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nicklloydnow · 3 years

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“In the last half-century of American politics, conservatism has hardened around the defense of economic privilege and rule. Whether it’s the libertarianism of the GOP or the neoliberalism of the Democrats, that defense has enabled an upward redistribution of rights and a downward redistribution of duties. The 1 percent possesses more than wealth and political influence; it wields direct and personal power over men and women. Capital governs labor, telling workers what to say, how to vote and when to pee. It has all the substance of noblesse and none of the style of oblige. That many of its most vocal defenders believe Barack Obama to be their mortal enemy—a socialist, no less—is a testament less to the reality about which they speak than to the resonance of the vocabulary they deploy.

The Nobel Prize–winning economist Friedrich Hayek is the leading theoretician of this movement, formulating the most genuinely political theory of capitalism on the right we’ve ever seen. The theory does not imagine a shift from government to the individual, as is often claimed by conservatives; nor does it imagine a simple shift from the state to the market or from society to the atomized self, as is sometimes claimed by the left. Rather, it recasts our understanding of politics and where it might be found. This may explain why the University of Chicago chose to reissue Hayek’s The Constitution of Liberty two years ago after the fiftieth anniversary of its publication. Like The Road to Serfdom (1944), which a swooning Glenn Beck catapulted to the bestseller list in 2010, The Constitution of Liberty is a text, as its publisher says, of “our present moment.”

(…)

Yet no one understood better than Nietzsche the social and cultural forces that would shape the Austrians: the demise of an ancient ruling class; the raising of the labor question by trade unions and socialist parties; the inability of an ascendant bourgeoisie to crush or contain democracy in the streets; the need for a new ruling class in an age of mass politics. The relationship between Nietzsche and the free-market right—which has been seeking to put labor back in its box since the nineteenth century, and now, with the help of the neoliberal left, has succeeded—is thus one of elective affinity rather than direct influence, at the level of idiom rather than policy.

(…)

The clash of these competing worlds of war and work echoes throughout “The Greek State.” Nietzsche begins by announcing that the modern era is dedicated to the “dignity of work.” Committed to “equal rights for all,” democracy elevates the worker and the slave. Their demands for justice threaten to “swamp all other ideas,” to tear “down the walls of culture.” Modernity has made a monster in the working class: a created creator (shades of Marx and Mary Shelley), it has the temerity to see itself and its labor as a work of art. Even worse, it seeks to be recognized and publicly acknowledged as such.

The Greeks, by contrast, saw work as a “disgrace,” because the existence it serves—the finite life that each of us lives—“has no inherent value.” Existence can be redeemed only by art, but art too is premised on work. It is made, and its maker depends on the labor of others; they take care of him and his household, freeing him from the burdens of everyday life. Inevitably, his art bears the taint of their necessity. No matter how beautiful, art cannot escape the pall of its creation. It arouses shame, for in shame “there lurks the unconscious recognition that these conditions” of work “are required for the actual goal” of art to be achieved. For that reason, the Greeks properly kept labor and the laborer hidden from view.

Throughout his writing life, Nietzsche was plagued by the vision of workers massing on the public stage—whether in trade unions, socialist parties or communist leagues. Almost immediately upon his arrival in Basel, the First International descended on the city to hold its fourth congress. Nietzsche was petrified. “There is nothing more terrible,” he wrote in The Birth of Tragedy, “than a class of barbaric slaves who have learned to regard their existence as an injustice, and now prepare to avenge, not only themselves, but all generations.” Several years after the International had left Basel, Nietzsche convinced himself that it was slouching toward Bayreuth in order to ruin Wagner’s festival there. And just weeks before he went mad in 1888 and disappeared forever into his own head, he wrote, “The cause of every stupidity today…lies in the existence of a labour question at all. About certain things one does not ask questions.”

(…)

If slavery was one condition of great art, Nietzsche continued in “The Greek State,” war and high politics were another. “Political men par excellence,” the Greeks channeled their agonistic urges into bloody conflicts between cities and less bloody conflicts within them: healthy states were built on the repression and release of these impulses. The arena for conflict created by that regimen gave “society time to germinate and turn green everywhere” and allowed “blossoms of genius” periodically to “sprout forth.” Those blossoms were not only artistic but also political. Warfare sorted society into lower and higher ranks, and from that hierarchy rose “the military genius,” whose artistry was the state itself. The real dignity of man, Nietzsche insisted, lay not in his lowly self but in the artistic and political genius his life was meant to serve and on whose behalf it was to be expended.

Instead of the Greek state, however, Europe had the bourgeois state; instead of aspiring to a work of art, states let markets do their work. Politics, Nietzsche complained, had become “an instrument of the stock exchange” rather than the terrain of heroism and glory. With the “specifically political impulses” of Europe so weakened—even his beloved Franco-Prussian War had not revived the spirit in the way that he had hoped—Nietzsche could only “detect dangerous signs of atrophy in the political sphere, equally worrying for art and society.” The age of aristocratic culture and high politics was at an end. All that remained was the detritus of the lower orders: the disgrace of the laborer, the paper chase of the bourgeoisie, the barreling threat of socialism. “The Paris commune,” Nietzsche would later write in his notebooks, “was perhaps no more than minor indigestion compared to what is coming.”

Nietzsche had little, concretely, to offer as a counter-volley to democracy, whether bourgeois or socialist. Despite his appreciation of the political impulse and his studious attention to political events in Germany—from the Schleswig-Holstein crisis of the early 1860s to the imperial push of the late 1880s—he remained leery of programs, movements and platforms. The best he could muster was a vague principle: that society is “the continuing, painful birth of those exalted men of culture in whose service everything else has to consume itself,” and the state a “means of setting [that] process of society in motion and guaranteeing its unobstructed continuation.” It was left to later generations to figure out what that could mean in practice—and where it might lead. Down one path might lay fascism; down another, the free market.

* * *

Around the time—almost to the year—that Nietzsche was launching his revolution of metaphysics and morals, a trio of economists, working separately across three countries, were starting their own. It began with the publication in 1871 of Carl Menger’s Principles of Economics and William Stanley Jevons’s The Theory of Political Economy. Along with Léon Walras’s Elements of Pure Economics, which appeared three years later, these were the European faces—Austrian, English and French-Swiss—of what would come to be called the marginal revolution.

The marginalists focused less on supply and production than on the pulsing demand of consumption. The protagonist was not the landowner or the laborer, working his way through the farm, the factory or the firm; it was the universal man in the market whose signature act was to consume things. That’s how market man increased his utility: by consuming something until he reached the point where consuming one more increment of it gave him so little additional utility that he was better off consuming something else. Of such microscopic calculations at the periphery of our estate was the economy made.

(…)

The contributions of Jevons and Menger were multiple, yet each of them took aim at a central postulate of economics shared by everyone from Adam Smith to the socialist left: the notion that labor is a—if not the—source of value. Though adumbrated in the idiom of prices and exchange, the labor theory of value evinced an almost primitive faith in the metaphysical objectivity of the economic sphere—a faith made all the more surprising by the fact that the objectivity of the rest of the social world (politics, religion and morals) had been subject to increasing scrutiny since the Renaissance. Commodities may have come wrapped in the pretty paper of the market, but inside, many believed, were the brute facts of nature: raw materials from the earth and the physical labor that turned those materials into goods. Because those materials were made useful, hence valuable, only by labor, labor was the source of value. That, and the fact that labor could be measured in some way (usually time), lent the world of work a kind of ontological status—and political authority—that had been increasingly denied to the world of courts and kings, lands and lords, parishes and priests. As the rest of the world melted into air, labor was crystallizing as the one true solid.

(…)

On the other hand, Jevons was a tireless polemicist against trade unions, which he identified as “the best example…of the evils and disasters” attending the democratic age. Jevons saw marginalism as a critical antidote to the labor movement and insisted that its teachings be widely transmitted to the working classes. “To avoid such a disaster,” he argued, “we must diffuse knowledge” to the workers—empowered as they were by the vote and the strike—“and the kind of knowledge required is mainly that comprehended in the science of political economy.”

Menger interrupted his abstract reflections on value to make the point that while it may “appear deplorable to a lover of mankind that possession of capital or a piece of land often provides the owner a higher income…than the income received by a laborer,” the “cause of this is not immoral.” It was “simply that the satisfaction of more important human needs depends upon the services of the given amount of capital or piece of land than upon the services of the laborer.” Any attempt to get around that truth, he warned, “would undoubtedly require a complete transformation of our social order.”

Finally, there is no doubt that the marginalists of the Austrian school, who would later prove so influential on the American right, saw their project as primarily anti-Marxist and anti-socialist. “The most momentous consequence of the theory,” declared Wieser in 1891, “is, I take it, that it is false, with the socialists, to impute to labor alone the entire productive return.”

* * *

With its division of intellectual labor, the modern academy often separates economics from ethics and philosophy. Earlier economists and philosophers did not make that separation. Even Nietzsche recognized that economics rested on genuine moral and philosophical premises, many of which he found dubious, and that it had tremendous moral and political effects, all of which he detested. In The Wanderer and His Shadow, Nietzsche criticized “our economists” for having “not yet wearied of scenting a similar unity in the word ‘value’ and of searching after the original root-concept of the word.” In his preliminary outline for the summa he hoped to publish on “the will to power,” he scored the “nihilistic consequences of the ways of thinking in politics and economics.”

For that reason, Nietzsche saw in labor’s appearance more than an economic theory of goods: he saw a terrible diminution of the good. Morals must be “understood as the doctrine of the relations of supremacy,” he wrote in Beyond Good and Evil; every morality “must be forced to bow…before the order of rank.” But like so many before them, including the Christian slave and the English utilitarian, the economist and the socialist promoted an inferior human type—and an inferior set of values—as the driving agent of the world. Nietzsche saw in this elevation not only a transformation of values but also a loss of value and, potentially, the elimination of value altogether. Conservatives from Edmund Burke to Robert Bork have conflated the transformation of values with the end of value. Nietzsche, on occasion, did too: “What does nihilism mean?” he asked himself in 1887. “That the highest values devaluate themselves.” The nihilism consuming Europe was best understood as a democratic “hatred against the order of rank.”

Part of Nietzsche’s worry was philosophical: How was it possible in a godless world, naturalistically conceived, to deem anything of value? But his concern was also cultural and political. Because of democracy, which was “Christianity made natural,” the aristocracy had lost “its naturalness”—that is, the traditional vindication of its power. How then might a hierarchy of excellence, aesthetic and political, re-establish itself, defend itself against the mass—particularly a mass of workers—and dominate that mass? As Nietzsche wrote in the late 1880s:

A reverse movement is needed—the production of a synthetic, summarizing, justifying man for whose existence this transformation of mankind into a machine is a precondition, as a base on which he can invent his higher form of being. He needs the opposition of the masses, of the “leveled,” a feeling of distance from them. [He] stands on them, he lives off them. This higher form of aristocracy is that of the future.—Morally speaking, this overall machinery, this solidarity of all gears, represents a maximum of exploitation of man; but it presupposes those on whose account this exploitation has meaning.

Nietzsche’s response to that challenge was not to revert or resort to a more objective notion of value: that was neither possible nor desirable. Instead, he embraced one part of the modern understanding of value—its fabricated nature—and turned it against its democratic and Smithian premises. Value was indeed a human creation, Nietzsche acknowledged, and as such could just as easily be conceived as a gift, an honorific bestowed by one man upon another. “Through esteeming alone is there value,” Nietzsche has Zarathustra declare; “to esteem is to create.” Value was not made with coarse and clumsy hands; it was enacted with an appraising gaze, a nod of the head signifying a matchless abundance of taste. It was, in short, aristocratic.

While slaves had once created value in the form of Christianity, they had achieved that feat not through their labor but through their censure and praise. They had also done it unwittingly, acting upon a deep and unconscious compulsion: a sense of inferiority, a rage against their powerlessness, and a desire for revenge against their betters. That combination of overt impotence and covert drive made them ill-suited to creating values of excellence. Nietzsche explained in Beyond Good and Evil that the self-conscious exercise and enjoyment of power made the noble type a better candidate for the creation of values in the modern world, for these were values that would have to break with the slave morality that had dominated for millennia. Only insofar as “it knows itself to be that which first accords honor to things” can the noble type truly be “value-creating.”

Labor belonged to nature, which is not capable of generating value. Only the man who arrayed himself against nature—the artist, the general, the statesman—could claim that role. He alone had the necessary refinements, wrought by “that pathos of distance which grows out of ingrained difference between strata,” to appreciate and bestow value: upon men, practices and beliefs. Value was not a product of the prole; it was an imposition of peerless taste. In the words of The Gay Science:

Whatever has value in our world now does not have value in itself, according to its nature—nature is always value-less, but has been given value at some time, as a present—and it was we who gave and bestowed it.

That was in 1882. Just a decade earlier, Menger had written: “Value is therefore nothing inherent in goods, no property of them, but merely the importance that we first attribute to the satisfaction of our needs, that is, to our lives and well-being.” Jevons’s position was identical, and like Nietzsche, both Menger and Jevons thought value was instead a high or low estimation put by a man upon the things of life. But lest that desiring self be reduced to a simple creature of tabulated needs, Menger and Jevons took care to distinguish their positions from traditional theories of utility.

(…)

In their war against socialism, the philosophers of capital faced two challenges. The first was that by the early twentieth century, socialism had cornered the market on morality. As Mises complained in his 1932 preface to the second edition of Socialism, “Any advocate of socialistic measures is looked upon as the friend of the Good, the Noble, and the Moral, as a disinterested pioneer of necessary reforms, in short, as a man who unselfishly serves his own people and all humanity.” Indeed, with the help of kindred notions such as “social justice,” socialism seemed to be the very definition of morality. Nietzsche had long been wise to this insinuation; one source of his discontent with religion was his sense that it had bequeathed to modernity an understanding of what morality entailed (selflessness, universality, equality) such that only socialism and democracy could be said to fulfill it. But where Nietzsche’s response to the equation of socialism and morality was to question the value of morality, at least as it had been customarily understood, economists like Mises and Hayek pursued a different path, one Nietzsche would never have dared to take: they made the market the very expression of morality.

Moralists traditionally viewed the pursuit of money and goods as negative or neutral; the Austrians claimed it embodies our deepest values and commitments. “The provision of material goods,” declared Mises, “serves not only those ends which are usually termed economic, but also many other ends.” All of us have ends or ultimate purposes in life: the cultivation of friendship, the contemplation of beauty, a lover’s companionship. We enter the market for the sake of those ends. Economic action thus “consists firstly in valuation of ends, and then in the valuation of the means leading to these ends. All economic activity depends, therefore, upon the existence of ends. Ends dominate economy and alone give it meaning.” We simply cannot speak, writes Hayek in The Road to Serfdom, of “purely economic ends separate from the other ends of life.”

(…)

For those choices to reveal our ends, our resources must be finite—unlimited time, for example, would obviate the need for choice—and our choice of ends unconstrained by external interference. The best, indeed only, method for guaranteeing such a situation is if money (or its equivalent in material goods) is the currency of choice—and not just of economic choice, but of all of our choices. As Hayek writes in The Road to Serfdom:

So long as we can freely dispose over our income and all our possessions, economic loss will always deprive us only of what we regard as the least important of the desires we were able to satisfy. A “merely” economic loss is thus one whose effect we can still make fall on our less important needs…. Economic changes, in other words, usually affect only the fringe, the “margin,” of our needs. There are many things which are more important than anything which economic gains or losses are likely to affect, which for us stand high above the amenities and even above many of the necessities of life which are affected by the economic ups and downs.

Should the government decide which of our needs are “merely economic,” we would be deprived of the opportunity to decide whether these are higher or lower goods, the marginal or mandatory items of our flourishing. So vast is the gulf between each soul, so separate and unequal are we, that it is impossible to assume anything universal about the sources and conditions of human happiness, a point Nietzsche and Jevons would have found congenial. The judgment of what constitutes a means, what an end, must be left to the individual self. Hayek again:

Economic control is not merely control of a sector of human life which can be separated from the rest; it is the control of the means for all our ends. And whoever has sole control of the means must also determine which ends are to be served, which values are to be rated higher and which lower—in short what men should believe and strive for.

While the economic is, in one sense readily acknowledged by Hayek, the sphere of our lower needs, it is in another and altogether more important sense the anvil upon which we forge our notion of what is lower and higher in this world, our morality. “Economic values,” he writes, “are less important to us than many things precisely because in economic matters we are free to decide what to us is more, and what less, important.” But we can be free to make those choices only if they are left to us to make—and, paradoxically, if we are forced to make them. If we didn’t have to choose, we’d never have to value anything.

* * *

By imposing this drama of choice, the economy becomes a theater of self-disclosure, the stage upon which we discover and reveal our ultimate ends. It is not in the casual chatter of a seminar or the cloistered pews of a church that we determine our values; it is in the duress—the ordeal—of our lived lives, those moments when we are not only free to choose but forced to choose. “Freedom to order our own conduct in the sphere where material circumstances force a choice upon us,” Hayek wrote, “is the air in which alone moral sense grows and in which moral values are daily re-created.”

While progressives often view this discourse of choice as either dime-store morality or fabricated scarcity, the Austrians saw the economy as the disciplining agent of all ethical action, a moment of—and opportunity for—moral artistry. Freud thought the compressions of the dream world made every man an artist; these other Austrians thought the compulsions of the economy made every man a moralist. It is only when we are navigating its narrow channels—where every decision to expend some quantum of energy requires us to make a calculation about the desirability of its posited end—that we are brought face to face with ourselves and compelled to answer the questions: What do I believe? What do I want in this world? From this life?

While there are precedents for this argument in Menger’s theory of value (the fewer opportunities there are for the satisfaction of our needs, Menger says, the more our choices will reveal which needs we value most), its true and full dimensions can best be understood in relation to Nietzsche. As much as Nietzsche railed against the repressive effect of laws and morals on the highest types, he also appreciated how much “on earth of freedom, subtlety, boldness, dance, and masterly sureness” was owed to these constraints. Confronted with a set of social strictures, the diverse and driving energies of the self were forced to draw upon unknown and untapped reserves of ingenuity—either to overcome these obstacles or to adapt to them with the minimum of sacrifice. The results were novel, value-creating.

(…)

One school would find expression for these ideas in fascism. Writers like Ernst Jünger and Carl Schmitt imagined political artists of great novelty and originality forcing their way through or past the filtering constraints of everyday life. The leading legal theorist of the Third Reich, Schmitt looked to those extraordinary instances in politics—war, the “decision,” the “exception”—when “the power of real life,” as he put it in Political Theology, “breaks through the crust of a mechanism that has become torpid by repetition.” In that confrontation between mechanism and real life, the man of exception would find or make his moment: by taking an unauthorized decision, ordaining a new regime of law, or founding a political order. In each case, something was “created out of nothingness.”

It was the peculiar—and, in the long run, more significant—genius of the Austrian school to look for these moments and experiences not in the political realm but in the marketplace. Money in a capitalist economy, Hayek came to realize, could best be understood and defended in Nietzschean terms: as “the medium through which a force”—the self’s “desire for power to achieve unspecified ends”—“makes itself felt.”

* * *

The second challenge confronting the philosophers of capital was more daunting. While Nietzsche’s transvaluation of values gave pride of place to the highest types of humanity—values were a gift, the philosopher their greatest source—the political implications of marginalism were more ambidextrous. If on one reading it was the capitalist who gave value to the worker, on another it was the worker—in his capacity as consumer—who gave value to capital. Social democrats pursued the latter argument with great zeal. The result was the welfare state, with its emphasis on high wages and good benefits—as well as unionization—as the driving agent of mass demand and economic prosperity. More than a macroeconomic policy, social democracy (or liberalism, as it was called in America) reflected an ethos of the citizen-worker-consumer as the creator and center of the economy. Long after economists had retired the labor theory of value, the welfare state remained lit by its afterglow. The political economy of the welfare state may have been marginalist, but its moral economy was workerist.

(…)

What the entrepreneur has—or, better, is—are force and will. As Schumpeter explains in a 1927 essay, the entrepreneur possesses “extraordinary physical and nervous energy.” That energy gives him focus (the maniacal, almost brutal, ability to shut out what is inessential) and stamina. In those late hours when lesser beings have “given way to a state of exhaustion,” he retains his “full force and originality.” By “originality,” Schumpeter means something peculiar: “receptivity to new facts.” It is the entrepreneur’s ability to recognize that sweet spot of novelty and occasion (an untried technology, a new method of production, a different way to market or distribute a product) that enables him to revolutionize the way business gets done. Part opportunist, part fanatic, he is “a leading man,” Schumpeter suggests in Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy, overcoming all resistance in order to create the new modes and orders of everyday life.

Schumpeter is careful to distinguish entrepreneurialism from politics as it is conventionally understood: the entrepreneur’s power “does not readily expand…into the leadership of nations”; “he wants to be left alone and to leave politics alone.” Even so, the entrepreneur is best understood as neither an escape from nor an evasion of politics but as its sublimation, the relocation of politics in the economic sphere.

Rejecting the static models of other economists—equilibrium is death, he says—Schumpeter depicts the economy as a dramatic confrontation between rising and falling empires (firms). Like Machiavelli in The Prince, whose vision Nietzsche described as “perfection in politics,” Schumpeter identifies two types of agents struggling for position and permanence amid great flux: one is dynastic and lawful, the other upstart and intelligent. Both are engaged in a death dance, with the former in the potentially weaker position unless it can innovate and break with routine.

(…)

Against this backdrop of dramatic, even lethal, contest, the entrepreneur emerges as a legislator of values and new ways of being. The entrepreneur demonstrates a penchant for breaking with “the routine tasks which everybody understands.” He overcomes the multiple resistances of his world—“from simple refusal either to finance or to buy a new thing, to physical attack on the man who tries to produce it.”

To act with confidence beyond the range of familiar beacons and to overcome that resistance requires aptitudes that are present in only a small fraction of the population and that define the entrepreneurial type.

The entrepreneur, in other words, is a founder. As Schumpeter describes him in The Theory of Economic Development:

There is the dream and the will to found a private kingdom, usually, though not necessarily, also a dynasty. The modern world really does not know any such positions, but what may be attained by industrial and commercial success is still the nearest approach to medieval lordship possible to modern man.

That may be why his inner life is so reminiscent of the Machiavellian prince, that other virtuoso of novelty. All of his energy and will, the entirety of his force and being, is focused outward, on the enterprise of creating a new order.

(…)

In The Constitution of Liberty, Hayek developed this notion into a full-blown theory of the wealthy and the well-born as an avant-garde of taste, as makers of new horizons of value from which the rest of humanity took its bearings. Instead of the market of consumers dictating the actions of capital, it would be capital that would determine the market of consumption—and beyond that, the deepest beliefs and aspirations of a people.

The distinction that Hayek draws between mass and elite has not received much attention from his critics or his defenders, bewildered or beguiled as they are by his repeated invocations of liberty. Yet a careful reading of Hayek’s argument reveals that liberty for him is neither the highest good nor an intrinsic good. It is a contingent and instrumental good (a consequence of our ignorance and the condition of our progress), the purpose of which is to make possible the emergence of a heroic legislator of value.

Civilization and progress, Hayek argues, depend upon each of us deploying knowledge that is available for our use yet inaccessible to our reason. The computer on which I am typing is a repository of centuries of mathematics, science and engineering. I know how to use it, but I don’t understand it. Most of our knowledge is like that: we know the “how” of things—how to turn on the computer, how to call up our word-processing program and type—without knowing the “that” of things: that electricity is the flow of electrons, that circuits operate through binary choices and so on. Others possess the latter kind of knowledge; not us. That combination of our know-how and their knowledge advances the cause of civilization. Because they have thought through how a computer can be optimally designed, we are free to ignore its transistors and microchips; instead, we can order clothes online, keep up with old friends as if they lived next door, and dive into previously inaccessible libraries and archives in order to produce a novel account of the Crimean War.

We can never know what serendipity of knowledge and know-how will produce the best results, which union of genius and basic ignorance will yield the greatest advance. For that reason, individuals—all individuals—must be free to pursue their ends, to exploit the wisdom of others for their own purposes. Allowing for the uncertainties of progress is the greatest guarantor of progress. Hayek’s argument for freedom rests less on what we know or want to know than on what we don’t know, less on what we are morally entitled to as individuals than on the beneficial consequences of individual freedom for society as a whole.

In fact, Hayek continues, it is not really my freedom that I should be concerned about; nor is it the freedom of my friends and neighbors. It is the freedom of that unknown and untapped figure of invention to whose imagination and ingenuity my friends and I will later owe our greater happiness and flourishing: “What is important is not what freedom I personally would like to exercise but what freedom some person may need in order to do things beneficial to society. This freedom we can assure to the unknown person only by giving it to all.”

Deep inside Hayek’s understanding of freedom, then, is the notion that the freedom of some is worth more than the freedom of others: “The freedom that will be used by only one man in a million may be more important to society and more beneficial to the majority than any freedom that we all use.” Hayek cites approvingly this statement of a nineteenth-century philosopher: “It may be of extreme importance that some should enjoy liberty…although such liberty may be neither possible nor desirable for the great majority.” That we don’t grant freedom only to that individual is due solely to the happenstance of our ignorance: we cannot know in advance who he might be. “If there were omniscient men, if we could know not only all that affects the attainment of our present wishes but also our future wants and desires, there would be little case for liberty.”

(…)

The overwhelming majority of men and women, Hayek says, are simply not capable of breaking with settled patterns of thought and practice; given a choice, they would never opt for anything new, never do anything better than what they do now.

Action by collective agreement is limited to instances where previous efforts have already created a common view, where opinion about what is desirable has become settled, and where the problem is that of choosing between possibilities already generally recognized, not that of discovering new possibilities.

While some might claim that Hayek’s argument here is driven less by a dim view of ordinary men and women than his dyspepsia about politics, he explicitly excludes “the decision of some governing elite” from the acid baths of his skepticism. Nor does he hide his misgivings about the individual abilities of wage laborers who comprise the great majority. The working stiff is a being of limited horizons. Unlike the employer or the “independent,” both of whom are dedicated to “shaping and reshaping a plan of life,” the worker’s orientation is “largely a matter of fitting himself into a given framework.” He lacks responsibility, initiative, curiosity and ambition. Though some of this is by necessity—the workplace does not countenance “actions which cannot be prescribed or which are not conventional”—Hayek insists that this is “not only the actual but the preferred position of the majority of the population.” The great majority enjoy submitting to the workplace regime because it “gives them what they mainly want: an assured fixed income available for current expenditure, more or less automatic raises, and provision for old age. They are thus relieved of some of the responsibilities of economic life.” Simply put, these are people for whom taking orders from a superior is not only a welcome relief but a prerequisite of their fulfillment: “To do the bidding of others is for the employed the condition of achieving his purpose.”

It thus should come as no surprise that Hayek believes in an avant-garde of tastemakers, whose power and position give them a vantage from which they can not only see beyond the existing horizon but also catch a glimpse of new ones:

Only from an advanced position does the next range of desires and possibilities become visible, so that the selection of new goals and the effort toward their achievement will begin long before the majority can strive for them.

These horizons include everything from “what we regard as good or beautiful,” to the ambitions, goals and ends we pursue in our everyday lives, to “the propagation of new ideas in politics, morals, and religion.” On all of these fronts, it is the avant-garde that leads the way and sets our parameters.

More interesting is how explicit and insistent Hayek is about linking the legislation of new values to the possession of vast amounts of wealth and capital, even—or especially—wealth that has been inherited. Often, says Hayek, it is only the very rich who can afford new products or tastes. Lavishing money on these boutique items, they give producers the opportunity to experiment with better designs and more efficient methods of production. Thanks to their patronage, producers will find cheaper ways of making and delivering these products—cheap enough, that is, for the majority to enjoy them. What was before a luxury of the idle rich—stockings, automobiles, piano lessons, the university—is now an item of mass consumption.

The most important contribution of great wealth, however, is that it frees its possessor from the pursuit of money so that he can pursue nonmaterial goals. Liberated from the workplace and the rat race, the “idle rich”—a phrase Hayek seeks to reclaim as a positive good—can devote themselves to patronizing the arts, subsidizing worthy causes like abolition or penal reform, founding new philanthropies and cultural institutions. Those born to wealth are especially important: not only are they the beneficiaries of the higher culture and nobler values that have been transmitted across the generations—Hayek insists that we will get a better elite if we allow parents to pass their fortunes on to their children; requiring a ruling class to start fresh with every generation is a recipe for stagnation, for having to reinvent the wheel—but they are immune to the petty lure of money. “The grosser pleasures in which the newly rich often indulge have usually no attraction for those who have inherited wealth.” (How Hayek reconciles this position with the agnosticism about value he expresses in The Road to Serfdom remains unclear.)

The men of capital, in other words, are best understood not as economic magnates but as cultural legislators: “However important the independent owner of property may be for the economic order of a free society, his importance is perhaps even greater in the fields of thought and opinion, of tastes and beliefs.” While this seems to be a universal truth for Hayek, it is especially true in societies where wage labor is the rule. The dominance of paid employment has terrible consequences for the imagination, which are most acutely felt by the producers of that imagination: “There is something seriously lacking in a society in which all the intellectual, moral, and artistic leaders belong to the employed classes…. Yet we are moving everywhere toward such a position.”

When labor becomes the norm, in both senses of the term, culture doesn’t stand a chance.

(…)

It would be a mistake to draw too sharp a line between the marginal children of Nietzsche—with political man on one branch of the family tree, economic man on the other. Hayek, at times, could sound the most Schmittian notes. At the height of Augusto Pinochet’s power in Chile, Hayek told a Chilean interviewer that when any “government is in a situation of rupture, and there are no recognized rules, rules have to be created.” The sort of situation he had in mind was not anarchy or civil war but Allende-style social democracy, where the government pursues “the mirage of social justice” through administrative and increasingly discretionary means. Even in The Constitution of Liberty, an extended paean to the notion of a “spontaneous order” that slowly evolves over time, we get a brief glimpse of “the lawgiver” whose “task” it is “to create conditions in which an orderly arrangement can establish and ever renew itself.” (“Of the modern German writings” on the rule of law, Hayek also says, Schmitt’s “are still among the most learned and perceptive.”) Current events seemed to supply Hayek with an endless parade of candidates. Two years after its publication in 1960, he sent The Constitution of Liberty to Portuguese strongman António Salazar, with a cover note professing his hope that it might assist the dictator “in his endeavour to design a constitution which is proof against the abuses of democracy.” Pinochet’s Constitution of 1980 is named after the 1960 text.

Still, it’s difficult to escape the conclusion that though Nietzschean politics may have fought the battles, Nietzschean economics won the war. Is there any better reminder of that victory than the Detlev-Rohwedder-Haus in Berlin? Built to house the Luftwaffe during World War II, it is now the headquarters of the German Ministry of Finance.”

#nietzsche #hayek #friedrich hayek #mises #ludwig von mises #menger #Carl menger #austrian economics #economics #libertarianism #philosophy #freud #nobel prize #leo strauss #carl schmitt #free market #agora

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thefeastandthefast · 4 years

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Thoughts on Serenade of Peaceful Joy as propaganda...

I was just thinking about Serenade of Peaceful Joy as propaganda tool and political morality play and realized...

If the drama is intending for the Chinese viewer to put themselves in the shoes of “the people” and not in the shoes of Danshu or Huirou or the other female characters, then I can see how the writer might think that the characterization of the emperor is sympathetic and that Huirou should ultimately accept her fate. All of the utterly illogical writing suddenly makes way more sense if that was the goal. I’ll explain my theory:

So... the emperor is constantly going on about how “the people” want peace and economic prosperity and most importantly, they need the imperial family’s conduct to be a moral example. In the last episode, he takes Huirou to visit a lantern-making family and shows her how everyone, from the oldest to the youngest, is working hard to make a living. He tells Huirou that her actions need to be considered above reproach because she owes it to “the people”, because “the people” didn’t pay taxes to support her posh princess lifestyle for twenty-some years so that she can hit her working class mother-in-law, canoodle with Huaiji, burn her house down, and interfere with government policy- you, if you are a Chinese viewer, are supposed to think, “EXACTLY, I DIDN’T PAY MY TAXES SO THAT SOME FUERDAI CAN GO CRASH THEIR FERRARI STREET RACING, HAVE ORGIES IN SANYA, AND USE THEIR PARENTS’ POLITICAL INFLUENCE TO GET AWAY WITH IT.”

Fuerdai (富二代) is the term for the rich children of China’s current political and economic elite. They are a much-reviled group in China, because they’re often the very public, scandalous face of the type of corruption that enormous economic inequality has wrought in the past few decades and because they are often shielded from the consequences of their scandals by powerful parents.

Badly behaving fuerdai are also considered dangerous to the stability of the CCP, because their existence has been used to levy criticism at the CCP’s failure to manage party officials. This Bloomberg article is worth reading to understand the whole phenomenon and I’ll just quote a little bit here: “The fuerdai (pronounced foo-arr-dye) aren’t just an embarrassment. The Communist Party seems to consider them an economic or even political threat. President Xi Jinping himself spoke out this year, advising the second generation to “think about the source of their wealth and how to behave after becoming affluent.” An article published by the United Front Work Department, the bureau that manages relations between the party and nonparty elite, warned: “They know only how to show off their wealth but don’t know how to create wealth.” Some local governments have taken steps to reeducate their wealthy elite. In June, according to Beijing Youth Daily, 70 heirs to major Chinese companies attended lectures on filial piety and the role of traditional values in business.”

The failure of Huirou to understand Huaiji’s attempts to explain poverty makes sense if this was the show’s message. She wasn’t meant to understand that lesson from his mouth because the writer needed Huirou to be taught this lesson by her father, emperor Xi Jinping... I mean, Renzong. So Renzong putting her in her place is presented to us as an act of benevolence to “the people” even if it destroys Huirou. Actually if you follow this logic, the story’s emphasis on Renzong’s love for Huirou makes his sacrifice of her happiness even more an act of selflessness for “the people”. You’re supposed to think, “WOW, even his daughter is not as important as justice for the people!”

The character of Zhang Bihan is interesting to consider from this angle too. Her love of extravagant luxury goods like ivory, pearls, and rare porcelain are shown repeatedly to be a political liability in addition to a personal failing. Add to that Lady Jia’s black market salt and human trafficking ring. Zhao Zhen’s weakness for Bihan and everything she and her circle represented and his rejection of sober, sensible Danshu was a sign that he still needed to learn how to put his own desires second to that of “the people”. Bihan is his fatal flaw to overcome on the path to sainthood. Because propaganda is most effective when you feel like those in power are just nice people trying their best even as they are fucking you over. But of course, in the end the writer makes Zhao Zhen realize that Danshu was always the best choice and choosing her signals his apotheosis. This is why Bihan and Danshu could never evolve beyond their tired archetypes. Never mind the ahistorical characterizations and relationships! Evidence-based depictions of a more complex Zhang Bihan that remained Renzong’s true love to the end and an adversarial Empress Cao/Renzong relationship wouldn’t fit the story that this propaganda requires.

Huaiji, his brother Yuansheng, and their family clearly represent “the people” starting from the very first episode. They’re the equivalent of the coal miners that American politicians love to talk about in the abstract as representatives of the working class. If you take Huaiji and Yuansheng’s journey as citizens who were deeply wronged by their government but who were then given opportunities to thrive later by the same government, you’ll see how the writer has very purposefully created a narrative (not in the book!) where lives destroyed by bad policy are merely accidents of fate but lives improved or justice restored are credited to compassionate government policy. The brothers losing the family business and each other, Huaiji losing his bright future and becoming a eunuch- none of the Liang family’s misfortunes can be attributed to Renzong or previous emperors purposefully making decisions to hurt people. Whereas their reversals of misfortune CAN be attributed to deliberate action on the part of the emperor and the government.

And when forcing a corrupt government to see and address injustice through unorthodox means, the writer wants you to know that you should expect and accept without complaint punishment for using those unorthodox means, even if you are justified in your cause. Yuansheng, after capturing and publicly reporting his aunt and the local official who had colluded to sell off his brother, doesn’t resist army exile and sees it as an opportunity instead. He’s later rewarded for his unquestioning submission with imperial patronage of his restaurant, becomes a successful businessman, and is reunited with his brother.

The emperor, after discovering that Huaiji is Yuanheng in the last episode, gives him back his real name and reunites him with Yuansheng. Though Huaiji is brutally parted from Huirou, his loss and longing are neatly tucked away from view in the end, unlike in the novel. Drama!Huaiji’s end is presented as a relatively happy one, where you see him sitting in a schoolhouse next to a beautiful river, quietly mounting a painting. He hears that the emperor has passed and makes a respectful obeisance. The drama wants you to think that he is grateful and he will recover, despite all the trauma that he has gone through. Because he HAS to recover, as a symbol of one of “the people” who has enjoyed the emperor’s grace.

The only wrench in the gears, though, is that Huirou, Huaiji, Danshu, He’er, Maoze, and Qiuhe got their personalities and backstories from a book with different priorities. And so that persistent feeling of wrongness I kept having watching this show was the feeling of seeing the visible seams stitching this Frankenstein’s monster together.

#serenade of peaceful joy #held in the lonely castle #清平乐 #cdrama #period drama #historical drama #my commentary

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arcticdementor · 4 years

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In the wake of Trump’s election, Brexit, and the growth of anti-EU populism, the placid doctrines of establishment politics are now being remade. But perhaps more significant is the absolute and utter collapse of Western self-declared “anti-establishment” politics: the “socialist” left has proven to be one of the earliest casualties. The cresting wave of left-wing populism turned out to be illusionary; as it receded, its only lasting legacy was bitter acrimony, rotting political hopes, failed analyses, and stranded careers in academia and the NGO-world.

This is not to say that “the left” has lost. Only the romantic narodism of the 21st century left has truly died: the belief that “the people,” or “the working class,” can be relied upon in the political struggle. One need only consider the riots going on even now in the US, or the one of the many institutional revolutions playing out (at foundations, newspaper editorial boards, and academia), to recognize that the movement is still in good health. But after the disappointments of late-2019 and mid-2020, those revolutions will no longer maintain any pretense of being waged by the people. They won’t even pretend to be waged for them.

…

The left may prefer to talk about a supposed “precarization,” of the college educated, and the right may be more comfortable talking about ”useless college degrees,” but neither side denies the facts on the ground: that for some time now, the West has been using a massive expansion of higher education to create a new class of functionaries—”knowledge-workers” and would-be managers—in numbers far in excess of what the labor market can or could absorb. Yet, it is only just now that we are seeing, with clear eyes, that this class of people (which, again, nobody denies the existence of) might begin acting as a class.

…

Rather than try to pin the blame on American television, or even social media, it behooves us to recognize that the conditions for this new “Springtime of the Managers” are just as ripe in London and Berlin as they are in Portland and New York City. What we have now on the left and right—on both sides of the Atlantic—is an open and bitter class war. It is a conflict between a growing cadre of imperial lords and the peasantry they hope to subjugate; between the managers and petty nobility of the much-prophesied “knowledge economy” and those they aim to manage.

Just as few took the existence of this class of people seriously, no one took the existence of this class war seriously until recently. The left was forced to outright deny it because they were already on the side against the working classes, and any acknowledgment of that fact would destroy their legitimacy. What is East Germany, without Communism? Nothing; it is merely part of greater Germany. The left faced a similar dilemma, and so the charade, emptied of all class conflicts in favor of “cultural” ones, had to be maintained.

Meanwhile, a minority of left intellectuals have already begun jettisoning ideological ties to a people it no longer belonged to or recognized. In the UK, thinkers like Paul Mason diligently sought to replace workers with young (educated) people who have a smartphone as the natural constituency of the left. In the US, Nathan J. Robinson, the publisher of Current Affairs magazine, pleaded for the left to finally abandon Marxism and historical materialism in favor of couching its arguments in moral terms. These characters were, almost without exception, mocked and ridiculed. But time has vindicated them. It is now clear that they took heat not because they suggested a new and different strategy, but because they were advancing the end to the left’s doublespeak and doublethink. The left had long since abandoned the workers; Mason and Robinson were merely preparing the ideological contingency plan for when the workers would abandon the left, as has now well and truly happened.

In the leadup to the 2020 election, the right faced a different dilemma. For them, the class conflict they refused to recognize was internal. The Democrats, having fully consolidated its new political coalition between petty managers, Silicon Valley grandees, and a dwindling base of minority clients, could not only defeat the likes of Bernie Sanders, but also reabsorb all of the hammer and sickle-brandishing “revolutionary communists” back into the machine. Unfortunately for the GOP—as with the Tories in Britain and the Sweden Democrats or Rassemblent Nationale in Europe—the consolidation of “the ascendant” into center-left parties has left them stuck with the political leftovers: an entirely ad-hoc coalition consisting of disgruntled heartland workers, small business owners, and big business also-rans. For this reason, and in part due to the intellectual legacy of the Cold War, talk of actual class conflict comes at a very high risk for the right. Trying to unite the competing interests that make up the extant and potential base of the Republican party is nigh impossible. The Democrats—and the Western left in general—talk about culture rather than political economy because they know the makeup of their coalition, who their enemies are, and what their plan is. Republicans—and the Western right in general—talk about culture rather than politics because they know none of these things.

…

As a political cause, Black Lives Matter seems to thrive just as well among the surplus managers of Dublin as it does in San Francisco—never mind the complete incompatibility of the Irish situation with the American. Sweden, for example, never had a plantation economy nor a period of formal or informal Jim Crow rule. But this in no way impacted the formation of a Black Panther movement in immigrant-dominated suburbs. At first blush, the children of immigrants to Sweden—predominantly of Middle-Eastern descent—cosplaying as 60s-era Afro-American freedom fighters reads as a hilarious anachronism. But there is an institutional logic behind it: Sweden already has a state-funded patronage network geared towards “community organizers” in particular, but also the surplus professional class in general.

Behind most declarations of proletarian solidarity or racial justice, one tends to find repeated and urgent demands for the state to simply create more jobs. How do we solve the thorny issues of racial justice? By diverting more federal and state money to employing the various temporarily embarrassed aspiring commissars currently stocking the shelves at Target, of course! While the language of economic redistribution today maintains a veneer of proletarian radicalism (often eagerly assisted by various red-baiters on the right, as seen during the fairly anemic “Joe Biden will usher in SOCIALISM” run-up to the 2020 election), only the truly credulous could believe that demands for the state to directly and indirectly employ more and more college graduates—creating as many ideological commissariats as necessary to rescue them from the ignominy of having to work at Starbucks—merely represents some innocuous side effect of the political project as a whole.

A full accounting of the scope of the Swedish patronage machine is neither possible nor necessary in this essay, but it does serve as a valuable example. Most of the country’s patronage machine actually predates the class that currently subsists on it. The “one percent rule” which states that at least one percent of the budget allotted to new buildings or infrastructure must be paid to artists for the express purpose of creating art, is just one example. The Swedish Inheritance Fund, (Allmänna Arvsfonden) was established as far back as 1928, when the country abolished the automatic inheritance rights of cousins and other distant relatives in the absence of a written will or close family. Originally, the intention was that the state would use this newly “orphaned” money to fund the care of orphanages and related causes. The fund’s mission has expanded over time to the point where it now funds a great variety of overtly ideological causes—often with next to no oversight. As such, the fund has become controversial, especially in the eyes of the Swedish right.

The various incarnations of the “one percent rule” or the Inheritance Fund only scratch at the surface. On every level—state, regional, and municipal—myriad grants, privileges, subsidies and direct cash transfers are available, aimed at a heterogenous group of race hustlers, artists, activists, and academics. It hardly needs to be said that cultural minority status, or fluency in the shifting language of wokeness, is a strict and unavoidable requirement for those seeking to access these resources. The state also pays the salaries of many Swedish journalists, either directly (through the various public service channels) or indirectly, through massive distribution subsidies. Are you perchance a radical syndicalist on a holy quest to crush the capitalist value-form while also grinding the running dogs staffing the reactionary Swedish state into dust? Have no fear, that state will gladly subsidize both your salary and cost of distribution for your newspaper urging the workers to destroy capitalism! Even as larger and larger parts of Sweden succumb to deindustrialization and lack of opportunity, this money tap will keep flowing.

All of this is to say that there is a very real, non-ideological endpoint for many of the fervent demands coming from the Red Guards of the American cultural revolution. The state can take it upon itself to create and sustain an ever increasing number of jobs for the surplus elite generated by our universities. Moreover, even systems that were originally not intended to serve as patronage machines for surplus managers—such as a state fund for orphans—can easily be repurposed into a job creation program controlled by woke guild rules. Again, to reiterate: very few of our institutions that are now notorious as liberal-hegemonic patronage machines were created for that purpose; they were colonized. American conservatives should thus be very careful in their quips about “socialist Sweden,” given their own immediate future.

…

The left populist project is very much a project of social democracy for young professionals. Joe Biden’s electoral victory—such as it is—would have been impossible without the immense class solidarity and sense of purpose uniting the supposedly “ascendant” or “reality-based” half of America. (Drunk on victory, there is already talk of drawing up lists of people who in any way abetted the old regime.) They no longer feel any need to hide their power, or their plans for the future.

Broadly speaking, these surplus managers have two complementary goals: the above-discussed expansion of the social-democratic state, and the establishment of formal and informal guild protections and structures within the newly-expanded or pre-existing professional fields they hope to inhabit. Some characterize this secondary goal as one of ideological domination of the workplace, but this confuses the means with the ends. Put plainly, the ideas that are getting people fired today are not only empty of content, they are also constantly and arbitrarily changing. Compared to the often murderous totalitarianism of, say, a crusading religious fanatic, there is a distinct lack of object permanence at play here. The religious fanatic, obsessed with forcing everyone to bend to the True Faith, chooses his doctrine once and then sticks to it. But in the world of the woke, doctrine is ever-changing, and the commissars of today will gleefully sign your proscription sentence for holding opinions they themselves held only yesterday.

Yet, in this cultural revolution, the fickleness of its dominant ideas is an essential feature, not a bug. The point of this “totalitarianism” is not to force everyone to think correct thoughts at the risk of getting fired; it is to get them fired. Full stop. Like the medieval guilds of old Europe, surplus managers are threatened by the existence of a mass of people willing to do any job within their ambit that cannot be comfortably accommodated without inviting the pauperization of their entire profession. For the medieval guilds, guaranteeing that only a select few who could actually hope to become carpenters or glove makers had nothing to do with improving the economic efficiency of the towns, but rather to secure the living standards and social status of those carpenters and glove makers already in practice.

Guilds, unlike unions, are institutions meant to inflate scarcity. It is hard to imagine an American auto workers union threatening strike action in order to forestall Ford or GM from producing more cars. After all, more cars means more workers, means more potential union members, means more power for the union. The specific political opinions of any one worker does not factor into the basic arithmetic. For a guild, however, the arithmetic of power is very much concerned with the ability to discipline its own members, as well as raise barriers of entry into the workplace via social, cultural, or other grounds. For the union, having more members is (almost) always just a good thing. For the guild, it is a nightmare scenario. (Of course, exceptions exist. In some narrow vocations, unions maintain scarcity through licensing requirements and other means. But even then, the interests at play are economic, managing qualified labor scarcity for the benefit of its members.)

It is significant that the figure of “the boss” is imagined by these surplus managers as being evil not because he is a capitalist, but because his myopic profit motive or outdated personal morality is an obstruction to the creation of committees staffed by employees for the purpose of firing and disciplining other employees. Today, one can even be a millionaire capitalist while maintaining a properly anti-capitalist, revolutionary outlook, denouncing other companies that refuse to discipline their workers for ideological commitments.

…

To illustrate the hopelessness of any conservative or right-wing project which aims to somehow “shift the debate,” consider the way those same efforts played out on the left before the election. Take the case of Jacobin magazine’s recent article entitled, “Trying to Get Workers Fired Is the Wrong Way to Fight Racism.” Within minutes of its being published to Twitter, the article was inundated with angry and shocked reactions from mostly self-identifying socialists. The idea that bosses shouldn’t be trusted with the power to arbitrarily dismiss workers over allegations of racism produced a firestorm of controversy among the people who, we are supposed to believe, represent the vanguard that will lead those same workers into a revolution against those same bosses.

If this is just a modern expression of “Marxism,” then it has certainly come a long way.

…

Just as the Boston Tea Party looms large in the minds of Americans, the entrance of the black ships into Edo bay occupies a place of importance in the Japanese historical memory. It is seen as the moment in which the simmering social and political contradictions irrevocably boiled over. Neither the British monarchy nor the Japanese shogunate recognized what was happening until well after the point of no return. The fight against Trump has already forced such massive changes that the old social compact no longer exists. Silicon Valley has merged with the larger progressive machine, taking it upon themselves to guide (if not outright control) political discourse, picking political winners in a completely open and blatant manner.

The old order that was constituted in the US in the 90s depended on the separation not of church and state, but of the separation of civil servants, technical expertise, and scientific empiricism from politics. Without it, end-of-history liberalism lacks any legitimating mechanism. But it is precisely this separation that has just been destroyed; often violently and publicly. The election—with its artfully coordinated media blitz, the monumental failure of institutional polling (again), and the sudden about-face on the existence of electoral interference, is just the final swing of the knife against what remains of post-war Western liberalism.

This is not some trifling ideological point. The last year has seen very large institutional changes in the real world—huge cash transfers from business to various progressive NGOs, the embrace of political education in government institutions as a matter of course (briefly and ultimately meekly resisted by Trump’s executive order, now poised to return stronger than ever). On top of that, the US has seen a series of rolling purges of politically unreliable people from all positions of importance within academia, journalism, and similar sectors. Are those people going to suddenly be rehired now that Trump is gone, no harm, no foul? Will the alliances forged between progressive liberal causes and big business be voided, and all that money returned?

Even so, it is very much in doubt that many people actually want to go back. All these new alliances, all of these new technical and social instruments of political control and discipline, are far too useful for anyone to willingly give up. You can hear it clearly coming from congresswoman Alexandra Ocasia-Cortez: the tune for the future seems to be a mix of revenge and reeducation, not restoration. But since the deplorables are unlikely to whip themselves in penance, the reeducators will have to be trained, deployed, and (one would assume) amply paid for their work.

The class war is here. It will not go away on its own. After 2020, not even the staunchest anti-communist or “traditional conservative” on the right should indulge fantasies to the contrary. Donald Trump, whatever else one may say of him, was not defeated by ideas, but by a society-spanning managerial omerta, organized by a stunningly impressive (and frankly, terrifying) class alliance working together in total discipline.

In an era of elite overproduction, the only realistic means of sustaining the unsustainable elite’s social status and standard of living is by increasing the exploitation of the rest of the population; demands, taxes, and tithes levied against the two-thirds of America that does not attend college by the one-third that does. And so more institutions will be built, more money will be transferred from the undeserving poor to their educated superiors. Our media personalities, academics, and experts will continue the work of inventing new crimes for their gardeners, gig workers, and unemployed countrymen to commit, so that they might maintain this process of looting and extortion.

Those of us outside this coalition of the ascendant—whatever else we may lack in commonality—are now called upon to realize one very basic point: regardless of whether you call yourself a national conservative, a one-nation Tory, a part of Blue Labour, or a labor populist, this class war cannot only be analyzed and complained about. It must be vigorously prosecuted and won. It is one thing to debunk the “Marxism” of the surplus managers, but another thing entirely to strike against the structures of their guild privilege, dismantle their networks of patronage and access, and defund and marginalize their institutions and money pipelines.

The battle lines of the class war have been drawn. For those of us who would fight against this miserable vision of the future, it is high time we proclaimed our own Sonnō jōi. Only then can we hope to restore some semblance of dignity. Only then can we hope to halt the creeping rot that is eating us from within.

#malcom kyeyune #the bellows #class warfare #professional managerial class #read the whole thing

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fieldofpain · 4 years

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On the White Rev Left

Developing Militants: the Left’s Minstrel Show and How College Educated Revolutionaries of all Colors Keep the Working Class Shucking and Jiving

[This piece was originally published by a small collective known as Fire Next Time in early 2013, though to my knowledge they no longer exist as an organization. Their website has disappeared into the digital ether and their writings along with it, so I’ve decided to re-up this article onto tumblr, even if I doubt many will find it on my lil’ old blog. If this does happen to stumble across your dash please take the time to read it, particularly if you currently consider yourself a “radical” in college. It had a tremendous impact on my friends and I when it first came out and dramatically changed the direction of the political work we accomplished that year.]

Introduction

The White revolutionary left is largely college educated young people. Whether they work at a cafe, wash dishes, teach in public schools, or drive trains, they share the common experience of a college education. Their experiences in college have profoundly shaped their politics in a variety of ways. Two particular sets of politics are race relations and relationship to revolutionary theory. These White College Educated Revolutionaries (WCER) have never broken from the experiences in college. Worst of all they unknowingly impose their particular college experiences on the revolutionary movement and particularly the working class whites and working class People of Color (POC)[1]. Lastly, People of Color College Educated Revolutionaries (POCCER) have played a crucial role in working with WCER in unknowingly preventing any working class leadership from developing.

This has resulted in a devastating consequence for potential POC working class revolutionaries. They are denied the very intellectual benefits which WCER have received. While WCER have all the best intentions, this is objectively white supremacy in motion. This results in the control of most organizations by WCER. The POCCER in particular are rarely in genuine leadership because of this dynamic and their own contradictory relationship to education and revolutionary theory. This results in a minstrel show where authenticity is defined by lack of knowledge of the past and the romanticization of someone’s experience. Fundamentally it says that theory, writing, and education is not for POC. White college educated revolutionaries control the movement and usually forefront only their experiences and expect POC and white working class people to conform to them.

I will expand on these points in this essay. This is one of the many crises of the revolutionary left today. Sadly, much of what I describe is done under the best of intentions. While it might sound like it at times, I do not believe there is a coordinated and evil plot to keep down working class people in the revolutionary left. I do not believe any of these WCER are white supremacists. They are serious revolutionaries. But they are revolutionaries who are the product of the general historical moment and their particular life experiences. Regardless of what they say and think, I am most interested in the objective results and process of their actions.

The White College Educated Revolutionary (WCER) The category of WCER is very broad and needs some political refinement. While I cannot draw extremely sharp demarcations, some minimal ones will be helpful. I have noticed that WCER in Trotskyist and Maoist organizations do not display this problem. If anything the Maoists are the most serious about developing well rounded revolutionaries as far as their tradition understands it. WCER Trotskysts also display a fair amount of seriousness and fall outside the critiques I am making.

I have noticed Anarchists are some of the poorest in this sense. While there are exceptions, those who I can point out are exactly that, exceptions. Then there are those coming out of the Johnson-Forest tradition which have most in common with the problems of the white Anarchists and WCER. Lastly, there are the independent activists who are radicals or revolutionaries, but most importantly have not joined any revolutionary organizational form. The core of my critique is centered around independent activists, those influenced by the Johnson-Forest tradition, and Anarchists, with all of them having in common their college education. When using WCER, I will tend to refer to this layer as a general rule.

Most of the WCER left has had minimal contact with POC working class and unemployed. They come out of the suburbs or small towns and go to fairly elite private or public university. They rightly developed a moral anger against the white supremacy geared towards many communities in the USA and around the world. They learned about Marxism in the university and often it was discussed as Stalinism. Marxism was paraded around as completely male, Euro-centric etc. What was missing was any mention of Walter Rodney, Rosa Luxemburg, Grace Lee Boggs etc. Or how many movements in Asia, Latin America, and Africa were marxist/ communist, although of highly Stalinist-Maoist varieties. Nor do they study in college the Grundrisse, Johnson-Forest Tendency, Socialism or Barbarism, etc.

What first developed for these WCER as a critique of Marxism, led to a criticism of theory and universal ideas as destroying oppressed groups’ particular experiences. Theory and universalism became a stand-in for the white straight man. While there is a strain of truth to it, it does not explain any of the women and POC militants and movements I have mentioned so far. What stood in its place was the romanticism of the individual experience of Queers, women of color, Trans-people, men of color, etc. The class dimensions of these identities were usually hallowed out because class also became the bogey man for Marxism. Sociological academic words like intersectionality, privilege, and positionality came to fill in for the revolutionary past. Bourgeois thought had once again defanged revolutionary theory.

If revolutionary theory was not totally hollowed out, what was learned at best was an incomprehensible academic Marxism. Giving certain insights to many WCERs, it also left them unable to speak plainly to anyone outside of academia. As soon as WCERs stepped out of school, they discovered no one understood a word they spoke unless they spoke plain. This further deepened the idea that revolutionary theory was not for the working classes. This created a private versus public distinction of where revolutionary ideas are discussed. Back on the college campuses, the WCER did some organizing where the only POC they encountered were their class counterparts. The political experiences and relationship developed on college campuses had a definitive impact on how both of these groups imagine politics, organizing and race relations to be. And these POC had been waiting their entire life to give it to the man and they found a group of WCER who were only too happy to oblige their POC counterparts. Both the WCER and the POC revolutionaries had a sickness of revenge, guilt and an inner cowardice.

Authenticity+Representation= Attack on Revolutionary Theory Everyone on college campuses recognized that there was a profound difference between their class reality and what people outside the campus were experiencing. Usually this was understood in some shallow-sociological form of class. That no one was able to make deeper connections with those outside college campuses was a reality no one could ignore. This is part of the material basis of the politics of representation which came to fill such a role in the contemporary revolutionary left. WCERs needed representatives to play a fill-in role since none could be found outside of college campuses. These representatives were almost always POCCERs.

But to be representative of something, you need some claim to authenticity. No discussion of authenticity can happen without discussing the problems of race which are inherent to the concept. We can expose the problem by framing it in terms of a question. Who is an authentic POC? What kind of music does an authentic POC listen to? How does an authentic POC talk? How does an authentic POC dress? Where does an authentic POC live? What does an authentic POC eat? What are the politics of an authentic POC? The list is endless. But this line of questions exposes the racialist/ white supremacist thinking which are the very foundations of the questions themselves.

No one in the WCER would openly ask such questions. Their white skin prevents such public statements. But the way WCER behave in college, exposes their method of thinking. This is where the POCCER enters. I will not forget when I recently heard a POCCER claim that he sagged his pants low so he could make a political statement, connect with the hood, and remind others of his true origins. This is a classic moment of authentic representation. The WCER sees someone who they believe has an accurate understanding of the POC working class.

The authentic representation combination leads to an attack on revolutionary theory. The authentic representative is someone who hates revolutionary theory. The following things are essential for this authentic representative to say: a) people in the hood do not read or care about books; b) people in the hood worry about the police, wages, or rent; c) people in the hoods’ experiences are enough to politicize them.

Ignorance or White Supremacy? College campuses are so politically correct that open white supremacy is rare in the left. There is something to be said of young people coming together. Mistakes will be made and often very silly things will be said. It is difficult to be a white revolutionary today around POC revolutionaries. The slightest slip is taken as white supremacy and the POC revolutionary is quick to make accusations. Strangely, I have noticed that POC often say as many ridiculous things about other POC from different religions, nationalities, class backgrounds, gender etc. However, there is much more negotiating and conversation going on within the POC space then with white counterpart.

The reality of white supremacy and the broader ignorance of white people regarding white supremacy has a lot to do with the frustrations POC revolutionaries have. Too many white people know little of what is happening in POC workplaces, schools and neighborhoods. Many well intentioned, but slightly naive WCER get caught in this dynamic. Unfortunately, nobody grows out of this dynamic. They continue to perpetuate it well past their years in college. Buried in this field of land mines is the assumption that politics and history is something you know or you don’t, but it cannot be taught. The anti-educational bent of the WCER and POCCER re-enforces the notion that either you know it or you don’t. The most common statement coming from POCCER is that people in the hood do not need to read about police brutality, they experience it everyday. How are white people supposed to know about police brutality? If something is learned from a book, its cultural credibility is put into question. Knowledge from a book is seen as less pure, authentic, etc. The real knowledge, the claim goes, is from the streets, from poverty, and raw oppression. The common refrain usually goes, “I do not need a book to tell me about oppression” x, y or z. This is often very radical sounding positions, but underlying them is poverty of knowledge, history, and strategy in how to fundamentally defeat the root causes of oppression.

If politics is something you either know or you do not, the implications are deep. People who advocate this position should think very carefully about what those implications are. Why/ how would white working class people have solidarity with working class POC? Why/ how would POC have solidarity with one another considering the amount of internal divisions within POC? Why/ how should working class POC/ whites stop believing in the anti-Semitic theories of the Illuminati? Why should men stop thinking women are ‘bitches’? Why/ how do some of these changes occur? The point of is in a society filled with horrible ideas spewed from ruling class media and oppressed people, how do new liberatory ideas gain traction? Of course, part of the story is people struggle, and change their views. But, is that enough? Obviously, I do not think so. Theoretical engagement with the working class is crucial. Related to this is that politics is purely culture and personal interactions. This is has particular origins in the United States. This has its own deeper history going back to feminism, rejection of vanguard Maoist-Stalinist parties of the 1970s, and the defeat of the 1980s all leading to contradictory developments. I do not mean to slight in any way the important insights regarding how the personal is political, the importance of unpaid care work, or the destructive nature of the voluntarism of the New Communist Movement. Attached to these healthy developments have also come the singular focus on culture and personal interactions as representative of political struggle.

This intersects with the contemporary experience of WCER and POCCER in countless classrooms where they are trained to be professional cultural critics. This should not be dismissed as something minuscule. I argue that the highest form of counter-revolutionary culture today is the radical chic cultural critic which is the emblem of sexy and cool politics. This is criticism with no historical, strategic, and organizational perspective. It is the cultural criticism of neo-liberalism disguised as radical politics which has fundamentally shaped WCER and POCCER. It is the practice of people who are not responsible for building a community, but only act as ‘critical dissenters’ who ultimately land a job at a university ‘speaking truth to power’ while actually never challenging it. At best, many WCER and POCCER walk away from college hating such cultural critics, but I argue the essence of those critics are stamped permanently on the former. And unknowingly it becomes a part of political practice, social life, and relationships. Culture and personal interactions absolutely matter. But they cannot be divorced from broader material and ideological realities of this system. This means that if we take white supremacy seriously, then we should take into account that our little groupings cannot be divorced from the effects of white supremacy.

Considering everything I have said, I want to end this section on a different note. The revolutionary left in the USA has had its fair share of internal white supremacy. What else is to be expected in a society so saturated with such a sickening racial order? This is not meant to excuse the failures of the past, but to place them in a certain ideological and material reality which we continue to deal with today. It is undeniable the revolutionary left has made gigantic leaps from the days of the Socialist Party of America when Eugene Debs could foolishly proclaim that socialism has nothing special to offer to the Black man. Today, I could not imagine anyone saying something like that without facing serious challenges from all quarters.

This begs the question of having some measurable standard for what constitutes white supremacy. Signs of white supremacy in the revolutionary left are: a) a lack of POC leadership b) a political program that does not take racial oppression seriously c) no organizing with racially oppressed groups d) the dismissal of POC revolutionary militants, thinkers, and histories. It seems that these four criteria are clear and measurable points of struggle that every revolutionary formation should be measured on.

The People of Color College Educated Revolutionary Who is the POCCER? Just like the WCER from Maoist and Trotskyist backgrounds, the POCCER from the same backgrounds also has a serious commitment to the working class. The one addition for POCCER, are nationalists, who are also some of the most committed to the development of working class people of color. Whether it is the determination of slaves to read or Malcolm X, the importance of being a well rounded and educated revolutionary is taken seriously. It is a particular point of honor in a society which has done everything to deny the masses of Black people decent education. And it is one of the most powerful ways to exist as equals with other whites.

POCCER can be divided into two camps on the question of revolutionary theory based on their reaction to the chapter “Saved,” in Malcolm X’s autobiography. For one set of POCCER it only made a momentary impact on their lives. It was just another moment. But another group of POCCER read it and it changed them forever. It recast their entire life. Their lack of knowledge of the past, their feelings of insecurity, their failures in school, their peoples’ oppression, etc. all got reworked by this chapter. And one of the dramatic lessons of this chapter was that ignorance was not a gift, but a great curse which had to be overcome. For these POCCER, reading and writing would become a crucial part of revolutionary politics and liberation. I do not mean to say that it was simply this chapter which was the magic trick. I am only using this chapter as a pivot into what was a developing current in the second set of POCCER. They were waiting to read such a piece of literature their entire life, as if all the events in their life had prepared them to sit in that lonely prison cell with Malcolm X and finally discover the power of knowledge.

The attraction to purely personal experiences by POCCER is a classic sign of weakness. It is weakness in a particular social context. In revolutionary organization where abstract thinking, theory, generalizations, history, etc. matter so immensely, POCCER who have been so poorly educated, in a moment of being intellectually overwhelmed, defend themselves by reverting to personal experiences. It is not just being intellectually overwhelmed, it is an emotional reaction. It is a reaction of bitterness. Even in the struggle for liberation, they cannot compete with many white revolutionaries. I am not saying personal experiences are not vital, but I see it in a 3-way relationship with theory/ history, experiences of political struggle, in relationship with personal experiences. That is a liberatory way of looking at one’s life and what many white and POC revolutionaries in the past have done.

There is a defensiveness when an “other,” but especially WCER, know the internal politics of POC. There is insecurity. The dirty secrets of the POC community have been revealed to an interloper. How did they learn this? The sad truth is that there are no more secrets. The current access to information is unlike anything humanity has known before. Gone are the days when secrets can be hidden. In a world of multi-racial dating, books, youtube, twitter, etc., the racial secrets are out. POC who are resentful over the dirty secrets are living in the 19th century. This gives further ammunition to POCCER who think that theory and history are no good. It is purely an emotional reaction. Healthy, multi-racial, working class politics do not exist in WCER and POCCER scenes. Instead of strategy and revolutionary politics being the driving force, it is our feelings. Much of how we treat each other reflects the experiences of WCER and POCCER more than an anarchist/ communist movement rooted in the working classes. Something new has to be built.

The People of Color Alliance with White College Educated Revolutionaries Against the Working Class of all Colors For POCCER there are conflicts with the POC working class revolutionaries. I see two conflicts: a) who gets to represent the authentic person of color and b) who will be the organizational top dog and the gatekeeper of the POC community to whites. This struggle is actually a mini class struggle which has so far gone unnoticed in the entire revolutionary left. The WCER with the POCCER who do not like to read, discourage working class people of color from reading so they can play a role in revolutionary organization, politics, and struggle. Earlier, I wrote that WCER impose their experiences and needs on working class people of color. That is not entirely true. A more accurate formulation is that the POCCER and WCER together accomplish this goal. Although these two groups have slightly different reasons and approaches, the results are the same. Both, WCER and POCCER argue that what they are doing is completely justified. They both tend to know academic versions of Marxism, academic versions of feminism, academic versions of fill in the blank. If social consciousness is the product of social being, what else is to be expected. Those four years of undergraduate school and more years of graduate school in the defining intellectual years of WCER/ POCCER play an over-determining role. Both tend to have a theory of pedagogy that says personal experiences are what counts and that politics is something you either know or you don’t, in contrast to something you learn.

Both have fundamentally accepted in a-historical terms the profound attacks on the working class. Every bit of historical evidence shows that the working classes in the USA before the 1970s had a profoundly rich political culture, whether Nationalist, Maoist, Stalinist, Trotskyste, Anarchist, etc. It was a political defeat of epic proportions that these currents were separated from the working class. It is also accepted as eternal that working class people cannot read, do not like to read, do not like to think…etc.

Neither takes seriously what the working class thinks. My case in point is that no current in the United States has written one serious essay on what young working class people are thinking about today: New World Order and the Illumanti. How many people in the revolutionary left have heard of books like The Pale Horse? This is what the young working class is reading. Perhaps most dangerous of all are thoughts which imply that working class people of color have an inherent disposition to learn through song and dance, i.e. hip hop. There is no doubt of the rich history of resistance in musical form. To ignore that is to have a reductionist understanding of politics and culture. At the same time, there is a romanticization of the form/content of pedagogy. It is borderline white-supremacist and very patronizing.

For POCCER, being a gatekeeper is a vital part of who they are. There is a crucial social relationship which is masked by this gate keeper function. That the POCCER are not able to ‘mobilize’ POC working class communities any better than their white counterparts is a painful admission. The POCCER usually chalk this up to the fact that white culture, politics and ways of doing do not resonate with POC. Or that there is a lack of multi-racial solidarity. All these points have a grain of truth which are a factor. But I argue that the fundamental reasons why whites or POC cannot mobilize POC working class communities are: a) POC working class communities are not revolutionary in this period b) they are trying different strategies other than militant confrontation with the system c) they do not see a real winnable alternative in the revolutionary left d) the one thing which the revolutionary left could provide, strategies and intellectual discussions, it does not do, because it does not take those questions seriously e) paradoxically, and most importantly, when there is an immense militancy or ‘revolutionary’ discussion going on in the working class, WCER and POCCER are nowhere to be found .

In the absence of working class struggle and politics, it is the middle class whites and POC which have defined everything about the revolutionary left. It is understandable. It is very difficult to escape your class background. What is not understandable is the intellectual failure by the WCER and POCCER to understand themselves in light of this particular problem. The Left Minstrel Show: Time to Dance for the College Educated I have come to believe one of the most dangerous places in America for POC is the left. Where overthrowing capitalism will require excellence, the revolutionary left is the home of intellectual mediocrity, and for POC who have had education denied to them, this is not an option for freedom, but for ignorance and death. To be an authentic POC, you have to play the game of personal experiences, tragedy, etc. If you discuss things at the level of white revolutionaries, they will begin seeing you less as a POC, less as someone part of the POC community, etc. They will deny that any such POC could possibly come out of such conditions. At best they will see you as the exceptional POC or simply erase your identity as a POC. Your best chance of getting heard in the WCER scene is by playing a very specific role which has been mapped out for a long time. The WCER and POCCER ultimately create one of the fundamental divisions in capitalist society in its own relationship with POC working class revolutionaries. This is a racialized mental and manual division of labor. Secretly the WCER and POCCER are on powerful email lists, have their own blogs where everything is debated, and journals, etc. Most of these forums are largely white. The POCCER/ WCER does not develop the skills of the POC working class revolutionaries so that they can participate in these forums. What happens is that the WCER are the thinkers while the POC working class revolutionaries are the brawn/workhorses of the group. Occasionally the POC working class revolutionaries will write about their own personal experiences, but rarely in a broader historical or theoretical sense. That is the job of the WCER. The POCCER/ WCER cannot see that this mental and manual division of labor must be transcended. The POCCER/ WCER has no conception of a worker-militant; no conception of the relationship between theory and practice; no conception of the relationship between personal experiences, history, and political struggle. Both groups ultimately have a rigid divide between theory and practice. Theory is for private discussions among mostly white college educated people. Everything else is for working class people.

The job of the authentic person of color is to dance a game of ignorance, personal experiences, tragedy, and sob stories which all the POCCER and WCER can listen to. After a while, most sensible working class people leave such formations, because one does not go to meetings to share personal stories. It is called hanging out with friends. Without a clear revolutionary vision, one does not need to organize protests. A Sunday afternoon watching NFL is much more entertaining and potentially liberatory. This reveals that the revolutionary left has very little to offer working class people.

At times in this essay it might sound like I believe it is WCER who will teach working class people of color. As if the only relationship that can be developed with WCER is one of them as teachers and the working class people of color as obedient students. I believe that what the WCER and POCCER have to teach the working class is fairly limited today. Largely because of the degradation of revolutionary politics and theory. In some ways, I believe the working class is on its own and has been abandoned by the revolutionary left. But even if the WCER and POCCER did have things to teach, it would be a dynamic relationship of theory and key skills informed by political work and experiences. College educated people, especially from the middle class or working class, will tend to have a leg up in terms of reading, writing, and speaking skills. There is no point in denying that. The question is toward what ends are those skills used. Currently little of those skills are used to develop working class revolutionaries. If the trajectory of the past is any indication, most of the WCER and POCCER today will be the chic professors, gentrifiers, and ‘progressive’ state bureaucrats of tomorrow.

Being Scared To Say Anything The worst is that the WCER is always afraid to say anything critical of their POC college educated comrades or the POC working class comrades–especially if they are in the same group. Every speech a person of color gives is powerful. If you say a POC was being inarticulate, is that racist? It becomes impossible for the WCER to help their comrade grow because they are trapped in a psychology of guilt.

For the POCCER what is at stake is their confidence. They are always worried that what they are doing is reflective of their race. And failure in a specific task speaks for the entire race. This is a specific problem white revolutionaries do not face. POC revolutionaries tend to be defensive and come off as authoritarian because criticism is taken not only personally, but ultimately as a commentary about their ability to be race men/ women/ non-gender identifying. That is the crux of the problem. Psychologically, while understandable in a historical sense, this is completely destructive for the individual militant. The white college educated militant, while usually not aware of this internal war going on in the POC militant, claps endlessly, regardless of the quality of the writing, speech, contact work, organizing event, etc.

We need to destroy these behavior’s of white-POC college educated revolutionaries. They are in the way of oppressed people learning. These so called revolutionaries are closer to Booker T Washington than anything resembling revolutionary politics. Yes, WCER and their counterparts are no different than Booker T Washington on many fundamental questions of education. For those who want to see a real contrast, compare it with W.E.B. Du Bois, C.L.R. James or Malcolm X.

The Hidden Battle: College Educated Revolutionaries Obscured from Working Class Women of Color Due to patriarchy across the globe, historically, there has arisen a larger grouping of men of color who have left their mark in the written word: Amilcar Cabral, Steve Biko, M.N. Roy, CLR James, Jose Carlos Mariategui, Ali Shariati, Walter Rodney, to name some. The list of women is considerably shorter although that is beginning to change. One of the factors which unites many of the men is that they were able to go to the university. The women were not. The very ideological, social and material divisions created by patriarchy end up creating a powerful problem to overcome. The WCER and POCCER take the results of oppression and naturalize them into their own internal dynamics. Many women and feminists will jump and shout that I am ignoring the efforts of Lucy Parons, Elma Francois, Laila Khaled, Elizabeth Gurley Flyn, Assata Shakur, and/ or Rosa Luxemburg. My point is that few of these women left considerable theories or histories behind. For the super majority of these women, we read their autobiographies. This is not because women are biologically or inherently more prone to write autobiographies. That is not true. It is because they were denied the education that more of their men counterparts received. Many had to take care of children. Others were also the secretaries of the very men comrades who were supposed to be fighting for ‘their’ liberation. Many of these women subordinated the struggle for women’s liberation in the hopes that class or race liberation would grant them increased freedom. The reasons are many, but all tied to patriarchy.

Working class women of color are just as capable as their male counterparts in doing what the latter has done. There is nothing inherent in men which allows them to be more theoretical. But the debate as it has been dominated by WCER and POCCER blocks this development.

Female WCER fail to politically understand the specific battle that women of color must have with men of color. When female WCER push against theory, reading, and writing, they rob women of color revolutionaries of an important weapon which is specific to their historical experiences. And of course many male WCER think they are doing their duty by supporting their sisters in attacking theory and study.

The WCER think they are developing a block around their oppressed women counterparts. It is an opportunistic block not based on liberation, but based on sociological and romantic desires to be close to women of color. Male POCCER can continue to speak on questions of race in a gendered way which equates race with male gendered identified people and continue being the authentic representatives of POC with no challenge to their perspectives. But what gets lost in the debate is the battles that women of color must have with men of color in asserting their legitimate need to do exactly what men of color have done on a world stage.

In the one place where serious education and theory could be learned, the revolutionary formation, the WCER and the PCCER block them from doing so. The framework of WCER is most damaging for working class women of color.

What about the Working Class? It is true that there are plenty of working class people who hate to read and write. Many who disagree with what I have wrote, can point to many examples of this reality. Many will also correctly point out how the K-12 education system is designed to create McDonald’s workers, prisoners, and unemployed workers. Many will also point out that for many working class people, the best defense mechanism for survival is to ignore the racist, patriarchal, and homophobic education taught in school. These are only some of the realities working class kids face in school.

The question then becomes what conclusions are to be drawn from this situation. Basic questions should be asked. What kinds of knowledge is needed to destroy capitalism and social relations of oppression? Is reading and writing automatically white supremacist? Patriarchal? Class based? If you are trying to organize with millions of people is some type of reading and writing required? If music or youtube is your response, are those things any less patriarchal, homophobic and potentially white supremacist than reading and writing? Many working class people, after being told by their teachers and peers in K-12 that they are stupid for not being able to read and write as fast, react by never taking forms of intellectual practice seriously. Again, this makes sense. Working class people also have a contradictory relationship to these questions. I have been told by working class POC that I am an achievement of the race for my ability to speak and write well. I have been looked at as a white-boy by other POC working class people. There is probably no principled position I could discover by doing a sociological study of what working class people think about education, especially the young folks. Perhaps from the adults with young children, we could see a general trend towards the importance of education as a key concern.

Another critique is that working class people need to think about bread and butter issues and do not have time for theory. I am currently reading Red Star Over China. In this book, peasant soldiers, in the middle of a war, are taking 3-4 months to study theory! Let me say that again, in a middle of a war, where their comrades are being hunted down and killed, they are taking time out to study. Where their daily caloric intake is probably less than what many working class Americans eat in one McDonald’s meal! At a certain point, some of these arguments are simply just racist arguments which implicitly say POC in America are too dumb to think about anything other than bread and water. And besides, I also notice that whenever POC think about more than bread and water, the common revolutionary response is that those POC are bought off. It seems a trap has been set up: if you are a poor working class POC, then you can only think of food, shelter, and cops; but if you are able to think about other things, then you are bought off.

It is probably true that the most common encounters that revolutionaries have today with working class people tends to re-affirm that working class people do not like to read or write. There is a truth to this. A few words regarding the choices of the working class. To the extent that the working class can be thought of as a unit, as a conscious being, as a subject in capitalism, it certainly makes choices based on need and survival. The working class fundamentally needs to make choices on how to get food on the plate. What are the choices which will allow this to happen? At what point do working class adolescents in school figure out that their childhood dreams are no longer achievable? To what extent is this a realistic assessment of white supremacy, class, and patriarchy? This has huge political potentials which everyone recognizes. It is an insight about the realities of the system. It is gained through lived experiences. At the same time, what is the difference between being an object and a subject? We should not ignore that working class people are also objects in this society. They are objects for the capitalists to impose their ‘rationality’ upon. If this dimension is not understood, then the very premise of oppression cannot be grappled with. Oppressed people are made into objects by the system. There is a dynamic tension between this object-subject relationship.

The point of bringing up this subject-object relationship is not to discount the real and sensible choices that many working class K-12 or college people make. To point is to look at how these choices also lead to limitations in destroying the very system which created the oppression. In the immediate sense of the question, the choice to stop paying attention in school makes sense. But it becomes much more complicated when it comes to figuring out what amount/type of knowledge is needed to overthrow the system. I want to recognize that it was millions of peasants or slaves who could not read or write (which does not mean they were not smart) who destroyed oppression in China, Russia, Haiti, and many other places.

This reality should not lead to sloppy understandings of the education required to overthrow the system. Every revolutionary movement has had a set of educated (either from the university setting, through revolutionary organizations, or through their own networks) revolutionaries who have either led or fundamentally shaped the revolution. In my years of study, I have not encountered a single movement that escapes this dynamic. The other choice which I do not want to discount is that the subjects/ working class–as I mentioned earlier in the essay– determined to continue learning, dropout of school, to continue their education. Some find themselves tucked away in libraries, some in front of youtube videos watching Illuminati vidoes, others at the corner of the street talking about politics. There are a million ways to learn outside of bourgeois educational institutions.

Conclusion It should be no surprise that the revolutionary left is shaped by the class, gender and racial politics of this country. A big part of that shaping has been done by the counter-reaction to the college experience by the WCER and POCCER. Both currents have failed to historicize themselves in the proper way. They take their experiences for granted. They impose their experiences with learning and education onto the working class. They impose their experiences of race onto the working class. This cannot go on any longer. To be clear: in no way is this meant to say that POC working class people only learn through reading and writing. There are a thousand ways to learn and revolutionaries should ferociously support and develop such ways. The only reason this piece was so one-sided is because many revolutionaries are anti-intellectuals, anti-reading, anti-writing etc. except when it comes to their private lives. And of course this is racialized, as I have noticed in my experiences. The white revolutionaries who argue in public against theory and reading, read and theorize privately. So the argument was forceful in emphasizing key dimensions. Everyone learns through experience. And to be more precise, they learn through mass struggle and in their daily lived experiences against oppression. The challenge is to connect this to a broader understanding of capitalism, anti-capitalism, and revolution.

It might appear that I have argued for separate organizations of POC only. I can certainly see why people would draw such a conclusion. That is not the conclusion I hope people reach. While I do not feel confident there are any organizations which can pass the tests of this essay, the tasks still remain. Yes many tears will be shed, as the color of your skin will not be your savior from criticism. Encouragement and hard ass work to develop ourselves as better humans and revolutionaries is the only path.

My argument still rests on building a multiracial movement with WCER. At the same time there needs to be a massive reconstruction of the revolutionary left. While I hope to see it happen, with millions of working class people of color joining, I also recognize that it will not happen overnight. Millions of people do not join revolutionary organizations or become involved in revolutionary struggle casually. It takes immense crisis and self-development before such social relationships are created. It is not something revolutionaries can conjure out of thin air. To the extent revolutionaries exist in non-revolutionary times, they will be a small minority of society. We need to become comfortable with that.

Many will point out that the very author of this piece is a college educated revolutionary person of color. While this observation is correct, this is a continued reflection of the fetishization of sociology in the United States political scene. Radical sociology is not revolutionary politics, but has become one of the most powerful substitutes for what counts as such. Based on how ‘American’ revolutionaries conduct themselves, they would have ignored Mohamed Bouazizi in Tunasia, because he did not fit the correct sociological profile. Lastly this essay is not promoting ‘consciousness raising’ or that revolutionaries are saviors of the working class. I have emphasized certain things which can only be understood in the context of the US revolutionary left.

Books Which Influenced the Writing of This Essay Black Boy by Richard Wright Auto-Biography of Malcolm X Modern Politics by CLR James Hubert Harrison by Jeff Perry Revolutionary Suicide by Huey Newton Black Skin White Masks by Frantz Fanon -by WILL

[1] I recognize the problems of the People of Color category. Most who use it ignore the specifics of race in the United States and the globe. I stand by my usage of POC in this essay largely because it explains a general trend of a reality which does affect POC. This is not to say it is equal across racial groups. No doubt more specific pieces should be written on what this means for different racialized groups.

Original credit: @marxianergonomics

#white organizers please read #BLM #black lives matter #white radicals #adademics #longread #to read #white organizers in academia

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theculturedmarxist · 5 years

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Business news headlines recently bemoaned the incidence of “bond yield inversions” in a series of countries as the supposed harbinger of doom and destruction. Many working-class people were left scratching their heads about what on earth this all means. 10 years after the “Great Recession”, many could be forgiven for thinking that we have been living in permanent recession and things can’t get any worse. The reality is that, while things have not been good in most countries, things can also get far, far, worse. In this article, we will explain why.

What is a bond yield inversion, and why does it matter?

A bond is a term for the purchase of someone else’s debt. In other words, if you buy a bond, you are lending someone money (often a government or large corporation). Bonds are different from stocks, which give the owner a share of the profits of a company.

Bonds can be short term or long term. This refers to the amount of time that you have agreed to lend someone your money. In normal times, the longer the term, the higher the return. Say you lend someone money for 12 months, you might expect a two percent rate of return; but if you lend money for five or ten years you might demand a four or five percent rate. It is natural to demand a higher rate for a longer period because you are taking a higher risk over that time. The value of your loaned money could be eroded by inflation, or you could even lose the entire amount if a company goes bankrupt or if a government goes into default (refuses to pay). Another term for interest rate is “bond yield”. A “bond yield inversion” is the weird and dangerous phenomenon when interest rates on long-term loans are lower than short-term loans.

Why would interest rates for long-term debt become lower than short-term? This is another way of saying that life in the short term is far riskier than life in the long term (even when the risk of inflation and bankruptcy is factored in).

Imagine that you are a billionaire and are trying to figure out what to do with the mountains of cash you have screwed out of the workers (to use technical terminology). If capitalism seems to be doing well, you’ll invest this money in stocks to get a share of the profit made from exploiting workers. This is risky, but gives the best potential return. But if you think that there is going to be a slump, then you’ll pull your money out of the stock market before everybody else does the same and you lose millions when share values go down. Now our poor billionaire is looking for a place to put his or her money. They could buy a short-term bond, but that won’t help because they’ll get the money back right in the middle of the crisis. So their only option (apart from sitting on cash, or buying gold) is to buy long-term bonds.

The yield of the long-term bond is driven down when lots of people want to buy them. This is because bonds are sold using an auction-like process. A government may say, “I want to borrow $1 million at a one-percent rate, who is interested?” If nobody is interested, such as when nobody wants to buy Greek debt, then that government will have to raise the rate to attract more people. But if it is the government of Germany, and lots of people want to buy their debt at a yield of one percent, then perhaps they can offer only 0.5 per cent, or even zero percent, and still get the money they need.

Low long-term yields are a symptom of the fact that the capitalists have no faith in the capitalist system. Don’t bother listening to the paid propagandists of the bosses who say that the “free market economy” is the most efficient way of allocating resources; instead, watch what the moneybags actually do with their precious hoard. They care too much about protecting their ill-gotten gains to believe their own propaganda for a single second. They just want to keep their heads down and hope that by the time their long-term bond matures the crisis will have gone away. They don’t care about being productive, and they definitely have no interest in providing jobs for working-class people. They only care about their money.

The situation has gotten so out of control that there are even bonds with a negative yield! This means it costs money to lend money, and you get extra money for borrowing money. The logic being that, while the loaner will lose money, they’ll lose less money than if they invested elsewhere. This can seem crazy, but there is $16 trillion currently invested in these assets that are 100 percent guaranteed to lose money. One Danish bank even released a negative rate mortgage, where they gift you money to buy a home. The capitalist system is clearly inside out and upside down.

Historically, since the Second World War, every time the return on 10-year U.S. government bonds has gone below the U.S. two-year bonds, there has been a recession soon after. While it is possible for yields to be negative without being followed by a recession, pretty much every recession is preceded by this kind of behaviour.

Bourgeois confusion

However, if one looks for an explanation as to why a recession is coming there is much confusion. Liberal politicians are talking about the “Trump slump”, with the prospect of the U.S.-China trade war causing a global recession. In related terms, a no-deal “Boris Brexit” also would serve to place additional barriers in the way of free trade. Even the Hong Kong protests have made markets jittery, due to the possibility of the movement spreading, and the fact that Hong Kong is an important financial centre in its own right.

Right-wing populists like Donald Trump think they can win a trade war. This leaves the intelligent bourgeois aghast, as they have spent the last 80 years trying to expand trade and avoid protectionism. In their view, protectionism extended the 1929 stock market crash into the decade-long depression of the “Dirty Thirties”. They actually have a point here, as protectionism does strangle the capitalist economy. Tariff barriers and competitive devaluations mean that, instead of buying a more efficiently produced (and therefore cheaper) foreign good, you are forced to buy a more expensive and less efficiently produced domestic item. If you are the only one using protectionist measures, then you have successfully exported your unemployment to another country, but when everybody does it, then on average the entire world economy becomes less efficient. You have to do more work to get less stuff. This is why big business opposes trade wars and favours free trade.

The self-declared “community of nations” is complaining about Trump violating the “rules-based international order”. Does that mean workers should support these liberals against Trump? The “rules-based international order” promoted by countries such as Germany, France, and Canada is a euphemism. These pretty words to conceal a thief's bargain to share out the loot of exploiting the world working class. Trump, the biggest gangster, is merely trying to rewrite the terms of the deal in his own favour. Our opinion on this fight is the same as our opinion with regard to differences between the New York Mafia, the London Mob, and the Tokyo Yakuza.

But while there is potential for a trade war to exacerbate the coming slump, just as subprime debt worsened the 2008 slump, or the dot-com bubble in 2000, or the oil crisis in 1973, none of these precipitating factors really explain the cause of a recession. It has been more than 10 years since the last global downturn, one of the longest periods of growth in the history of capitalism, and generalised processes demand a generalised explanation. Possibly the best explanation for the root causes of capitalist crisis comes from the Communist Manifesto:

“In these crises, there breaks out an epidemic that, in all earlier epochs, would have seemed an absurdity—the epidemic of over-production. Society suddenly finds itself put back into a state of momentary barbarism; it appears as if a famine, a universal war of devastation, had cut off the supply of every means of subsistence; industry and commerce seem to be destroyed; and why? Because there is too much civilisation, too much means of subsistence, too much industry, too much commerce. The productive forces at the disposal of society no longer tend to further the development of the conditions of bourgeois property; on the contrary, they have become too powerful for these conditions, by which they are fettered, and so soon as they overcome these fetters, they bring disorder into the whole of bourgeois society, endanger the existence of bourgeois property. The conditions of bourgeois society are too narrow to comprise the wealth created by them.”

Evidence of overproduction is wide and spreading. One key economic statistic that shows this is called “capacity utilization”. This measures how much of the productive potential of machinery and factories are actually in use to create commodities. Globally, this statistic has been in decline over the last 50 years. For example, in the USA, capacity utilization regularly surpassed 85 percent in the 1970s. However, after plunging to almost 65 percent during the last crisis, this figure hasn’t been able to recover. Now, between 20-25 percent of machinery sits idle even in a so-called “boom”. This waste of productive potential is an indictment of capitalism in the 21st century, which Marx and Engels explained back in Victorian times. Conversely, it also shows the potential of a society that produces for need instead of greed. Overnight we could increase output by 20 per cent merely by utilizing the existing productive forces. We would direct these resources to the genuine needs of the people, to end the housing crisis, build environmentally sustainable transit infrastructure, schools and hospitals, etc.

Another example of the crisis of overproduction are the mounting hoards of corporate “dead money”. Mark Carney, formerly the governor of the Bank of Canada, and now governor of the Bank of England, made headlines back in 2015 when he chided corporations for sitting on cash and not investing. This lack of investment led to stagnation in productivity. At the time, in Canada, dead money amounted to just under $700 billion. The bosses responded with indignation to this criticism from “one of their own”. They asked why they would invest in increasing productivity when there was a capacity utilisation crisis. Why spend money to produce more commodities when you can already make more commodities than the market can absorb? Carney quietly moved on, as did journalists, but the problem has not gone away.

Canadian “dead money” has ballooned by $65 billion per year to a total of $950 billion. These figures can be repeated in country after country. The billionaire class is acting like a dragon from a Tolkien novel, sitting on its jealously guarded pile of gold. But if the workers dare ask that this hoard be used for jobs, or homes, or education, they are met with smoke and fire. This is yet another glaring example of why humanity can no longer live with this monstrous system, which is completely incapable of advancing society and must be slain for the people to prosper.

The fundamental contradiction of capitalism is that the workers are not paid the full value of their labour. Therefore, the workers cannot buy back the items they have just produced. But while the consumption power of the working class is restricted by a whole series of factors, the individual capitalists continue planning production as if there are no such limitations. This inevitably leads the capitalist system into recurring crises of overproduction.

The capitalists can temporarily get around this in a number of ways. They can re-invest the surplus product in production. But doing this merely exacerbates the problem, as increased productivity in the long run, leads to more items being produced that the workers cannot buy. At the moment however as we have seen with the capacity utilisation and dead money crisis, corporations have stopped re-investing. The bosses can also export the surplus product, but again this builds up productive potential in other countries and re-creates the same crisis of overproduction. Now Trump’s trade war is shutting the door on this method of postponing a crisis. Finally, they can artificially boost the market by extending debt to workers, corporations, and governments. This can also work for a period, but eventually these debts must be repaid with interest. Again, the Communist Manifesto explains this clearly:

“And how does the bourgeoisie get over these crises? On the one hand by enforced destruction of a mass of productive forces; on the other, by the conquest of new markets, and by the more thorough exploitation of the old ones. That is to say, by paving the way for more extensive and more destructive crises, and by diminishing the means whereby crises are prevented.”

In 2009, governments bailed out the banks and massively increased debt. Now this debt remains—personal, corporate, and government—but a new crisis is coming. The capitalist class has utilised almost every tool at its disposal to avert another crisis. It has used up all of its escape routes and does not know what to do. It is desperately afraid of the social consequences of the “enforced destruction of a mass of productive forces” which would lead to massive layoffs and destitution. A decade ago, the bankrupt labour bureaucracy managed to encourage the workers to keep their heads down and not fight. But in the intervening period, the ideas of socialism have become popularised in a way not seen in generations. The political system in country after country is on the verge of collapse in this time of modest growth. Just imagine what will happen during a generalised slump.

One political commentator for the CBC said the following:

“We are in unknown territory, out past the ‘here be monsters’ sign. None of us has any idea how this will turn out, economists included. As we saw in 2008, the collateral damage when things start to go badly can be devastating. Personally, I have a bad feeling about it all.”

Theoretically speaking, there is no “final crisis” of capitalism. They will always find a route out, one way or another. But the capitalists have no idea where this route lies, and neither do we. One thing is clear, however: whichever way out they find, it will be at the expense of the workers and the poor. The bosses can no longer move society forward and stand at the edge of an abyss. We must build the forces that can create a socialist society as the only alternative to capitalist catastrophe.

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malusvio · 6 years

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Just what is Anarcho-Communism? Part 1: Common Policy Positions

Part 2: https://malusvio.tumblr.com/post/175451817452/just-what-is-anarcho-communism-part-2 Part 3: https://malusvio.tumblr.com/post/175452375962/just-what-is-anarcho-communism-part-3-what-an In this post I will be going over basic Anarcho-Communist (Ancom) policies, clear some misconceptions, and try and get a little in depth, tho I dont want to make this post uber long. First we will start with basic socialist policies, then communist, then anarchist, and further things.

Policy #1: Workers own their workplaces. This is basic socialist thought that is the core of socialism. The workers do not, under capitalism, receive their share of the fruits of their labor. The workers deserve to democratically run their workplaces, not some rich capitalist who takes all the profit and leaving the workers who spend all day in the factories, offices, etc. to fight over the scraps

Policy #2: Abolition of commodity production. Another basic socialist policy. When you are distributing resources according to who does the most work or who has the largest pocketbook, thats not socialist. Resources should all be distributed according to people’s needs. You see those nice fur coats in the windows being sold at $30-#50 dollars waiting to be bought and thrown away? Why not give those to the poor and homeless who are cold and starving instead of handing it to someone who already has a coat just so you can get some profit?

Policy #4: Abolition of the state. Basic Communist and Anarchist theory, though Anarchists believe the state should be abolished and smashed immediately. Marxists generally believe we should use the state apparatus seized by the working class, that then slowly dissolves into communism (although this is not quite what Marx advocated for, but regardless) The state is an unjust hierarchy, but first we must define the state. The state contains a centralized institution with a monopoly on the legitimate use of violence, an administrative governing body which claims use of that violence, and a geographical area over which this violence is exercised. The state always is controlled by a small elite. This is the most common definition used by Ancoms, and other anarchists. The Marxist definition differs as follows: The marxist definition is that the state is a tool used by one social class to dominate another. Under capitalism, the Bourgeoisie dominate the Proletariat. Under a socialist state, the Proletariat dominate over the Bourgeoisie. However, Socialism is, to us ancoms, inherintly de-centralized, and can never be centralized. So when you have Marxist-Leninists (Stalinists), Maoists, and other Authoritarian Socialists demanding a state apparatus before dissolving into communism, we tell them that the state is inherintly centralized, and since the USSR was a centralized state, it does not qualify as socialist, along with many other problems. So what do we advocate as a replacement? Individual communes set up through democracy (we’ll get to that topic in a bit) where the community decides on issues.

Policy #5: Abolition of social classes. We believe that social classes should be eliminated, as it is, once again, an unjust hierarchy (see further below). One man sits atop another and profits off of him. Rather than having one person be more powerful and more priviliged than another, all of mankind should stand shoulder to shoulder with others, with their own needs individually met through abolition of commodity production.

Policy #6: Abolition of Money. Ancoms believe, once again, money creates unjust hierarchies in which one man has more power and influence over a region to dominate it, and to take more resources than the rest because of his money. Some people, such as a minority of Marxists, and anarcho-collectivists, instead advocate for “Labor Vouchers” which distribute resources according to work. However this creates unjust hierarchies once again. We propose instead to replace money with Mutual Aid, an evolutionary theory based on the works of evolutionary scientist Pyotr Kropotkin, who proposed the best species were not the ones who competed, but rather those that worked together

Policy #7: Abolition of Unjust Hierarchies. We believe that hierarchies that do not meet the burden of proof to justify their requirement to exist makes them unnecessary, and often, harmful. If a woman sees a child about to be hit by a car, it is justified for them to snatch them away from danger. But a Politician who stands far above you in the chain of command, giving you orders that do not benefit you, only themselves, is an unjust hierarchy. Examples of unjust hierarchies will be covered, including the state, capitalism, landlords.

Policy #8: Abolition of Capitalism. We are socialists, of course we want to dismantle capitalism. Not the “Bernie Sanders and Jeremy Corbyn” Socialism, but actual socialism, as described further up. We describe capitalism as “A region with a state (see far below) where the means of production, distribution, and exchange are owned privately. It also contains social classes and money. Capitalism is characterized by capital accumulation, commodity production, high levels of wage labor, investement of money to make profit, and capitalist self interest in managing business and investments, market competition, supply and demand, and eventually in later stages, imperialism”

Policy #9: Abolition of the Police. We see the police as a tool used by the elite capitalist classes to enforce their unjust laws upon the population. As police violence soars across the west, we see what the police were made to do when the elite become desperate.

Policy #10: Democracy. We do not advocate for Representitive Democracy, as democracy is rule by the people, but Representative Democracy is instead rule by elected “representatives” who just end up getting elected and benefit noone but themselves and their elite friends. If Democracy were alive today, we’d see better healthcare, end to the drug war and overseas wars, more worker unions, etc. Instead we propose two forms of Democracy. First, Direct Democracy, direct rule by the people under horizontal organization (as opposed to vertical) where the people effected by an issue get to vote on it. We also propose Delegative (liquid) democracy as a backup. This is so that if two or more communes want to work together, the community will elect a delegate who still works alongside the workers, but has a few additional jobs. Delegates can be fired by the workers at any moment for any reason. When these communes come together for a common cause, we call it a “Federation”, although Anarcho-Syndicalists will sometimes propose delegates to form syndicates, and then syndicate delegates to form federations. De-Centralization has been shown to make people happier and more fulfilled in the product of their labor.

Policy #11: Feminism. Anarchists are all feminists. This is a requirement to be an anarchist. The form of feminism we propose is called “Anarcha-Feminism” which calls for the liberation of all women, LGBT+ folk, non-binary, the disabled, and other minorities as well as abolition of the patriarchy, and abolition of traditional gender roles, and more.

Policy #12: Fuck the landlords. We see no reason for a person to claim ownership over a building they do not use, and is sometimes even completely vacant for months or even years. Why should a person be making money just because they claim ownership over a building noone is using? In america alone, there are roughly 6 empty houses for every homeless person. We support squatters, people who are simply struggling to live a life with a roof over their head. But instead we see the police coming over and arresting, beating, and killing them because of “property rights”

Policy #13: Fuck Private Property. When we talk about private property, we do not mean your home, your yard, bed, television, or even toothbrush. That is personal property and we have full respect for that. What we mean by private property is the workplace, a lake, a mountain, an entire forest. How disgusting it is that an entire company, person, or state can claim ownership over something like a mountain? How absurd and barbaric.

Policy #14: Pro Sex Work. We believe in FULL bodily autonomy. This does not just mean the ability to take any drug you please or have wild tattoos or piercings, this also means we believe that if a person wishes to engage in sex work, that is their choice and is to be respected. No person has a right to tell others what to do with their bodies, not within a capitalist system, not within a socialist system. Sex work is work.

Policy #15: Violence? While it is true many anarchists are insurrectionists and revolutionaries, as they believe that the state and capitalists will always kill and crush any form of legit socialism to occur, as Lucy Parsons once said “"Never be deceived that the rich will permit you to vote away their wealth". And while syndicalists may believe in acheiving anarchism through unions, a general mass strike, and wildcat strikes, refusing to work for the state and capitalists, which shuts down the system, they generally do believe workers should be armed enough to defend themselves when the state, police, military, and SWAT come to take it all away and cause violence. At least the syndicalists will have the comfort of knowing they did not attack first, they simply defended themselves. We also have Anarcho-Pacifists within our groups, though this group is a bit smaller than insurrectionists and syndicalists, they are none the less comrades and are brave and strong to withstand the temptation of violence upon becoming an anarchist.

#antifa #anarchism #communism #feminism #politics

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bibleteachingbyolga · 3 years

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I woke up on November 1, 1973, a happy 23-year-old within the Communist Party. I had entered the University of Michigan graduate school after reporting for The Boston Globe, along with travel on a Soviet freighter and the Trans-Siberian Railway. A comfortable fellowship let me have my cake and advocate eating the cake of others. Professors complimented me on my Marxist analysis. Free love beckoned.

I had just received a visit from two leaders of the Michigan Communist Party. They admired not only my volumes of Marx, Engels, and Lenin, but my three volumes by Bulgarian communist boss Georgi Dimitrov. I told them of my just-approved plan to create, with university funds, a mini-course featuring Soviet scholar Georgy Arkadyevich Arbatov. He had just published in English (translated from Russian) a book with a best-seller title: The War of Ideas in Contemporary International Relations: The Imperialist Doctrine, Methods, and Organization of Foreign Political Propaganda. Great stuff, as I considered it at the time.

Plus, everything was coming up red roses around the world. At a meeting of the Young Workers Liberation League in a University of Michigan seminar room, we heard good reports about the coming North Vietnamese victory over US forces, and progress in key targets for communist activity over the next decade: Afghanistan, Ethiopia, South Africa, and Nicaragua. In Washington, Vice President Spiro Agnew had just resigned in the face of bribery allegations, and Attorney General Elliot Richardson had resigned during the Watergate “Saturday night massacre.”

As an undergraduate at Yale, I had gained exposure to the best and the brightest that “bourgeois culture” could put forward, and found them wanting. Marx and Lenin taught me that the crucial determinant in human history is economic and social class, and I concluded that the bourgeois class had swung and missed: war in Vietnam, poverty at home, corruption in Washington. Time for the working class to take over, under the leadership of the vanguard of the working class, the Communist Party, those willing to do whatever it takes to take over the Capitol and eliminate the betrayers in power.

Frozen in My Chair

At 3 in the afternoon on November 1, I was in my room and sitting in my red chair, rereading Lenin’s famous essay “Socialism and Religion.” In it he wrote, “We must combat religion — this is the ABC of all materialism, and consequently Marxism.” Following Marx, Lenin called religion “opium for the people . . . spiritual booze in which the slaves of capital drown their human image.”

Nothing new. I had abandoned Judaism and declared myself an atheist when I was 14. But suddenly the strangest experience of my life began. Since I had never taken LSD or had a concussion, hallucination, or near-death experience, I can rule out those possible explanations for why I sat in that chair for eight hours, looking at the clock each hour with surprise that I still hadn’t moved.

During those hours, over and over, I saw myself as walking in darkness, but invited to push open a door into a room of brilliant brightness. Meanwhile, questions battered my brain: What if Lenin is wrong? What if God does exist? What is my relationship to this God, if he’s there? Why, when he is kind to me, do I offer evil in return? Why goodness in, garbage out?

Then I started thinking about my journalistic attitudes: Is America really Amerikkka? If not, why am I turning my back on it? Mixing theology and ideology, I started wondering why capitalist desire for money and power is worse than communist desire? Why had I embraced treasonous ideas? Why?

From where were these thoughts emanating? In my brain, Marxism was settled social science. Lenin’s hatred for the “figment of man’s imagination” called “God” was not new to me. It’s hard for me to convey the strangeness, the otherness, of this experience. I have trouble sitting still during lectures. I like to walk while thinking. Yet here I was sitting in the chair, hour after hour, suddenly believing I had done something very wrong by embracing Marx and Lenin.

At 3 in the afternoon, I was an atheist and a communist. When I arose eight hours later, I was not. I had no new data, but suddenly, through some strange intervention, I had a new way of processing data. Over and over, the same beat resonated: I’m wrong. There’s more in heaven and earth than I previously recognized.

Hound of Heaven

It seems mystical, and I can’t even describe well the experience, but it reversed the course of my life.

At 11 that evening, I stood up and spent the next two hours wandering around the cold and dark University of Michigan campus. To borrow an image from nineties basketball, I bounced past the Michigan Union, off the Literature, Science, and Arts building, past Angell Hall, off the Hatcher Graduate Library, nothing but nyet: a firm No to the atheist and Marxist weeds that had grown in me for ten years.

During the next three weeks, I resigned from the Communist Party and read criticisms of the Soviet Union: Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, Andrei Sakharov, Whittaker Chambers, The God That Failed. I felt I should pursue the question of God’s existence, but disciplined myself to spend the following three weeks writing term papers.

By then the initial glow had faded. I escaped all-encompassing questions by joining the board of the Cinema Guild, a student movie-showing group, and thus gained two free tickets to any of the four or five movies shown on campus each night, with resultant dating opportunities.

But the Holy Spirit wasn’t finished with me. While I ran from reality, God pursued, in a process described by Francis Thompson’s powerful poem “The Hound of Heaven”:

I fled Him, down the nights and down the days; I fled Him, down the arches of the years; I fled Him, down the labyrinthine ways.

God came after me “with unhurrying chase and unperturbed pace.” He turned each of my attempts to escape into new encounters.

Russian Gospel

God came after me. First, I had studied Russian to speak with my Soviet big brothers and had to continue with that to fulfill a PhD language requirement. One night in my room, I picked up the only unread Russian-language work in my bookcase, a New Testament given me as a travel souvenir and retained because it seemed exotic and might be useful for reading practice. With a Russian-English dictionary in front of me, I dived into the Gospel According to Matthew. I was delighted to find chapter 1 easy going: in the second verse Abraham begets Isaac, and other begats lope down the page.

Then came the Christmas story I had never read, followed by a massacre of babies and John the Baptist’s hard-hitting words: “You brood of vipers” (Matthew 3:7). It held my attention, and after a while I didn’t punctuate the verses with sneers. Needing to read slowly and think about the words was helpful. The Sermon on the Mount impressed me. All the Marxists I knew were pro-anger, devoted to fanning proletarian hatred of The Rich. Jesus, though, was not only anti-murder but anti-anger: “Everyone who is angry with his brother will be liable to judgment” (Matthew 5:22). Marxists held to a two-eyes-for-an-eye kind of justice, but Jesus spoke of loving enemies and turning the other cheek.

Reading the Puritans

My next push to faith came in 1974 when, as a graduate student, I had to teach a course in early American literature: it was in the course catalogue, but none of the professors wanted to teach something they saw as dull and reactionary. I had to prepare by reading Puritan sermons, including those of Increase Mather and Jonathan Edwards. Since the Holy Spirit had prepared me, those dead white males made sense to me. Some love Puritan arguments and others hate them, but my childhood prejudice that Christians were stupid people who worshiped Christmas trees faded fast.

The little I knew of Christian thought came largely from my observation of Boston Catholicism, heavy on ritual. The Puritans were different: they believed God is the agent of conversion and regeneration, with humans responsive yet not leading the process. God does not ticket for heaven those with good social conduct: God saves those he chooses to save, regardless of their acts. Salvation then leads to better conduct, sometimes slowly.

That was good news for me. I had broken each of the Ten Commandments, except literally the prohibition of murder (but Jesus called anger a form of murder, Matthew 5:21–22). I certainly was glad that God, if he were anything like the Puritans described him, would not judge me by my works. I assigned to students Thomas Hooker’s sermon on “A True Sight of Sin,” in which Hooker describes our insistence on autonomy: “I will be swayed by mine own will and led by mine own deluded reason.” That was my history, and Hooker seemed to be preaching to me.

Unstoppable Spirit

I was slow. In 1975, instead of visiting a church to find out what flesh-and-blood Christians believe, I started reading about Christianity in the University of Michigan library. I headed down a rabbit trail with Gabriel Marcel and other Christian existentialists, as well as neoorthodox theologians who said they had wedded Christ without much concern for whether the Bridegroom actually existed. I was also in no hurry to leave behind some of the transient pleasures of atheistic immorality.

But I had not left communism merely to believe in pleasant myths or flings. The question was and is truth: as the apostle Paul put it, “If Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile and you are still in your sins. . . . If in Christ we have hope in this life only, we are of all people most to be pitied” (1 Corinthians 15:17–19) So, the Holy Spirit worked on me, and in 1976 I finally made a profession of faith. I relished and still love Psalm 73:24–25: “You guide me with your counsel, and afterward you will receive me to glory. Whom have I in heaven but you?”

That sums it up. God offers wisdom now and heaven later — and what good alternative do we have? I had relied on my deluded reason. I was a fanatic who, apart from God’s mysterious intervention, could not be reasoned with. Happily, the Holy Spirit, while not unreasonable, is unstoppable.

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go-redgirl · 6 years

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Donald Trump Fully Endorses Ted Cruz for Senate

by Charlie Spiering 4 May 2018

President Donald Trump endorsed Sen. Ted Cruz on Friday, speaking in Dallas, Texas at the National Rifle Association conference.

“Full endorsement for this man — Ted Cruz,” Trump said at the beginning of his speech.

Cruz waved at Trump from the crowd, which cheered and shouted “Cruuuuz.”

“Boy that was very rousing, that’s a good sign,” Trump continued.

Trump urged everyone in the audience to vote in the midterm elections and warned them not to be complacent.

“You watch how well we do in ’18, you watch,” Trump said. “Get out and vote. Don’t be complacent.”

Read More Stories About:

2018 Elections, Big Government, Donald Trump, national rifle assocation, NRA, Ted Cruz, Texas

INDIVIDUAL COMMENTS:

TheLineIsDrawn • 19 hours ago

I supported Cruz in the primaries but couldn't be happier with President Trump. He is a canny fighter and gets results. In fact, considering everything Swamp Land is throwing at him as he successfully sorts out a mountain of thorny messes kicked down the road by predecessors, the pugilistic Trump may be uniquely qualified for the Presidency in the times we live in.

bankruptfromobamacare TheLineIsDrawn • 19 hours ago

You hit the nail on the head.

proreason bankruptfromobamacare • 18 hours ago

Ted would have been an excellent president as well, but it is unlikely that he could have withstood the flak as well as President Trump has been able. And Trump has proven that he is able to get out of the rigid political boxes that the country has been grappling with for decades.

I hope that Ted will eventually accept a SCOTUS seat because there are some potential successors out there who might be a better fit for president in the era of scorched earth politics (Tom Cotton, hello!!) and Cruz is one of the few people in the world who has the intellect and determination to be as successful a jurist as Trump has been a president.

jason callio proreason • 18 hours ago

Ideal scenario. 8 years of Trump draining the swamp and restoring liberty to the finical / public sector. Followed by 8 years of Cruz restoring sanity and constitutional principals back to our out of control progressive controlled judiciary. Trump removing the commies from the public sector institutions. Cruz restoring the constitution back to our courts. Sounds good to me.

gordonfreeman jason callio • 18 hours ago

I'm a Cruzbot, myself, but I like Trump as well. What I can't stand are the purist, concern trolls, who would rather unite with the RINOs. Like the purists at National Review. I wish they would STFU and get on the Trump Train to 2024.

Steelman gordonfreeman • 18 hours ago

I was torn between supporting Trump or Cruz back during the primaries. Either one of them would've been a good choice in my opinion.

Cruz is the #1 go-to guy of the NRA, so any of you that care about your gun rights might want to cut him a little slack and not root against him.

Schrödinger's cat Steelman • 17 hours ago

There has been no one ever - ever before - like TRUMP !!!

He breaks the mould !!!

In a class of his own !!!

Don't they hate him for it ??? LOL

MAGA

Texaslee Schrödinger's cat • 16 hours ago

One thing for sure he is in it for all the American people, and he was already rich enough to not be bribed all the time like democRats and Rinos....

dirk dominick Texaslee • 11 hours ago

"rich enough"? none except accountants and government's irs know trump's true worth. it's easy to be rich one day and in liquidation the next in industries like real estate and entertainment and technology. so far so good so maybe it will last.

merecedes Schrödinger's cat • 15 hours ago

HE REALLY IS THE GREATEST!!!!!!!!!!!

TMZ2 Schrödinger's cat • 12 hours ago

Think he is good, well my state is favoring Kobach as governor. I pray for both guys Trump and Kobach. The left is freaked out by them. Kobach might eventually run for potus if all things work out.

Gumbo Joe Schrödinger's cat • 17 hours ago

Do you burn candles at your shrine?

cheatemandhowe Gumbo Joe • 16 hours ago

Do you still eat out of your catbox?

Gumbo Joe cheatemandhowe • 16 hours ago

Only the big pieces.

cheatemandhowe Gumbo Joe • 16 hours ago

Cool, makes cleaning it so much easier.

GeorgiaPeachie Gumbo Joe • 16 hours ago

He's not like you marxists.

marine72 Gumbo Joe • 15 hours ago

Yes, don't you?

Breitbart Administrator Schrödinger's cat • 16 hours ago

your gag-reflex is practically non-existent. the job you do on donny's junk is unmatches

Cadaverville Mayor Steelman • 15 hours ago

Cruz would NOT have beaten Hillary. Trump was the ONLY candidate (of all that ran) who could stand strong against all the BS and not back down (from the ENTIRE liberal media, etc.) Cruz would've folded to protect his family and try to stay "above the fray" which would have resulted in a Romney defeat!

Deplorable Trump Voter Cadaverville Mayor • 13 hours ago

I agree at least Cruz is no Rubio. I do not think he and his family could have handled what Trumps family has handled.

Deplorable Trump Voter Mike Resce • 12 hours ago

Cruz wife wrote that trade deal building a North American Union. that Trump ripped up. She worked in every administration since Bush 1. Heidi Cruz. I do not Trust him but Trump fired her. He would not endorse Trump. Look it up yourself. Why would she work with Obama. Our President knows all of his secrets that is why he kept calling him lying Ted.

blip tard Deplorable Trump Voter • 9 hours ago

Cruz can best be applied to right us by the constitution.. As for the outsider piece.. Trump is the only one that could do that. I wake up everyday thanking my lucky stars we don't have that crook hilary in there! Whew.

blip tard Cadaverville Mayor • 9 hours ago

Cruz is a fantastic Constitutional Conservative but I voted for Trump because of exactly what you said. Most of all, I'd like to see these good conservatives support Trump 100%. Mark Levin is a pretty good example. The thing I disagree with Mark about is the NAFTA deal.. What happened is with clinton starting it, then bush/obama carrying it fwd, our country was gutted into a series of ghost towns where mfgring left. The country was effed so far over that we needed Trump to fight fire with fire. Also, could anyone have won PA/MI/OH like trump - hillary's "blue wall"? The answer is NO.. because to win those, Trump has to take care of the Union types(typically dems), meaning pulling back the wreckage caused by NAFTA - this typically goes against what conservatives are saying about how free trade should be. Trump is the one who gets it done. Now if we can get everyone on board.. We can keep going forward!

NotMarySue lyndaaquarius • 13 hours ago

Any Republican would be going through this press BS. George W did, and it was ugly every day. He couldn't do anything they didn't harp on.

Kim Cain Steelman • 10 hours ago

Nobody we know in public or private life could have taken what Trump has and flourished. You gotta give him that.

Trump is a trooper.

Karen from outstate gordonfreeman • 16 hours ago

The purists like pure Liberals are alike. They believe in unicorns and fairies-the tinkerbell and Nathan Lane kind-they have no clue about real life.

Vonnie gordonfreeman • 13 hours ago

That's why I cancelled my subscription, I thought I had subscribed to the wrong magazine. Would they rather have a damn Democrat!

Nora brave Glorious_Cause • 10 hours ago

Are you on drugs?? How is attempting to repeal obamas govt takeover of healthcare, pushing for pro 2a legislation, cutting taxes,cutting regulations, and cutting govt jobs, growing government?? Half of the country that were dems jumped ship when obamy pushed the left into communism, including myself. There is no more dems and repubs, just patriots and communists. You are the weakest commenter live ever seen.

Mort Meek gordonfreeman • 12 hours ago

There are no ‘purists’ at National Review anymore. Only never-Trumpers and RINOs who pretend to be led by principle when they are making decisions on anything but principle.

elgavilansegoviano jason callio • 13 hours ago

...Agree with you 100%, ...Ted Cruz 2024!!,...

Outer Mission Kid jason callio • 16 hours ago

What, no Pence?

Missionaccomplished jason callio • 7 hours ago

LMAOFF!!!

Reaganwasright jason callio • 11 hours ago

I'm thankful there are still people who think like you left in this country. There is a chance to save the mess these criminals have created.

Lou proreason • 17 hours ago

Cruz has taken notes in how to deal with the swamp when he becomes President thanks to President Trump

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loudlytransparenttrash · 7 years

Note

What were those classes like? What was the environment in the classroom and how did it make you feel?

It takes a particular kind of person to take these classes to begin with. If you’re a girl with no career prospects, you just want to do what your friends are doing, you want to feel good about yourself, feel enlightened and progressive then it’s the perfect major to take. All you have to do is show up, say you’re a feminist and pussies rock and you pass. You also have to understand everything you are taught is from one perspective, there is no age old virtues of impartial teaching, there’s no giving both sides of the argument, everything is from a feminist lens.

If you look up any women’s or gender studies course, you will find feminist theory, which was created by radical communist feminists in the 60s and 70s, based exclusively on marxism and misandry. There’s no evidence or credibility to any part of feminist theory, it is ideological rather than academic. Yet this is the backbone of women’s studies and it can usually be broken into three main topics which will always relate back to what you are taught: the patriarchy, intersectional oppression, and social constructionism. Again, none of these contentions can be proven but if you want good grades then you better start believing quick smart.

No theory is more fundamental to academic feminism than the theory of the patriarchy. Quite simply patriarchy is the theory that there is a regime of institutionalized male control over women. Men are born into a world of privilege, they join the patriarchal ranks from birth and breeze through life while women are born into a world of subservience. Male control, and its logical consequence, female oppression, is the foundational theory every class is structured on. But why just analyze oppression through the vectors of gender?

Enter intersectional theory, better known as the oppression olympics. The message of intersectional oppression is clear: oppression is everywhere, if you don’t see it, that only means you aren’t looking hard enough. Perhaps you think this is an exaggeration. It’s not. Microaggressions, macroaggressions, even invisible aggression have become a thing to prove oppression is everywhere, even if you can’t see it. The biggest problem with finding oppression where it doesn’t exist is finding innocent people to blame for oppression that doesn’t exist.

Then we have “social constructionism.” According to this theory, everything we can observe, such as gender differences, is all constructed by somebody else. Humans aren’t born as male or female, we all born identical, the differences only begin after the doctor assigns us our predetermined role in society, known as gender, and from then onwards every decision, every thought, belief, behavior, interest, job, relationship etc is all a construct which we have been brainwashed into conforming to. Anything we thought we knew about biology goes flying out the window.

Our personal experiences also trump any kind of evidential and fact-based education in these classrooms. Students are told that they are never wrong, they are given soothing, affirming nods when explaining how difficult and scary their life is as a woman in the United States, the fact that they can’t safely walk home alone at night while drunk and naked is evidence the world is against women and class discussions often devolves into group therapy sessions where similar grievances are shared and accepted as evidence of oppression.

This article encouraging young girls to major in women’s studies does a pretty good job at summing it up, ironically for all the wrong reasons. The author writes that before she went into it, she was happy, she felt safe, she didn’t know what rape culture was, she didn’t know women were being underpaid because they had vaginas, she started to come home angry at the world and angry that she was part of a class that was being kept down. She tells other young women to stop being so uneducated and become enlightened about their oppression.

She then boasts you will learn about so many things in women’s studies; politics, literature, history - great, right? Well she goes on to say you will only learn about these things so you can learn and understand how women have been portrayed, mistreated, underrepresented, objectified. A major perk she says of majoring in women’s studies is it will make you a better protester against “the War on Women and Planned Parenthood.” She says “you will be on the “right side of history” by taking this class. “When you choose this major, you become an agent, not a bystander. Women’s Studies explores why women are mistreated and then it shows you how to change that.”

I mean, at least she’s honest. Women’s studies, gender studies, ethnic studies etc were only recently created for no other reason than to recruit empty young minds and convince them they’re on the right side of history by joining their left-wing, marxist professors and become activists against gender, white men, “heteronormativity,” social norms, patriarchy, history, patriotism, capitalism. Universities allow it and even support it because they know they can invest practically nothing into these ridiculous classes and still make a fortune from it.

The author says it all herself, “Women’s Studies is not so much a career choice as it is a life choice, you’re adopting a new perspective that you’ll use in every relationship, every job, and every circumstance.” All I can say is that’s an expensive “life choice,” one where as long as you’re woke about all the oppression going on around you, who cares if you don’t have a real education or job.

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onceandfuturekiki · 7 years

Text

Fascism in the United Stated during the Great Depression

Lets take a minute and talk about fascism in the United States. Over the past year or so there has been a lot of talk about the fascism that happened in Europe in the early and middle parts of the 20th century, among other places, and a lot of talk about how we're letting history repeat itself.

But widespread support for fascism is not somehow new to America. I know that people look at the US's intervention in WWII and like to think of the US as a country that heroically opposes fascism, but there have been periods of time in this country where the idea of fascism was incredibly popular and a lot of people, including some incredibly influential people, were pushing for a fascist leader to take over.

The 1930s were an incredibly difficult time in the United States. The Great Depression was going on. Between 1929 and 1933, half of the GDP was just gone. By 1933 nearly a quarter of the population was unemployed. Fertility rates dropped from 93.8 in every 100,000 in 1929 to 76.3 in every 100,000 in 1933, declining around 20%. Suicide rates went up, from 12.1 per every 100,000 in 1928 to 18.9 per every 100,000 in 1929 alone, with rates remaining relatively high at between 15-16 in every 100,000 during the 1930s.

People were homeless. There were starving. For most of the country it seemed like it would never end, and while the lower and middle classes were struggling to just live, the gap between those classes and the wealthy grew even greater. While some of the wealthy did lose their fortunes, that was not the case for many people in the upper class. For some people and families, the Depression was a mild annoyance that only mattered to them when it meant that a favorite club or venue had gone under. And there were a lot of wealthy people who got even wealthier during the Depression, largely off of the suffering of the lower classes. There were a number of people who had seen that there was a potential of a crash and sold their stocks early, which in part may have helped lead to the crash. There were people who were able to play the depressed stock market to their advantaged. People like Joe Kennedy exploited the suffering of out of work and struggling Americans by exploiting them, investing in alcohol (which was made legal again in 1934) knowing that a great deal of people would be willing to spend whatever money they had on anything they could get that would make them forget their troubles for a little while.

The people who were out of work, struggling, hungry, and homeless were watching as the upper class didn't even seem to realize there was a Depression happening, as they threw their lavish parties at expensive hotels, and continued to spend and make money as though nothing had changed.

People were scared that they were going to struggle forever. They were angry that there were people who had so much money while they had none.

This led to a great deal of hostility toward multiple groups. Racism and antisemitism ran rampant. Half of all black people were out of work, as many white believed that, as long as there were white people out of work, black people should be fired from their jobs and not hired so that white people could have those positions. In the south, groups of unionized white workers attacked and even murdered black worker on the railroads so white men could have their jobs. Black women were often forced into what was called a "slave market", where they went to work in the service of white women, working full time for $5 a week. New heights of antisemitism were reached during the Depression, with many Americans blaming the Depression on Jewish people, believing that a significant amount of people in power were Jewish and that it was either their incompetence that led to the crash, or that there was some kind of Jewish conspiracy to destroy the country. A public opinion showed that, during the 1930s, 60% Americans thought that Jewish people were greedy and untrustworthy. Near the end of the decade, one poll showed that only 39% of people thought that Jews should be treated like everyone else, with 53% thinking that Jews were inherently "different" and that strong restrictions should be place on them, with 10% feeling that ALL Jews should be deported. (Despite the strong rise of racism and antisemitism, the development of groups that supported the deportation and murder of people in these groups, and the hate crimes that were happening, the KKK was surprisingly beginning to dwindle in numbers during the 1930s, to the point that it sort of unofficially "disbanded" in 1944).

The economic hardships of the time led to a surge in people joining Communist groups, especially as they chilled out a bit in the mid-1930s and stopped attacking any non-Communist liberal groups and efforts. But the US had done a pretty good job of convincing Americans that Communism was one of the greatest evils that had ever existed, so while the Communist party, despite the surge in membership, never reached the numbers needed to be considered a serious contender, the rise in membership numbers had a lot of people scared, and charismatic voices, from business leaders to conservative radio hosts, held up fascism as a self-defense against Communism.

To make it all worse, in the early 1930s, President Herbert Hoover was resistant, and many times even refused to, develop federal programs to help citizens that had been effected by the Depression, instead starting programs that bailed out banks and business, saying that people needed to "pick themselves up by their bootstraps".

The atmosphere in the US at the time was one of a lower and middle class that was unemployed, hungry, scared, and angry, as the watched the wealthy continue to live their lavish lifestyles. In their eyes, Jewish people held a number of positions of power, such as bankers and business owners, that had directly led to the depression and that were now benefiting from it, and black people were taking their jobs. They'd been convinced that Communism would end the world and now it was growing in popularity. And it felt like the government was completely impotent and doing nothing.

People were struggling to find work, losing their homes, the government was, at best, impotent when it came to helping and, at worst, flat out refused, instead working hard to bail out banks and businesses, they were afraid of a sort of vague foreign threat, and they thought that minorities were taking their jobs and responsible for their hardships, making demands that they be banned and that they "go back home".

Sound familiar?

While these mindsets and sentiments were at their strongest during the early 1930s, when Hoover was in office and very little was being done by the federal government to help those who were struggling, it did persist throughout the decade, even after FDR was elected and began instituting New Deal programs. It took awhile for a sizable effect to be noticeable when it came to the New Deal, so there were a lot of people who thought that this was all just as ineffective as Hoover's contributions. Some people who did not benefit from these programs or were still out of work felt that the "wrong people" were being helped, and there were many who saw the programs that put money into the arts and infrastructure and believed that money was being put into less important things and things that didn't deserve it instead of putting money into helping struggling people, not realizing that these programs were creating jobs. And some people just believed that the programs were the wrong way to help. So while the anti government sentiments were strongest during Hoover's administration, it did carry into FDR's administration.

There were many groups to whom fascism was very attractive and would have been advantageous, as long as it meant they would be the group in control. Wealthy businessmen were very much in support of fascism, and there's evidence that suggests a group of business owners was plotting to overthrow FDR and take over. A number of militant groups, most of which were very much inspired by Nazism and that were very much based on racism and antisemitism, such as the Silver Legion and the German American Bund, were trying to spur on a fascist revolution. Charismatic leaders and politicians, who were able to amass a great deal of followers, such as Huey Long and Robert Henry Best, endorsed fascism with varying levels of openness and enthusiasm. Popular stars and national heroes like Charles Lindbergh endorsed fascism. Wealthy business owners and politicians were able to organize groups to push fascist ideas and pay for effective propaganda to sway Americans, while people like Lindburgh, radio host Reverend Charles Coughlin, and other broadcasters, who the public either viewed as heroes or as "one of them", were able to spread their ideas by directly addressing the people. The people supporting and encouraging fascism were not on the fringes. They weren't people known only for these specific beliefs. They were mainstream and trusted.

There were also Italian and German Americans who were sympathetic to Mussolini and Hitler, respectively, and the problems in their home countries that led to the rise of these leaders who started their own groups to support fascism, inspired by the beliefs of their motherland's leaders.

The ideas for fascism in the US were based on the idea that the government was ineffective and needed to be taken over by a strong leader with absolute power, and that the reason the government was ineffective was because people who they thought wanted to actively harm the US, like the Jews, who were inherently "less than", like black people, and others who were stupid, ill informed, and antisocial, were allowed to vote. The idea was that democracy needed to be destroyed so that the nation could be led completely by a strong leader whose power wasn't diluted by the input and action of things like Congress and the Supreme court, and so that people who were considered "less than", "not good enough", and "undesirable" couldn't vote, and that these things would save the economy, keep the nation strong, and crush Communism.

A great deal of propaganda was put out to sway the public. Because so many fascist supporters held positions of power, this propaganda was able to get in front of so many eyes. In 1933, MGM, led by Louis B. Mayer, put out the film Gabriel Over the White House, a movie about a corrupt president who, after a near death experience, is guided by God to save the country by doing away with Congress and the Supreme Court and threatening to bomb all the other countries. The film was widely released, directed by well known director Gregory LaCava, and starred popular stars Walter Huston, Franchot Tone, and Karen Morley. Papers all over the country, both those that were released locally and those that were released nationally, contained articles supporting fascism. A number of radio programs supported fascism and extolled its virtues. Religious and political leaders talked about fascism and how it was the country's only hope against poverty and Communism.

The support for fascism started to wan in the late 1930s and into the 1940s. Government programs put in place by Roosevelt had started to show a definite impact on the unemployment and poverty rates, bringing his approval ratings up and leading elections for multiple government offices going to Democrats (as well as FDR's landslide reelection), which meant that fascists groups were unable to get their candidates into significant positions of power in the federal government. In the 1940s, the US went to war against the fascist countries in Europe, and incredibly effective propaganda was produced to get American citizens to see fascism as a great evil to be fought against. All of this, among other things, meant that, while a headline like "How Fascism Will Save Democracy" was a normal occurrence in the mid-1930s, by the mid-1940s there were considerably more Americans who opposed fascism than who supported it. But for a but over a decade, fascism was an incredibly popular movement in the US, and it led to a huge amount of racism, antisemitism, religious intolerance, and violence.

The American people do have a history of turning to these things when things are tough and they're looking for someone to blame. But you'll hardly ever see people talking about fascism in the US during the Depression. It's definitely not taught in schools. It's not even commonly taught in college level history courses. It's an unpretty part of our history that we pushed aside and treated like it never happened, and as such, we were inevitably doomed to do it again. It’s not Germany’s ugly history we’re repeating. It’s our own. We’re just making it worse.

#history

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surveystodestressme · 7 years

Text

52.

5000 Question Survey Pt. 12

1101. Continued…Let’s see if I’m psychic. You wrote three yes or no questions. Now I will answer them. 1 yes 2 no 3 no Did I get any right? idk 1102. You wrote one question that can be answered with a color (example: what color is my car). I say…. White. Is it true? no my underwear is green and pinklol 1103. You thought of a number between 1 and 100 and typed it down. Was it 14? nada 1104. You wrote one more question, anything you wanted. The answer is yes, 42, orange, Matt, Josh, Kim, Nicole, whatever or your mom. Does that answer your question? lol you’re bad at this 1105. Do you think that Britney Spears would make a good Bond Girl? no

1106. Have you read anything by C.S. Lewis? yeah 1107. What is your favorite movie with Bill Murray? i can’t think of one right now 1108. What is your favorite movie with Jack Nicholson? doesn’t he do the shining? and the bucket list? bc those are both rlly good 1109. What is your favorite movie with Christopher Walkin? idk 1110. What is your favorite movie with Johnny Depp? alice in wonderland 1111. What is your favorite movie with Orlando Bloom? idk any at the top of my head 1112. What rhymes with ‘orange’? door hinge 1113. Why do guys have nipples if they will never need to feed a baby? that’s just how they’re born 1114. Some people think that couples should be screened before they are allowed to reproduce (so that people who cannot afford to support a child don’t have one, or so that a child won’t be born into a dysfunction family or to unfit parents). What do you think about this? honestly as long as the test is accurate and shit, i think it’s a good idea. too many kids get born into shit homes or with bad people and it sucks bc they’re wayyy too many kids in foster care and end up going up for adoption bc of this 1115. Have you ever swallowed an object by accident? a penny when i was little 1116. Did you get it back? yes 1117. Do you prefer He-Man or She-Ra? don’t even know what those are 1118. Are you proud of yourself? i’m doing ok with life right now so i suppose 1119. Who should go to hell? bad people 1120. Is your eyesight 20/20? not even close 1121. Have you ever had insomnia? yes. 1122. Does it bother you when people touch you? if it’s someone i don’t know or don’t like, then yes 1123. Is it better to get too much or too little sleep? i’d rather have too little honestly bc i know how to deal with that lol 1124. Have you ever given away something you made? What? yeah some ceramics projects i made in class 1125. Is it better to have kids when you are in your teens, 20s, 30s, 40s, or older? i’d say mid to late 20s 1126. What gets your adrenaline pumping? making rash decisions 1127. Is hell all fire and brimstone or is it personal for everyone like in Bill and Ted’s Bogus Journey? Or does it not exist? it doesn’t exist 1128. Do you ever talk about yourself in the third person? only when i’m trying to be funny 1129. What’s your favorite radio station? What kind of music do they play? i listen to 105.7 a lot, and rock 1130. What did you think of these movies: Election? Gone With the Wind? Fight Club? pretty good!! Spider Man? depends on which one we’re talking about The Virgin Suicides? Resident Evil? Signs? it’s ok Muppets from Space? Pearl Harbor? Halloween Resurrection? not bad The Dark Crystal? 1131. Is everyone special? i suppose 1132. Are your toes: Painted (what color)? Manicured? Sparkly? Soft? Wearing a toe ring? Do you have hobbit-feet? none of these honestly lol 1133. Do you believe there is anyplace still undiscovered in all the world? of course 1134. Whose picture would you like to paint a target on and throw darts at? dahmer 1135. Is love all you need? no necessarily 1136. Ever caught a fish? yep 1137. Are you adventurous? i try to be 1138. Are you afraid of mediocrity? not afraid of it 1139. Would you rather die tomorrow or have all your friends die? i’d rather die 1140. What are 3 things you don’t understand? 1 why people are rude 2 why the world is such a cruel place 3 why people decided money should rule everyones life 1141. I would do anything for love but I won’t do 'that’. What is 'that’? kill myself 1142. Has your diary ever been rated? idek what that means? 1143. Do you do more than kiss on the first date? i’ve never been on a real date besides with my current boyfriend so idk but i don’t think that i would 1144. Are you very liberal or conservative? idk 1145. What do you like about your neighbors? i don’t really like my nieghbors lol 1146. I read that by 2010 they expect to market a gene therapy procedure that will increase the life spans of adult human beings by double or triple. If this happened would you have it done? nada 1147. If you’re happy and you know it clap your hands. Did you clap? yes 1148. Was this year a good year for you? so far 1149. What are you looking forward to next year? moving and switching colleges 1150. Are you a Jim Henson fan? not really. 1151. What do you think of these diarist names? ToxicToast: Solitary Music: gemini_wish_star: juneberry: haha idc. 1152. Do you read the Diary Master’s diary? no. 1153. Have you ever made an enemy on OD? no. 1154. Have you ever (or do you know anyone who’s) been deleted from OD? idk what that is. 1155. Were you ever in the first row of a concert? not yet 1156. Did you ever meet a celebrity? Who? steve-o 1157. Do you have any autographs? yes. 1158. Can you visualize whirled peas? idek what that is 1159. Are there some situations where love just isn’t enough to keep 2 people together? When does that happen? idk 1160. Do you have no attention span? i do 1161. What do you think of these entry titles? me. back. home: steak and butter: The Smurfs Go Communist: The controversial Athens: 1162. Have you ever been wrongly accused? yeah 1163. When you wash your hair do you blow dry it or let it dry naturally? naturally 1164. Where does your family go on vacation? we don’t go on vacation anymore 1165. Have you ever been to: Newport, Rhode Island? nope Dutch Wonderland? no. Salem, MA? no Niagara Falls? no 1166. Have you ever given money to OD cares? no. 1167. Have you ever created an OD interest? If yes, what interests did you create? IDK WHAT THAT IS 1168. What do you think of these entry names? DEAR SOUL FRIEND 57 Loss: I had a good title but i forgot it: Left Alone: yeah yeah…he kissed her: cool. 1169. If you have aol what is your 'you’ve got mail’ sound? IDK 1170. What will you never have enough of? food. 1171. Who can you only handle in small doses? My brother 1172. You are at a magic auction where you can bid on impossible things but you only brought enough money to buy one thing. Out of these..which would you buy? entrance into whatever afterlife you believe in a guarantee that you will have at least 3 books published in your life a new car, house and boat each year unending creative inspiration ultimate compassion and acceptance of others a trip into outer space perfect health for the rest of your life 1173. In the above question if finding perfect love was a choice would you change your answer? no, bc i have that now. well it’s not perfect but ya know 1174. What food is so fattening or unhealthy that you would NEVER touch it? nothing lol 1175. Which do you love more, your country or your planet? country. 1176. What do you think of: Abba? idk Brian Adams? idk No Doubt? good shit 1177. Are you more logical or emotional? emotional lol 1178. Do you think that tattoos and piercing are overrated? not at all 1179. What do you think of these diary titles? The Seamless Garment: Your eyes can be so cruel: What was, is no more: shock me sane: omg i don’t care about these. 1180. Do you believe that Michael Jackson molests children? i don’t even know man 1181. Hypothetically, let’s say that he did molest them. Who would you feel should be held MORE accountable, Michael Jackson or the parents that allowed their children to go to Never Land Ranch unsupervised for sleepovers? both i suppose 1182. Have you ever been to: Manhattan? no Disney? no Paris? no Anywhere cooler? 1183. What 3 music videos should everyone download? i don’t really watch music videos 1184. If someone bet you ten dollars that you couldn’t sing the whole Gummy Bears theme song, would you be able to do it and win? nope 1185. Do you like Bjork? don’t know what that is 1186. How about the Black Rebel Motorcycle Club? ^ 1187. What do you think of Moby? ^ 1188. What do you think of Alien Ant Farm? they’re good 1189. What do you think of the Flaming Sideburns? idk them. 1190. Do you believe that imps, trolls, giants, dragons, unicorns, etc. were real but became extinct? nope 1191. What sucks? school 1192. What do you think of these diary titles? Geologist to the Stars: The Hussy Chronicles: Gravy: Napping in the Broom Closet: again, idc. 1193. Do you ever think about suicide? i used to 1194. Do you believe that Jesus Christ was a real person? How about Noah? dk dc 1195. What is one luxury you refuse to live without? running water lol and electricity 1196. What is one luxury you feel you could live without? technology, like my phone or laptop 1197. Do you feel that you are high, medium, or low maintenance in a relationship? medium. 1198. What do you think of these diarist names? N.Y.S: Collapsibleman: *})|({*: black dove: omg bye. 1199. Do vegetables taste better from the store or from your garden? both they taste the same 1200. How long have you spent on this survey so far? too long

#bored #quiz #questions #survey

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olmopress · 5 years

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Farticipatory culture!

week 7: Harry Jenkins, Convergence culture: Where old and new media collide, Introduction and Chapter 4

Shiiiit was reading Henry Jenkins boring. Oh my God. All those useless stories and that endless circumnavigation of issues. Man I understand you had to reach a certain wordcount to get someone to publish you but maaaaaaaaan I got so bored.

You are more than welcome to imagine that the stuff I liked about Mr. Jenkins is very little

BUT

I have to say we share a common interest in Star Wars. To honor that, I am unleashing the first FRANCHISE-THEMED post on this blog.

Yes kids! The visual content of this blog post will feature exclusively material from Star Wars!

If you like my idea you can contact me in private for donations. I would love to raise a little profit out of George Lucas’ copyrighted material because

SCREW HIM

So hit me up with your money, we shall use it to fund modern heroes fighting against the horrendous kebab imperialism of the Turkish fils de pute president.

OK here we go. Jerkin’ Mr. Jenkins has three concepts for us and

INCREDIBLY ENOUGH

none of them is particularly original. At times I fell almost like this guy is just a great affabulatore who probably got great grades in his college papers because he could babble for 2000 words without saying much of particular relevance.

BUT THIS IS JUST ME BEING NASTY

Sure.

Jenkins’ first and most important concept is that of convergence. We dumbasses who had to go through COM 220 in this university are already familiar with this word and associate it either with technological convergence or media ownership convergence. But just like that time in which the Buddha taught for 40 years straight just wake up one day and be

HOLD UP BRO IT WAS ALL A BIG EXPEDIENT TO PREPARE YOU FOR THE TRUTH OF THE

LOTUS SUTRA

Jenkins surprises us silly undergraduate with a sort of ULTIMATE MEANING of convergence. To him, convergence is neither solely about technology, nor solely about ownership. By convergence, he means

“the flow of content across ultiple media platforms, the cooperation between multiple media industries, and the migratory behavior of media audiences who will go almost anywhere in search of the kinds of entertainment experiences they want” (2)

Just the kind of definition I need the weekend before a midterm. Thanks Harry. So what I gather from this is that the converge he is talking about is essentially about content, or I mean comunque about themes and instances orbiting around a certain kind of content. Right? I guess. And so Jenkins focuses on how these kinds of contents are reproduced by and sought on different media.

Much of the rest of his introduction is Jenkins bustling with his own confused concepts to gain a degree of clarity of this stuff on convergence. Which in a way is fun to watch in itself. Because first he traces the supposedly linear history of the development of the idea – by the way quoting (and fortunately criticizing that JERK of Negroponte who believed that “monolithic empires of mass media are dissolving into an array of cottage industries” – and then he embarks on a frankly boring and useless story about this New Orleans Media Experience of 2003 about which honestly nobody gives a shit and even which even more honestly is just boring. Did I say that already? Oh sorry.

BUT IT’S TRUE

This story is infused (as frankly the rest of the stuff I have read) with a disgusting romantic notion of corporate behavior and aims, as if big media companies just couldn’t go on without including their audiences because they LOVE THEM.

FUCK NO HARRY THEY JUST WANT THEIR MONEY AND THEY’LL DO EVERYTHING IT TAKES TO SQUEEZE AS MUCH OF IT AS POSSIBLE FROM THEIR OUR POCKETS AND YOU FUCKING KNOW IT GODDAMNIT YOU TEACH AT USC IT’S NOT LIKE YOU WERE BORN YESTERDAY

I’m sorry. You may have noticed I have slight tendency in losing my temper at

MANAGERIAL CAPITALIST PIGS

No I mean with people who see things differently from me. But let us go on. By the way there is a moment in which Jenkins, talking about the way in which corporations were dealing with the emergence of convergence (I rhymed!), writes:

“The old paradigms were breaking down faster than the new ones were emerging, producing panic among those most invested in the status quo and curiosity in those who saw change as an opportunity” (7)

You what this reminds me? Look it up here. This guy first wrote it. See that part about the monsters? Does it remind you of anything? Am I implying that media giants especially of the internet are giving us a new fascism? Did you know that Charlemagne most probably didn’t want to be crowned emperor by Pope Leo III?

Unless you’re a historian of the Middle Ages, one of the answers for those last two questions is “Yes.”

Btw you should know that I decided I was heterosexual when I was 3 and went to see Phantom Menace and got acquainted with the looks of this lady up here.

Anyway. Back to convergence. Jenkins goes on and on and on and on about this talking about the different lifespans of delivery technologies and media, about his self-defined Black Box Fallacy (because to him, and he honestly has a point, while hardware diverges, content converges), about the fact that convergence is a process and not an endpoint, and about all sorts of things

UNTIL

He basically says that convergence is a top-down process as much as it is a bottom-up one. And at this point, Harry, you kinda lost me. You have used so many different and contrasting ways of defining what is it that you’re trying to define that I do not know anymore if I am reading you or fucking Spinoza. And I AM SORRY, you ain’t as cool as my lad Baruch.

So yeah I was left pretty much like this:

I think we should stick to the explanation I gave in the beginning. let us move to a second concept, which will be hopefully easier to define.

I wanna talk about collective intelligence because Jerkings only suggests it. So let me do the explanation know.

Collective intelligence was at work fo instance on the Game of Thrones’ subreddit who higitus figidus cracked the secret behind Jon Snow’s lineage YEARS before the thing was revealed in the series. Like in those beautiful communist revolutions we don’t do anymore, commoners pooled their wits and skills to fuck over the greedy and ugly masters who enslaved them. This is collective intelligence: to unionize cognitive processes and screw capital ownership.

OK maybe this was a little bit too political but you get the point right? It’s about people pooling resources and working together to solve problems or propose stuff. It’s actually quite cool. And it happens all the time on the internet. Because it’s easier to pool those cognitive resources over there.

DONE!

Let’s move to the last one.

The third point in Jenkins’ reading was participatory culture. His endless spiel about Star Wars fandom was at times interesting and times suicide-inducing. Potentially cool as a case study, but we don’t really need it for the purposes of this post. So.

The stuff we need to know is contained in the first few pages of the chapter. First of all, Jenkins rightly notes that while fandom as always existed, the internet has tipped the scales because it makes fan culture more visible. Which is in itself quite OK.

youtube

aaaaand here’s a beautiful example of Star Wars’ participatory culture.

He then distinguishes between interactivity and participation. To him, interactivity refers only to the fact that people get more feedback when they consume cultural products. Participation, he says, is deeper because it is basically in the consumer’s (I hate this word) hands: it is “open-ended” and not constrained by the decision of the designers of the original/official products. The rest of the chapter deals in ways in which companies address fan-generated content. Funnily enough, he distinguishes between prohibitionists (tight-ass douchebags who don’t want you to mess with their precious product) and collaborationists (other douchebags who instead see the staff you do as yet one more opportunity to steal time and labor from you). Nice, huh?

The funniest thing is that he chooses COLLABORATIONISTS: I mean really? You really wanna make me do that association between capitalism and fascism again? It was your choice huh.

A good example that Jenkins makes is that of game modders, who manipulate the code of videogames to construct personalized fantasies that might expand the universe of the original game, or maybe even take it to a completely new direction. Here’s an example De’Noantri:

I guess I broke my rule about Star Wars. Too bad. But I am the one who calls te shots here. I’m your lider maximo here. This is a READ ONLY blog. You shut up and read, comrade!

To reach a conclusion, the whole story of how LucasArt deals with fandom content is surely fascinating, but Jenkins repeatedly fails to look at a very important issue. When George Lucas in ANY way makes use of content created by fans, most of the times directly appropriating the copyright for it, he is

EXPLOITING

those silly fans. Instance: when the devs of Star Wars Galaxies sought fan advice for developing the game, did these fans got paid? Where are their rights? Where is the compensation for the time and labor they offered? Nowhere. And so they have been exploited, allowing George Lucas to save money on people he would have had to pay for the same services. But he had the fans he wanted to iNcLuDe…

I mean you really thought I was not going to use this?

So the conclusion is:

FANS OF ALL NATIONS, UNIONIZE!

CLAIM YOUR SHARE OF PROFIT!

DEMAND COLLECTIVIZATION OF FRANCHISES!

DEMAND LIBERALIZATION OF FAN FICTION!

DEMAND THE FUTURE!

Here you can see a visual depiction of the fandom working class rising up against bourgeoise privilege.

Since I already broke the rule, culture time will be free this week too. This is a great Russian composer who certainly influenced Williams when composing Star Wars’ music. It is one of my favorites pieces of music ever so ENJOY!

youtube

Here instead you can see Caravaggio depicting me making it barely alive out of this week’s readings:

It happens every now and then. Let’s hope next it’ll be better.

auf Wiedersehen!

Image Sources: GIPHY.com, squillace.org, wikiart.org

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abujaihs-blog · 5 years

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China’s Debt Disease ight wreck its uncrashable housing market

For decades, the burgeoning power of China’s middle-class has been promised as a cure-all for many of the global economy’s troubles (not to mention its own). Enriched by three decades of rapidly rising wages, Chinese consumers should have long ago begun turbo-charging sluggish economies everywhere. That hasn’t happened. In past years, it’s largely been because they received a much lower share of national income than was their due. But there’s a new reason, one that should alarm both China’s leaders and the scores of foreign companies still waiting for China’s middle-class consumers to ride to their rescue. After a decade-long real estate boom, home prices in many Chinese cities are unnaturally high. In Beijing and Shanghai, buying a home costs about what the average family would earn in 23 years if it spent none of its income. And in 2016, Chinese residents began splurging on borrowing, most of it in the form of mortgages—as well as untold sums of high-interest personal loans—to buy increasingly pricy homes. With somewhere around $6.8 trillion in personal debt, with most wrapped up in real estate, the risks of a sharp drop in prices setting off a financial crisis akin to that of the US or Spain in 2008 are rising. The alternative, however, is only slightly less ominous.

New analysis reveals that consumer debt rose at a much brisker clip than the GDP or household disposable income. Thanks in large part to this latest home-price boom, Chinese consumers are now stuck shelling out more of their income covering debt payments than ever before—and a greater share of their incomes than their counterparts in the US, Germany, France, or Japan. If this continues, Chinese consumers may soon find themselves too overwhelmed by debt payment to power the consumption boom foreign companies, trade partners, China’s own leaders, and, indeed, the world economy have been counting on.

China’s “silver bullet”?

Chinese consumers are different from those pretty much anywhere else. In most places, everyday consumer spending contributes somewhere between half and two-thirds of national economic output. Not, however, in China. Chinese shoppers weren’t always so unusual. In 1990, domestic consumer spending’s share of real GDP was about 60%, according to the Penn World Table, a database of national accounts. That share plunged in the decades that followed—by a far greater magnitude than normally happens when a country industrializes. The flip-side of this was an over-reliance on investment and exports to power ultra-fast growth, which resulted in wasteful corporate spending—and, as a result, outstanding corporate debt of at least $20 trillion. The world has been waiting for China’s economy to shift back to a greater dependence on domestic consumer spending. Over the last three decades, scores of multinational companies have set up shop in China, making expensive bets that consumer demand—pent up after decades of privation under Communist Party economic mismanagement—would finally be unleashed, promising huge profits on everything from fast food to SUVs. Real consumer spending has indeed surged since the late 1990s, turning China into the planet’s second-biggest consumer market. But that boom was vastly smaller than it should have if Chinese consumer spending grew at the same pace as GDP. For instance, if consumption levels had stayed at the level they were in 2000, Chinese households would have consumed an average of nearly $1 trillion more a year over the next 12 years, according to one study. Most companies have done fine. Some—GM and Apple spring to mind—have even come to rely on Chinese consumption. (China is, after all, a vast market, and wages—and therefore buying power—have been rising swiftly.) But despite frequent lip service from the government about the need to “rebalance” back toward consumer spending-driven growth, the much-anticipated Golden Era of the Chinese middle class consumer never dawned.

The back-up engine

For economists and other observers, the chronic thrift of Chinese consumers has long implied the existence of a backup engine for when growth stalled and corporate debt maxed out. “For years, there was this idea that China’s silver bullet for an economic slowdown was its high household savings rate,” says Andrew Polk, economist at Trivium, a Beijing-based research firm. This was the flip-side of China’s under-consumption: Consumer balance sheets were pristine. If the government needed to unlock consumption potential, Polk said, they could always encourage household borrowing, with more favorable mortgage policies, for example, or encouraging expansion of credit card issuance. Indeed, in 2016, the head of China’s central bank and the all-powerful State Council (pdf, p.415) both declared as much. Suddenly, however, what had been a rainy-day abstraction became a reality. Chinese consumers are now deep in debt. The Bank for International Settlements calculates that individual Chinese borrowers owe $6.8 trillion, as of December, up from $4 trillion three years earlier, much of it for home mortgages. The “silver bullet” economic stimulus that Polk mentioned hinges on the fact that when people borrow, they have more cash to spend—for instance, to buy a new car. Those who purchase new homes through mortgages might increase their spending to furnish their apartment, because their new monthly mortgage payments are less than their rent was, or because owning a home makes them feel more financially secure. Given the staggering scale and pace of this recent household credit binge, that should have boosted consumer spending. However, any such effect was temporary at most. Last year, auto sales fell for the first time on record. Apple and Starbucks (paywall) surprised shareholders with warnings about weak China earnings. More general measures of spending have faltered too. So what’s behind the silver bullet’s misfire? Wage growth, for one thing. According to Polk, annual salary increases that had been in the double-digit growth a few years ago have since slipped into the low single-digits. Then there’s the impact of the recent consumer borrowing stimulus to consider—specifically, the cost of monthly interest and principle payments, says George Magnus, an Oxford University economist and author of Red Flags: Why Xi’s China Is in Jeopardy. And indeed, this is where the picture gets troubling. But to understand why, it helps first to understand the origins of Chinese households’ unusual zeal for real estate.

The origins of China’s real estate mania

China’s housing market is an economic marvel. In most countries, a 30% surge in home prices every couple years would swiftly give way to financial crisis. Not in China. Its housing market is yet another example of the country’s eerie, and widely envied, immunity to market consequences. Its crash-proof nature is all the more astonishing given that home ownership is among the highest on the planet. Back in 2015, more than nine in every 10 urban households already owned at least one home, according to a recent survey by China’s Southwestern University. And not only is home ownership unusually high; so is multiple home ownership. It’s common for owners to keep their apartments empty, foregoing rental income, since unlived in apartments tend to have better resale value. Small wonder, then, that housing accounts for around four-fifths of Chinese household wealth, according to Wei Yao, economist at Société Générale. A clue to this puzzling phenomenon lies in the way the Chinese government manages its financial system. To create the cheap pool of savings needed to fund hyper-industrialization, the authorities have long barred households from investing outside the country.1 That has left them with few—and mostly lousy—options for preserving the value of their savings.

There was one major exception. In the late-1990s, the government privatized the housing market, allowing resident families to buy their apartments from the state-owned companies that owned them—and for a huge discount. These dingy apartments were on the most coveted plots of city real estate, and as China urbanized, their value rocketed. These served as original stakes of wealth that households sold at a massive profit, funding still more home purchases. “Commercial apartment units have been far and away the best-performing assets for the Chinese investor,” wrote Anne Stevenson-Yang, founder of J Capital Research, a China-focused research firm based in Hong Kong, in a May 2018 note. Official home price data—which have tended to understate sharp rises in home values—show that prices fell only once in the two-plus decades since China privatized housing. (And that year, 2014, average prices were still 9% higher than two years earlier.) “So in the worst year historically for Chinese housing, in the worst local markets, investors still made 4.5% on a two-year investment,” she said. “This is a much better proposition than, certainly, the stock market, which has led to heavy real losses for retail investors more years than not, or average yields on bank wealth products over the same period of time.” Thanks to the sure bet provided by property investment, China’s economy has become disproportionately reliant on the real estate industry to keep growth aloft. Beyond spurring construction, it also boosts consumer spending—on things like new washing machines and furniture—as well as banking and manufacturing. Counting the knock-on effect to other sectors, economists estimate that real estate activity contributes somewhere between 20% and 30% of China’s GDP. The problem is, the economy—and, therefore, income growth—has been slowing. That means keeping the Chinese housing market chugging along requires that new homebuyers rack up more and more debt.

Risky borrowing takes off

That’s what happened in 2016, when a home price rebound set off a parallel jump in mortgage debt. But the soaring cost of housing has become a growing source of urban popular outrage (particularly among younger workers keen to live on their own, but whose earnings barely cover mortgage payments). To keep the lid on home-price froth, the authorities pressured banks to curb mortgage loans, raised mortgage interest rates, and increased the requirements for down payments. Though property sales slowed somewhat, people didn’t stop buying homes. Instead, they supplemented their mortgage borrowing with higher-interest consumer loans, including from ultra-dodgy peer-to-peer (P2P) lending platforms, said Ernan Cui, an analyst at Gavekal Dragonomics, a research firm in Beijing and Hong Kong, in a recent note. So how much has this consumer borrowing binge strained household budgets? It’s hard to know; the only publicly available estimate comes from the People’s Bank of China, which puts the debt service ratio at 9.4% at the end of 2017 (pdf, p.39, link in Chinese). However, in a note published last month, Cui reported the results of her own estimates. As of the end of 2018, China consumers were forking over between 8.1% and 11.3% of their disposable income (depending on which calculations of household income used) to keep current with monthly interest and principal payments. However, including high-interest borrowing conducted via P2P platforms and other non-bank financing would likely push this burden even higher. That puts China in the middle-upper range of global household debt-service burdens. More worryingly, though, is that it seems likely to climb in that ranking. “If these trends continue, China’s debt-service ratio will likely reach 12-13% in no more than three to four years’ time,” Cui says. “This may not prove to be a hard ceiling, but relatively few countries have sustained debt-service ratios above this level.”

Putting it all together

So what happens when consumer borrowing bonanzas finally ends? The most notorious way debt-service ratios tend to fall is through housing market crashes; over time, the mass foreclosure and consumer belt-tightening that follow tend to bring debt-service burdens down to more manageable levels. That’s what happened in the US and Spain over the last decade or so. Even without a housing market meltdown, though, when consumer debt rises suddenly and sharply, economies suffer. Research on 30 countries from 1960 to 2012 by Atif Mian and Amir Sufi, two leading scholars of debt dynamics, found growth slows after booms in consumer borrowing. (Interestingly, that was true only of household—and not corporate—borrowing.) What’s more, the burden of debt service accounts for almost all of the hit to growth, according to follow-up analysis by BIS economists (pdf, p.22). The risks might be even greater for China than other countries’ fates suggest. Thanks to the central role real estate plays in powering the Chinese economy, its leaders faces a nasty dilemma.

If they curb credit growth and home-buying too much, it will be near-impossible to hit the 6%-plus official growth target (an aim of unique political urgency this year, which happens to be the 70th anniversary of Mao Zedong’s proclamation of the People’s Republic of China). But that might let Chinese households clean up their finances, increasing the chance that they’ll eventually start spending on goods instead of mortgage payments. On the other hand, another round of loose lending will undoubtedly let China reach its politically sacred GDP goals. Home prices will, of course, shoot up too—and with it, the household debt burden. The authorities seem to have opted for the latter course. That will let jittery global investors and central bankers relax a little. And foreign companies will welcome the (temporary) reprieve from uncomfortable China-related earnings revelations. For a while anyway. The odds are good that in a couple years, China will find itself in the exact same place—but with more household debt, more empty houses, and even less means of paying for it. Source: GwynnGuilford Read the full article

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