False Profits and Gramsci's Truth

Dean Baker’s book, False Profits: Recovering from the Bubble Economy, is a depressing book.  Not through any fault of the author.  It is an excellent book.  It is not depressing because Baker offers no hope.  He suggests technically simple and practical solutions to the economic problems he points out.  It is depressing, rather, because history and any cursory review of the present political landscape suggest that there is not a snowball’s chance in Death Valley that any of his solutions will be put into practice – or any other solutions that would really help solve what are, for most of us, the underlying economic problems.  The reason for this, like Dean Baker’s suggestions, is fundamentally quite simple:  what is best for most of us is not best for the relative few who currently have power, both hegemonic and state, on their side.

Baker’s book, like his last one (Plunder and Blunder), has a simple premise:  the current economic crisis was the predictable result of a bubble economy based on flagrant inflation of real estate prices (specifically, for owner-occupied homes).  The bubble and the inevitability of the resulting crash were perfectly evident, to anyone who, like Baker, focused an unbiased analysis on the data.  Yet through it all, those who were supposed to be responsible for guiding our economy ignored, and even actively denied it.

What makes Baker furious, in False Profits, is that the people who failed to see the bubble, who even acted as bubble boosters, have suffered no ill consequences from their actions.  The same people have been left in charge of public and private management of the economy; the same people are reporting on the economy, and appearing as experts on television shows.  Baker minces no words.  These people should have been summarily fired.  When one of these pundits appears on television, or before Congress, to warn (for instance) on why too much deficit spending is a bad thing, Baker says the first question they should be asked is, “Exactly when did you stop being wrong about the economy?”

Class differences are clearly visible in the government’s response to the crisis.  The bailout to the banks came first and was almost infinitely generous.  Baker points out that the much-touted TARP funds were only the tip of the iceberg; huge sums were made available, for free, or virtually so, by the Federal Reserve Bank, and other government agencies, with almost zero publicity.  The result was that the financial industry, and other commanding heights of our economy were virtually made whole at the public expense.  Meanwhile, the stimulus, intended to get the real economy going again – i.e., get people back to work – was relatively miserly, and was politically difficult, at that.  Baker estimates that the federal stimulus was only about 1/10th of what was needed, based on technical measures, and in fact was so small as to little more offset the anti-stimulus of state and local cutbacks.  (I have read other estimates that say the stimulus and anti-stimulus were in fact almost exactly equal.)

Baker is at pains to point out all the “bad science” arguments put forward against bigger stimulus and deficit spending, in favor of the bank bailouts, “too big to fail”, etc., etc., etc.  The trouble is, Baker is a voice crying out in the wilderness.  The bad science is repeated ad infinitum, becoming the “conventional wisdom” (to use the term coined by another liberal economist more widely read than Baker, but almost equally unheeded).  The voice of reason never makes it to the airwaves.

I have one major quibble with Baker.  (I have a few other minor ones, but only one that is systematic.)  This quibble involves his constant implication of incompetence, “mismanagement”, and the like to those who steered the economy into the abyss.

My question to Baker is, from their point of view, where was the error?  As a class, the chieftains of the economy made sure they were made whole.  While some traders and speculators, and a whole lot of common shareholders, undoubtedly lost money, at least for a while, and some, perhaps, were ruined, the capitalists and especially the financiers as a class managed to make money throughout – hand over fist during the bubble, and at a quite respectable (if that is the right word) rate through the crash. 

Meanwhile, the economy limps along with punishingly high unemployment.  Is this accidental?  A comrade of mine highly placed in organized labor talks of labor law reform (such as the ill-fated Employee Free Choice Act) as strategic reform, in contrast to the tactical battles we usually fight.  It is strategic because it alters the terrain of the battle field, changes the balance of power between capital and working people.  (Of course, capital realizes this, too, which is why EFCA had to be defeated.)

Similarly, high unemployment is strategic for capital, because it weakens the bargaining power of the labor force, and, especially if sustained, lowers the expectations of working people.

I can’t believe that only a few left-leaners like Baker, my friends and I can see these kinds of things.  Which leads me to believe that at least some of the captains of industry (or princes of finance) saw the bubble, knew the crash would come, and calculated, all along, how best to profit through it.  Perhaps Lloyd Blankfein of Goldman Sachs, for example – a very smart man, who, based on the way his company positioned itself before and in the early days of the crash, clearly had a better sense than many of the imminent risk inherent in mortgage-based derivatives.

Antonio Gramsci said, “In mass politics, to tell the truth is precisely a political necessity,”  which sounds almost oxymoronic to those who believe that politics and truth are inherently strangers to each other.  But Gramsci wasn’t talking about politics, in general, he was talking about the politics inherent, or which should be inherent, to the socialist movement.

It is all about hegemony.  Hegemony is when one class leads society, not by raw force (which would be called dominance or authority), but by winning the consent of the other classes.  We live in our society under bourgeois or capitalist hegemony.  Since the capitalist system is designed to exploit us (working people) for the benefit of those who control property (capital), the capitalist class MUST lie to win our consent.  If we knew the truth, we would rebel.  Gramsci sought to replace capitalist hegemony with the hegemony of the working class (socialism, or as he would have said, communism).  Doing this depends on telling radical truth, exposing capitalist lies, making people understand their true power and their true worth.  "The truth will set you free," although (and actually because) as Gloria Steinem pointed out, first it will piss you off.  A society that is not exploitive does not depend on, and in fact CANNOT be based on, lies.  Or so Gramsci believed.

But to win, this way, we have to get the truth OUT.

Reading Gramsci

I have been reading portions of Selections of the Prison Notebooks of Antonio Gramsci, as part of a book group sponsored by the Boston local of Democratic Socialists of America.  So far I have read the section on “the Intellectuals” and the section known as “The Modern Prince”.  This is my first foray into Gramsci, and I have found it somewhat slow going.

There are a number of reasons why reading Gramsci’s prison notebooks is difficult.  For one thing, they do not comprise a manuscript prepared for publication by its author, but were precisely notes by Gramsci to himself, some consciously preparatory for some future “for publication” writing, and some not.  Secondly, the thematic groupings (at least in the Selections) seem to be largely determined by the editors.  Apparently Gramsci kept several notebooks going simultaneously, and went back and forth over time between a wide array of topics.  The themes we see in published form were apparently culled from various notes, in various books, written at different dates, and given order by the editors.  Finally, Gramsci was very well-read, and intensely engaged in civic (not just political) life, and his notebooks make frequent references to European (and global) contemporary events, contemporary politics, contemporary (or recent) political thinkers and philosophers, who possess varying levels of present-day fame, as well as to specifically Italian history, especially of the Risorgimento.  Many of these thinkers and topics are not well-known to a modern, non-specialist, American reader, and, since Gramsci was making notes to himself, he was not moved to give background explanations.  (The editors’ notes in the “Selections” help some, but not enough.)

Still, with some persistence, I have found these readings rewarding.

The sections of the Notebooks that comprise The Modern Prince were, loosely, notes for a planned work on politics modeled on Niccolò Machiavelli’s classic, The Prince.  Some of the passages included in the published work clearly were directly related to this project; other’s were perhaps selected (by Gramsci? or the editors?) as at least loosely related.  (Gramsci’s planned work was to have been called The Modern Prince, which leads to some complication of terminology.  The words “The Modern Prince” may refer to the work Gramsci intended to publish, but did not complete; to the actual published assemblage of notebook sections; or to the protagonist of Gramsci’s work, which, as we shall see, was the Communist Party.)  

It may seem strange that the radical, Communist firebrand should take as a model someone so often viewed as virtually the devil incarnate.  But Machiavelli is a much-misunderstood figure.  The Prince horrifies many readers because Machiavelli seems to advocate naked violence and cruelty on the part of rulers.  Interestingly, Machiavelli never says that brutality in a ruler is morally acceptable, nor does pretend morals don’t matter.  He refers to such behavior as “bad”.  But he distinguishes between what is morally “good”, in the sense of describing the world we might choose to live in if we could, and what is “necessary” if certain ends are to be accomplished in reality.  In the ideal world, the “good” might be preferable; in the real world, “necessity” must often prevail.  Machiavelli believes, probably more than most of us would be willing to accept, that the ends justify the means.  What is almost charming about him is how perfectly matter of fact he is about this; so much so that he never even feels the need to specifically state this as a principle.

What were the political ends that Machiavelli sought?  This is a little harder to prize out of his writing than his ideas about means.  There are clues in The Prince, but the Discourses on Livy are give a better glimpse.  Machiavelli was a republican, at heart. With some oversimplification, the adjective “republican”, from ancient world through the Renaissance, can probably best be described as having a preference for the rule of law over the rule of men.  Machiavelli’s own political career had been in the service of his native city of Florence during a republican period;  he lost his job upon the return of the Medici princes (and went to prison, briefly, where he was tortured, then released).  The Prince, in fact, was at least partially written as a sort of job resume; an attempt to get back into politics in the service of the Medici. 

Machiavelli was a republican, but not particularly a democrat.  Gramsci, I think, overstates Machiavelli’s role as a precursor of Gramsci’s own mass-based politics.  Machiavelli had no particular concern, other than pragmatic ones, with how broadly the franchise of citizenship should be distributed.   His primary model was the (pre-Augustan) Roman Republic, but he didn’t think it important to copy the forms of the Romans directly; it was how effectively they achieved their ends that he admired.  He was concerned with the stability of a social system, and with a city’s greatness.  Liberty, for him, as for those in classical times, was for a people to live under their own laws without foreign rule, and preferably without a native tyrant, as well.  The closest he came to democratic thinking was strictly from instrumental concerns; he believed that a republic would be greater, and ultimately more stable, if it was based on the willing and engaged participation of the mass of the citizenry.  In the Discourses, he points out how the disruptions of the plebs in the early days of the Roman Republic forced the senatorial class to make concessions – establishing the tribunate of the people, gradually opening the other constitutional offices to plebeians – but Machiavelli believes if they had not done this, and had somehow been successful in suppressing the plebs, then Rome would never have possessed the loyal, disciplined citizen army that conquered the world.  Thus, civil disorders, producing the need to compromise with the masses, rather than being evils to be avoided, are to Machiavelli the necessary costs of greatness.

From passages in The Prince, it seems evident that Machiavelli was also a sort of Italian patriot.  He wanted to see Italy united, as were the great kingdoms of Europe such as Spain and France, in his time, and he wanted foreign rulers (French, Spaniards, Germans) out of Italy.  If, as it perhaps seemed to him late in his life, the best way to accomplish that was for Italy to be united through force of arms by a powerful but autocratic leader, so be it, and anything Machiavelli could do through his studies and writing to help the process along was for the good.

It is a mark of how progressive Machiavelli’s thinking was (if I am correct in this) that his dream of a united Italy was not actually accomplished until nearly 350 years after his death.

Gramsci clearly felt many points of  kinship with Machiavelli.  In the section of The Modern Prince on the “Elements of Politics” (p. 144 ff), Gramsci stresses the need to start from things as they really are, rather than pretend to some more ideal conditions.  We live in a world in which there are leaders and led.  We should study whether and how it may be possible to move to a world without rulers and ruled, but in the mean time it behooves us to study how to lead effectively.  Gramsci also stresses (p. 170 ff) how Machiavelli was an “active politician”, and not either a political scientist nor a diplomat.  For Gramsci, this means his concerns with politics were primarily pragmatic, unlike the political scientist, but unlike the diplomat, he also had visionary goals.  An “active politician” uses pragmatic means to move towards a vision of a different future, unlike a diplomat, who works in service to the status quo.  It is not hard to see how Gramsci identified himself, as well as Machiavelli, in this.

Gramsci was also fascinated with Machiavelli’s reference to the Centaur who taught Achilles in classic myth, which Machiavelli interprets as meaning that a ruler must combine elements of man with elements of the beast.  Gramsci identifies this with his own ideas of force and consent, which are intimately tied up with his ideas of authority (associated with force) and hegemony (associated with consent).  Gramsci seems to feel that Machiavelli anticipated his own thinking on these things; in fact, I think he was right.  The lesson of the Roman plebs, cited above, could easily be used as an example of the Gramscian idea of hegemony in practice.

Gramsci argues that Machiavelli must be understood and interpreted in the context of his own time, and not necessarily as laying down timeless principles.  In particular, says Gramsci, Machiavelli is concerned with “the moment of force” and not primarily with “the moment of consent”.  This observation is clearly tied to Gramsci’s plan for The Modern Prince, a work to be designed similarly address the needs of Gramsci’s time, in a way similar to that in which Machiavelli’s had addressed his own.

The prince of Machiavelli’s title, is, to Gramsci, a mythic figure, an ideal type constructed to serve as a model for real live rulers to emulate.  While Machiavelli’s prince may have been a suitable model for the 16th Century, Gramsci feels no single individual can bear such weight of history in modern times; the “modern prince” of Gramsci’s opus must be, therefore, a collective person, a political party – specifically the Communist Party.  The Modern Prince was to be a study of the political reality in which the Communist Party finds itself, and the character and attributes it must have or acquire if it is to play its historic role therein. 

Gramsci’s idea of the party, at least at the mythic level appropriate to The Modern Prince, differs from the conventional.  To him, the essence of the party is what he calls the “organic” or fundamental party.  There can be many such organic parties, each of which gives expression to the needs of one specific “group” (which is prison-notebook code for “class”).  These “organic” parties may be broken into numerous apparent “parties”, which would be those entities the world would generally recognize as political parties.  Even “non-party” functions such as groups of intellectuals and publishing enterprises are in fact integral parts of the “organic” party. 

The party, as the expression of a class, also expresses the “common will” of that class (and, as that class becomes hegemonic, as the bourgeoisie is now, and as the proletariat will become, the “common will” of society as a whole).  You might think that for Gramsci, if a class possesses something like a “common will”, that the party, as an “organic” party would come to express this spontaneously or automatically.  But Gramsci does not see a “common will” as something automatically existing in a class; it must be developed, and it is the party that develops it.

What is the “common will” exactly?  It is difficult to extract exactly what Gramsci meant.  In some passages, it seems it could be something as simple as a broad consensus on nationhood (or class consciousness – i.e., who does and does not make up the nation or class), along with a consensus on, or at least a hegemonic conception of, the broad structures of society, state, economy, etc.  Absent a rigid demand for absolute consensus, such a concept of the “common will” could probably be uncontroversially accepted as applying, e.g., in a modern nation such as the United States. In other places, though, he seems to have a much more extreme view, as when he says (p.133) “the modern Prince [Communist Party], as it develops, revolutionizes the whole system of intellectual and moral relations in that its development means precisely that any given act is seen as useful or harmful, as virtuous or as wicked, only in so far as it has as its point of reference the modern Prince itself, and helps to strengthen or oppose it.”  This seems to represent a system of totalitarianism hard to accept as desirable, even in theory, or as attainable, in actual fact.

In addition to the “organic” parties, Gramsci makes reference to what he calls “marginal”, “purely reformist movements (p. 157-158).  My first thought on reading this was that examples would be the environmental, feminist, civil rights, gay rights, etc. movements, which (excepting their most radical exponents) do not envision a complete restructuring of society, nor do they depend on any particular economic structure (unlike, arguably, bourgeois liberals), but rather support reforms which could, and must, apply to any overall social form.

But then Gramsci argues that “at the decisive turning points” all these “movements” must merge into their “natural” (class-based) overall party.  The movements I was thinking of seem irreducibly cross-class (or, if you prefer, are not class-based).  So then I thought Gramsci meant only such phenomena as “business unionism”, which has a reformist and immediate agenda under capitalism, but which could be subsumed into the greater working class (socialist) movement in a crisis of the state (revolution).

But then where does that leave the movements I first considered?  They seem to have no role whatsoever in Gramsci’s big picture of politics.  This apparent reductionism is perhaps not surprising in an early 20th Century Communist thinker, but noteworthy, nonetheless, and unsatisfactory from a 21st Century viewpoint.

An important part of Gramsci’s thinking is wrapped up in what he calls the elements of a party (p. 152 ff). Gramsci sees three “elements” of a party:

1. The mass element (which doesn’t really comprise a party until conscious).
2. Intellectuals, which form a ginger group (not a term G. uses), inspiring and catalyzing the formation of a mass base, of which they then become the “generals”.
3. An intermediate stratum, rising from the mass base (Gramscian “organic intellectuals”?), forming in effect the non-commissioned and lower commissioned  officer corps of the party.

When (2) has organically linked to a (1) possessing rising consciousness, such that (3) begins to percolated out as needed, then Gramsci believes that the historical point has been reached at which a party can no longer be destroyed (until it has played out its historically prescribed mission?)  Up until that point, it is imperative that (2) look to its own reproduction, since if (2) is destroyed (i.e., by the state authorities), and leaves no “ferment” from which it can be regenerated, then the organic mass party... what?  May never form?  Or just may be much delayed (unnecessarily delayed) in its formation?

It is hard to tell, from my so-far limited reading of Gramsci, whether he holds that the play of historic/economic forces must inevitably bring certain things about (e.g. socialism).  He certainly believes that men and women’s political actions are important in determining the pace and course of these revolutions, if not their ultimate success or failure.  A related question would be, how much does he think our actions – as opposed to inevitable historic forces – have in defining the nature of the ultimate goal, once realized?  Antonio Santucci, who wrote an intellectual biography of Gramsci, seems to feel that Gramsci had rejected historical materialism entirely, but I am not convinced that his rejection of this central Marxist tenet was in fact that strong.

Gramsci is at pains, though, to point out his differences with “vulgar” Marxists and anarcho-syndicalists, who pin their faith in inevitability, and believe that nothing need be done in the here and know to prepare for or influence events.  He frequently points to the role of the party, including the intellectuals, in preparing the road.  Thus, for example, his frequent exhortations on the need for educating the masses, for training them in party discipline as well as to lead, for reproducing (as mentioned above) the leading intellectual stratum of the party.  This emphasis on the leading/guiding role of the party stands, I would think, in particular counter-distinction to the anarcho-syndicalists, who presumably would hold that the mass base (1 above) is all that is important; that (3) will arise spontaneously from the base as needed (and fall back into it when needed no longer); and that (2) is completely superfluous.  (Despite the irony implicit in various anarchist intellectuals espousing this view.)

Recall, though, that for all his emphasis on leadership, Gramsci holds that socialist leadership must look to creating the future conditions under which under which the distinction between leader and led will no longer be necessary, or even meaningful (p. 144).  Also, he argues that the success of a socialist (communist) party can only be judged after it no longer exists.  Since parties exist only as the expression of a particular class, the party which proposes to end all class divisions will succeed only when there are no more classes to express, and hence when no parties can logically exist.

It is interesting to compare Gramsci’s idea of organic parties to the situation in the modern United States, where the hegemonic capitalist class has, in effect, two parties.  What Gramsci would see as the “organic party” of the working class seems to have minimal direct expression (marginalized groups such as DSA, a few intellectuals, the worklife-focused labor movement).  Some of what might arguably be called “organic” expressions of working class politics can be pretty perverse (the Tea Party).  How would Gramsci view the situation in which, for practical purposes, much of the political expression of the working class gets directed into the two parties of the capitalist parties?  Sometimes this expression takes forms that Gramsci would be able to recognize as direct functions of the “organic” party – labor COPES, the Mass Alliance – but, primarily due to the Constitutional structure of the U.S. Republic, the energy is focused within one of the two capitalist parties.

What kinds of lessons can I actually draw from Gramsci?  Where was he right, and where wrong?  The concept of hegemony, as he developed it, seems to be a very powerful analytic tool, but I cannot follow it quite as far as he seems to do in his more extreme definition of “the common will”.  I cannot agree (to the annoyance of some of my more traditionally Marxist friends) with his apparent reduction of all social struggle to class conflict.  Issues such as race, gender, sexuality have their own independent (socially constructed) existence, and their own importance.  Gramsci’s idea of the three elements of a party seems worth thinking about, and his ideas on the importance of education, and of creating the “ferment” that will reproduce activist intellectuals for a new generation are things to which anyone who cares about long term social change must certainly pay heed.

I’m certain that I will have more, and more detailed thoughts as my plunge into Gramsci’s thought continues.  And no doubt I will have reason to regret more than one of the hasty, early judgments presented here.

Onward!

References: Antonio Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks, Quintin Hoare and Geoffrey Nowell Smith, eds.; Niccolò Machiavelli, The Discourses, Penguin Classics edition, Leslie J. Walker, S.J. and Brian Richardson trans., and The Prince (Bilingual Edition), Mark Musa, editor and trans.; Antonio A. Santucci, Antonio Gramsci, Graziella Di Mauro, trans.

Starting from Zero

I’ve never read Hegel, but I recently reread Russell’s chapter on Hegel in A History of Western Philosophy as background to some early Marx we were reading for the Democratic Socialists of America Boston local’s reading group. Per Lord R, Hegel starts from the idea that “the Absolute” is “pure being”, deduces that this means it has no qualities, and finds this self-contradictory because to have no qualities is to be nothing. This is the antithesis – “The Absolute is nothing” – and leads to the first synthesis: “The Absolute is Becoming.”

What struck me is that Hegel thinks he is starting from zero, using only one premise – that reality cannot be self-contradictory – but of course he really is applying many premises: that there is something that may reasonably be thought of as “absolute reality”, that “pure being” is a meaningful concept, which entails having no attributes, that to have no attributes (or qualities) is to be nothing, that the union of being and being nothing is becoming.

It seems there is a basic flaw in a philosophy which tries to start from zero, or from some very small set of premises, building up from these by synthesis; to wit, that we cannot do it. We always, in fact, have to start with a lot. Descartes’ radical doubt leads, perhaps, to “cogito ergo sum” (more precisely, perhaps, “...something is”, but to go further, he needs to introduce more premises, “undoubting” certain things. He selects premises that purport to justify the undoubting – clear and distinct ideas, and the goodness of God – but this is basically B.S., not justified by his method, as stated.

Really, what we do, always, is to start with everything we know, or think we know, and start juggling it about. We apply reasoning (rules of inference) that feel right to us and (perhaps) we try to codify these into a system of logic. We apply various tests in doing this. What tests depends on the person and what he or she brings to the process. Examples are empirical tests (how well do these premises and this logic predict future experience) and faith-based tests (do these premises and this logic lead to conclusions that conflict with “revealed” scripture?) We can apply tests, at any time, to some of our a priori beliefs about facts, and or to our rules of inference, but each test involves accepting other facts and rules, at least temporarily and contingently. We can never test the whole shebang.

This process is irreducibly ad hoc and messy, which is no doubt what has led many philosophers to reject it, and to try and find a purer and simpler alternative. But they were deluding themselves.

The actual process “works”, more or less, because our sensual and reasoning faculties have evolved by natural selection. If they failed badly at the task of extracting meaning from the universe, we would have become extinct, or at least these faculties would have. But this is no guarantor of “ultimate knowledge”, whatever that is. Aspects of our reasoning system may be selectively neutral, such that there is no effective, general difference in survival rates from reasoning one way or the other. These aspects, then, would not be fine tuned by natural selection. Like blue eyes and brown eyes, both may survive indefinitely in the species. I suspect this may be particularly true of the ways we construct abstract structures of meaning to explain our experience to ourselves.

Different ways of knowing can also serve the same person better or worse under different conditions. Something like what I called “faith based” learning is certainly the most satisfactory way of learning for a child, who will learn much too slowly if she must test every new factoid empirically, rather than trusting the wisdom imparted by her elders. In fact, realistically most of what we learn throughout all our lives, we learn from others whom we trust, either because of their social position as teachers, authors, or what-have-you, or simply because we believe they have no reason to lie. In complex situations, we have to apply other tests – such as when we find that the “experts” don’t agree with each other. And empirical experience is the ultimate arbiter, to which faith, for any reasonable person, must bow. Galileo’s telescope trumps the Pope.

True Tax Freedom = Progressive Taxation

Soak the rich
'Til there are no more.
When that day comes
There'll be no more poor.

Of course, that's an over-simplification, because it is possible, in theory and at times in history, for there to be poverty w/out wealth. In our age, however, we clearly have the productive technology to adequately provide for every man, woman and child on the planet (although if the population countinues to double every 50 years, all bets are off). Poverty is therefore, in our world, the product of an unjust and undemocratic capitalist system, which orders production and distribution primarily for the needs and wishes of the well-off, and leaves immense numbers of the poor effectively w/out any voice. The solution is for people to become enlightened and rise up, throwing off the mental chains created by the lying propaganda of the Right (e.g., the concept of "Tax Freedom Day"). Progressive taxation is therefore a symptom and an instrument of the solution, and not, of course, the solution, itself.

Anyway, for me, April 15 is not so much tax day as the day my wonderful daughter arrived in our lives.

Random firings

March has been a very busy month. I’ve been doing a lot, reading a lot, thinking a lot, but haven’t had time to sit down and write a coherent blog post. So I’m going to try cobbling one together out of some of my shorter journal entries for the month. I’ve been rereading Dewey’s Experience and Nature (among other things), and much in the following musings is influenced by that. The last, however, was influenced in part by discussions at a recent DSA meeting on Monte Pearson’s Perils of Empire, and by an article by Arthur MacEwan.


3/5/10

Rules of arithmetic have their properties only in virtue of the abstractness of numbers. For instance, consider X&Y chromosomes. Normal human females have two X chromosomes, normal males have one X and one Y. Thus,

F: 2 ea x 1 type = 2 chromosomes
M: 1 ea x 2 types = 2 chromosomes

Abstracted to the level of chromosomes, this gives:

2 x 1 = 1 x 2 = 2

which is valid, but the practical significance of the information lost to abstraction is far from trivial.

In general, classes of things are classes only if the difference between members is unimportant, which is a function of the analysis to be performed, and the level of abstraction appropriate to that analysis.


3/12/10

Reality is always there, it is just-as-it-is. But knowing always involves an abstraction. There is no way to know something just-as-it-is. The notion of doing so is vacuous: there is no meaningful way to understand it. The just-as-it-is cannot be inside your head. What is in your head is a pattern of neurological activity, chemicals, electricity... This neural pattern is associated with the just-as-it-is. They are linked in experience. This linkage is knowing. It involves a process of abstraction (choice from among the full range of experience presented) and analysis (ordering and associations upon the objects of choice).


3/17/10

Confusion around the concept of causation may result from applying (as a metaphor) concepts pertaining to the goal-directed action of sentient things to non-sentient nature. For us, the results of our actions come at the end of a causal chain (or intermediate results come as intermediate points on the chain). We look for the same effect in nature.


3/20/10

When we divide the world into objects, we do so along natural lines of cleavage, but these are not the only lines of cleavage, nor do we always cleave the same reality in the same way. We parse the world into objects pragmatically, in the ways that make sense to ourselves as a species, and also relative to our objectives at a given time. Some other species, or ourselves in different exigencies, would parse it differently.


3/27/10

The logic of capitalist accumulation is much like the logic of empire. If you have a (political) empire (e.g., Rome), even if you don’t consciously wish to expand, there is always trouble somewhere on the border, which entails the risk of losing some part of your existing empire. Losing part of your empire is bad, so the wise course seems to be to “pacify” the unruly neighbor, which as a practical matter means extending the empire.

In an uncertain world, maintaining your existing power is a delicate balancing act – too delicate for anyone to be confident of his ability to do it precisely. The real alternatives will always seem to be either increase your power, or tacitly allow it to recede. Since the second is unacceptable, the first course is followed by default.

In capitalism, power derives mainly from the effective control over property. (Note that this may, or may not be, coincident with formal “ownership”.) The logic of power leads one to try to maximize the power under one’s control, thus corporate growth, thus capital accumulation.

Note 1: A corollary, of sorts, is that capitalists desire to increase the prerogatives of capital, e.g. vis. labor.

Note 2: This logic of capital is very different from the logic of labor. Individual laborers may wish to increase their small store of wealth (purchasing power), but this is not their primary source of economic power. An unorganized laborer’s primary power is in her skills, strength, ability to work. If she is more politically conscious, she realizes that her real power lies in her ability to organize, both into labor unions and politically. Labor unions may accumulate some significant store of funds, but their main source of power lies in the number of workers they have organized.

Note 3: I mean “power” very broadly as the ability to independently make, or at least strongly influence, decisions affecting your life and/or the lives of others.

Let ‘em filibuster

Almost since the beginning of his administration, I have had the gut feeling that President Obama’s bipartisan, compromise-oriented approach to legislation was a mistake. I have had endless debates with friends (especially my wife, Susan) about whether this approach was tactical on Obama’s part, or a function of some deep-seated, almost pathological need to “get along” (perhaps combined with a failure to grasp the profound significance of the underlying ideological differences). I do not pretend to be a political pundit, nor a psychoanalyst, so I won’t go further into the motivation debate. But certain effects seem fairly clear: Obama thought that by outreach and compromise, he could move legislation, including and especially health care reform, through Congress. The Republicans, on the other hand, although quick to decry partisanship when they are in power, saw their best advantage in sheer obstructionism, and this they did very well, helped by the rules of the profoundly undemocratic U.S. Senate.

In these private debates (as in my 1/17/10 blog post), I argued that Obama would have been better off to come out swinging. If he had seemed to be fighting for the little guy, and the Senate Republicans were obviously blocking his every move, then it would have been clear to everybody who the villains of the piece were. His legislation might have been blocked – but it was anyway! By being seen as a fighter, his chances of increasing the Democratic majority in the midterms would have improved.

At least in my small circle of friends on the Left, this idea of mine seems to be coming pretty widespread. People are, in fact, holding it forth as a model for how Obama should go forward. “Let ‘em filibuster” is a call I hear more and more often. At a recent discussion we organized for the Boston local of Democratic Socialists of America, all three panelists put forth an analysis that seemed, to me, strikingly similar to mine. They ended by saying that Obama needed to find some pieces of legislation, however small, that he could move, and push them through Congress quickly. I raised my hand and commented that, based on what they had said so far, it seemed like even if Obama couldn’t move anything through, it would be better for him to try and fail due to visible Republican obstructionism. Somewhat reluctantly (they didn’t want to give up the dream that Obama could pass something), all three panelists agreed.

Unfortunately, as I reflect on the outcome of the recent Massachusetts Senate election, and some other thoughts about the nature and makeup of the U.S. electorate, I have come to have some doubts about at least the short-run effectiveness of this strategy.

The AFL-CIO commissioned a poll after Scott Brown’s election, which showed some very interesting results. Among other things, it showed that nearly two-thirds of Brown’s voters want him to “be bipartisan and work with Obama and congressional Democrats, rather than stick to his conservative philosophy and work to defeat the Democrats’ agenda”. Since Brown won about 50% of the total vote, this suggests that one third of the electorate makes no deeper analysis when voting than “I’m not happy with the way things are going, so I’ll vote for the other party.”

A behavioral tendency I have noticed in many voters may partially explain these results; if it doesn’t explain them, it may mesh with them to reinforce the result. In conversations with various friends and coworkers over the years, especially people who do not see themselves as particularly “political” people, I have noticed that many people apply a very simple model to the solution of social problems. Specifically, they:

1. Think everybody sees the same problems they do, and sees these problems in essentially the same way, and, 
2. Think that the solution to these problems is essentially technical, and that there is general consensus among experts on how to solve them (even if they, themselves, don’t understand what the solution is).

With this set of beliefs, it is natural to think that, if the party in power can’t seem to get it done, then flipping to the other party is the best solution. Maybe the other party will be more effective. Failing to understand the role and importance of ideological and theoretical differences means failing to understand that the other party may “effectively” move in a direction that does nothing at all to solve the problems you perceive, either because they are acting according to a bad theory, or because they are trying to solve a different set of problems altogether.

In a recession, for example, a worker may take it for granted that the problem is “getting the economy going again”, and that this necessarily entails restoring or creating jobs, and good jobs at that – anybody can see that! But someone else may think that the definition of “getting the economy going again” is a matter of profitability and a rising stock market. If he’s elected to office, the policy this second person pursues may not be oriented towards restoring good jobs. Or, the politician may think bringing back jobs is important, but believe the way to do it is by a supply side approach: cutting taxes on the rich, while practicing fiscal austerity by slashing social programs to “stabilize” the economy. This policy will have a very different effect on outcomes then the massive Keynesian stimulus that might be proposed by some other politician, who had a different theory as to the solution to the same problem.

But if you don’t understand these effects of ideology and theory on outcomes; if you simply assume that everybody sees things essentially the same way you do (always excepting a few “radicals” and “nut cases”), and that fixes to social problems are subject to well-understood technical fixes like designing a stronger beam or choosing the right wire for an electrical circuit; then it makes perfect sense to flip your vote whenever the party “in power” doesn’t seem to be able to “get it done”. With this kind of attitude, even such an obviously obstructionist strategy as a filibuster may have an unobvious effect – causing you to vote for the filibustering party, not because you agree with their positions, but because their successful obstructionism makes the other party seem unable to effectively govern.

In light of these considerations, I am no longer so certain that a “Let ‘em filibuster” strategy will do much for the Democrats’ electoral results in the short run. But I still think it is better for Obama to fight and lose than to just lose without a visible fight. The AFL-CIO poll suggests that the electorate is divided roughly into thirds – one third left leaning, one-third right leaning, and one third that flips one way or the other depending on which way the wind is blowing. The long-term objective for the Left (and for the Right, for that matter) must be to hold onto and firm up our base, while trying to educate at least some of the flip-floppers.

The Republicans have proved that they can pretty much block legislation any time they take a serious mind to. If the outcome for Obama’s agenda is to be losing in any case, then coming out fighting won’t make him seem any less effective. He may still lose the flip-flopping vote, but at least he’ll have a better chance of holding on to his base. This may lead to less of a debacle in the mid-term elections, and at least, as Republican obstructionism enrages the frustrated core of left-leaning people who know their enemy, it may give those of us who are truly on the Left a better base to work with in the future.

Abstinence

My teenage daughter and her peers, lately, are obsessed with movies and TV shows about teenagers having babies. I have watched some of this stuff with her (probably less than I should) – episodes from “The Secret Life of an American Teenager”, part of the movie “The Pregnancy Pact”. Even her new favorite show, “Life Unexpected”, is about the (implausible) consequences of teenage motherhood in the life of the baby, now a girl in her own teens. It’s not just shows for teenagers which have these themes, either – I remember an episode of the police show “Without a Trace” which would fit completely into the paradigm discussed in this essay, and that is just one more case among many.

From what I’ve seen, these shows:

1) Present abstinence-only as a legitimate moral choice, even if, as in “The Pregnancy Pact”, they may question whether it is the best one,

2) Tend to strongly argue for keeping and raising the baby as the most legitimate choice for a teenage girl ONCE pregnancy has occurred. Abortion and even adoption are strongly devalued as choices.

Within the context of the post-birth aspects of these kids’ lives, the shows do tend to show kids trying to be mature, and responsible, working hard on their relationships with friends and lovers, their own parents, and the baby’s father. This presents positive images for their teenage audience to live up to. On the other hand, since these fictional kids tend to be so good at this stuff, which in reality is so hard, even for those of us who waited until we were in mature, stable relationships (and had decent jobs), before we had our kids, that one effect is to make the “have your baby” choice seem less fraught than, in reality, it is.

But I’m particularly concerned about the growing acceptance of an abstinence-only policy as a legitimate moral choice, even if not a necessary one. In fact, abstinence-only is a bad choice, based on a false moral premise. It has absolutely no moral benefits, and tends to produce at least two bad moral outcomes.

First, I need to distinguish between abstinence-only as a policy, and simple abstinence. It is not morally wrong for a person to be sexually abstinent, if they choose to be. But abstinence-only is a policy that says the best (or only moral) way to avoid teenage pregnancy is to remain abstinent until marriage. Since effective birth-control methods are readily available in our society, there is no rational basis for this prescription. As a policy, abstinence-only “makes sense” ONLY if you accept the implicit premise that sex before marriage is morally wrong. This is the false premise on which abstinence-only is based.

Not only is sex before marriage not morally wrong, I would argue that most people SHOULD have (safe) sex before marriage. Marriage is an important decision, involving a melding of the whole complex of life choices facing two people and (yes) often the question of bringing more people into the world, who must be raised and cared for. Such an important decision should, in my opinion, be kept as free as possible from the heady influence of overactive hormones. Separating the choice to have sex from the choice to get married results in better choices about both.

Abstinence-only, even if it “works”, acts to make kids marry before they are ready. It is worth pointing out that, even on its own premises, abstinence-only is not a prescription for preventing TEENAGE pregnancy, but only PREMARITAL pregnancy. I can see no sound reason for viewing premature marriage as a moral “good” that we should design policies to foster.

And, of course, the reality is that (as even the birth-worshiping shows admit) failure of abstinence is an all-too-likely effect of a policy of abstinence-only. The TV morality plays try to gloss over the effects of such failures by depicting the noble struggles of a few fictional teens and their loving families to make their way through the forest of problems besetting them – and, yes, in real life many families do pull through, and come out all right on the other end. I have tremendous respect for the families who, caught up in this situation, manage to make it work. But a good outcome does not prove that the original choice was good. Certainly, in almost every case, the lives of teenage mothers, and their children are much, much harder than they would have been if the pregnancy had been deferred until a better time of life. In cases where other life factors are stacked against the family – factors like poverty, racism, unavailability of strong, supportive extended networks – the affected lives can essentially be ruined, as the stress caused by one bad decision leads to further bad behavior, resulting in pain and suffering for all that might have been averted with better initial judgment.

The morality plays paint a choice between evils, with teenage pregnancy, birth control, abortion and adoption all seen as ills to be weighed in the balance. But birth control is not an evil. It is a simple solution to a practical problem. Birth-control, not abstinence, is the moral choice for avoiding teenage pregnancy. And if birth control (or abstinence) fails, an early abortion or a “morning after pill” is clearly a reasonable and legitimate moral choice. As third tier possibilities, later abortion and adoption are both perfectly legitimate choices, in many cases better than bearing and raising a child for which you are not ready.

Abstinence-only, in short, is a moral position that makes sense only in the context of a Christian dream world, where the imagined word of God trumps the real-life needs of men, women and children. But sex is a normal, human act, not a sacrament, and premarital sex is not a sin. Birth control is a practical solution to an age-old problem, and is not in any way morally problematic. Insisting on a policy known to produce bad outcomes for real human beings, when a simple solution is available, is morally wrong.

In the real world, abstinence-only is not just an irrational or impractical policy. It is an immoral choice. And it should be shown to the world as such.