tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36709258897487991792024-03-13T00:03:36.168-04:00Persistent WonderingMusings from a man who can't stop thinking...David O. Knuttunenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14031797720106188357noreply@blogger.comBlogger82125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3670925889748799179.post-34445683043779822122021-03-04T18:06:00.001-05:002021-03-04T18:07:49.719-05:00Meaning and Meaning<p> The conflation of the concepts of "reason" as an explanation and "reason" as a purpose has done much mischief in philosophy. Similarly with "meaning" as an interpretation and "meaning" as a purpose or intent.</p><p>If I am a hunter tracking prey, its spoor has meaning to me. I can interpret it, adding something to my store of knowledge that will help me track its path. But nothing purposed for that meaning to exist. If I speak to you meaningfully, though, there is a meaning that is purposed (mine) and a meaning that is only interpreted (yours). In this case, your interpretation hopefully adds something to your store of knowledge that will help you track my intention (purpose).</p>David O. Knuttunenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14031797720106188357noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3670925889748799179.post-43585844967029457432020-11-10T07:50:00.000-05:002020-11-10T07:50:13.081-05:00Politics (Winning and Losing)People often focus only on the ideology of their preferred political candidate.
They often assume that the people at large have an ideology similar to their
own, and so assume, if their candidate loses, that the race was somehow
stolen. But losing an election counts for something. <div><br /></div><div>The skills that it takes to
win nomination to office, or win an election, may in fact be the same skills
necessary to do the job. People often think of elected office, especially
executive office, as a position of command: the President gives orders, and they
are carried out. But this is <i>never</i> actually true, even in a dictatorship,
and far less in a democratic, constitutional republic. Getting an agenda carried
out <i>always</i> requires the support of others, support which may be given or
withheld. Executive position requires wheedling, dealing, negotiation,
compromise, coalition-building. </div><div><br /></div><div>Similarly, legislative action, if one is not
going to be a simple back-bencher, passively voting yea or nay, requires the
same skills. This skill set, often, happens to be the one which serves to get
one elected, in the first place. </div><div><br /></div><div>Effectiveness, of course, is not the only thing
that is important. One’s place in history is determined by what one stands for
<i>and</i> by how effective one is in carrying it forward. Ideology is
important; so is getting the job done. Finding candidates with both these
qualities is the ongoing challenge.
</div>David O. Knuttunenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14031797720106188357noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3670925889748799179.post-82327067022692456912020-07-02T07:25:00.000-04:002020-07-02T07:25:29.452-04:00What's Wrong With Economic Growth?<p>I don't think there is any natural system or process that grows indefinitely without reaching some point of saturation or satiation. It's kind of hard to imagine what eternal exponential growth even looks like.</p><p>Also, it probably is not possible for the richest countries in the world (that also tend to have the largest ecological footprint) to continue growing sustainably, since we are already emitting (for instance) way too many greenhouse gasses, and need to radically reduce our output of them, not just slow its growth, or even flatten it.</p><p>But eternal growth as a human goal really doesn't make sense. How many toys can you play with? How much food and drink can you consume? At some point, a sane person is rich enough, and doesn't need to get richer.</p><p>But capitalism depends on growth. My possessions may give me pleasure, and content me, but they are literally valueless to the capitalist. The capitalist, <i>qua capitalist</i>, is only interested in what he can next sell me. Of course, things need to be replaced, from time to time, but capitalists have never seemed satisfied with a replacement-value economy. Capitalism cannot survive stasis.</p><p>Of course, the immediate problem is that wealth is very unevenly distributed. Many people do NOT have enough possessions, let alone enough security in them, to be happy. Redistribution is necessary. We've been told, in the past, that growth will raise all boats so that the poor will eventually be comfortable and secure. It doesn't work. The Kuznet curve has been debunked. Redistribution is necessary. Growth (if it doesn't destroy the habitability of our planet) may make it a little less painful to redistribute (maybe we could approximate some Pareto optimality or a Rawlsian "give to the rich only when it benefits the poor"), but redistribution is still necessary.</p><p>Personally, I believe the planet is rich enough, or close to being rich enough, if we distributed it's fruits more fairly. I don't think any further growth is really necessary, but certainly it needn't (and can't) go on forever.</p><p>But... capitalism.</p>David O. Knuttunenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14031797720106188357noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3670925889748799179.post-75631304847654434362020-05-04T16:08:00.000-04:002020-07-02T07:13:09.820-04:004/25/20 Piketty “Capital & Ideology” c. p. 511<p><em>This blog has been disused for a while. Hardly anybody ever read it, so I decided to hardly ever write for it. But now I’ve decided to use it, for a while at least, to start posting comments on things I am reading, copied from my notebooks. These are not edited, and particularly not made to function as stand-alone essays. I.e., I have not tried to paraphrase the arguments from the books that I may be discussing. The first book I’m doing this with is Thomas Piketty’s “Capital and Ideology”. Page references are to the 2020, hardcover, English language edition, published by Belknap Press.</em></p><p><strong>4/25/20 Piketty “Capital & Ideology” c. p. 511</strong></p><p>Had these thoughts a couple of days ago, when I was reading this section, but didn’t write them down. Trying to reconstruct.</p><p>Piketty’s considerations of fairness re. the entrepreneur trying to start a small business seems to conflate a couple of questions – at least the mechanics of capitalization and questions of passion and ambition.</p><p>First it assumes a capital regime similar to ours, that businesses are financed out of private savings, also a wealth regime such that a person not born wealthy might accumulated a small capital by saving, sufficient to start a business. (How realistic is his example, BTW? Is even $50,000 enough to start a small business with a brick-and-mortar store and two employees? My guess is it would be iffy, at least without also securing a substantial line of credit.)</p><p>Imagine, instead, Schweickart’s model, where the capital would come from a public board. Then, P’s entrepreneur would pursue her dream by developing her powers of persuasion, including the ability to develop a well-documented business plan, instead of by working in solitude to amass a capital. Powers of persuasion would also serve her in good stead in finding sympatico coop partners. And persuasion is a skill that requires much more <u>social</u> values than accumulation.</p><p>If we do assume private capital, the unfairness in the initial injection of the resources of one to be subsequently shared by all could be addressed by making capital infusions, over and above some initial universal buy-in, perhaps, in the form of loans. The terms of the loan would be set at the making of the loan (by contract), and could not later abrogated unilaterally by one party (the collective) acting against the other party (the member/investor “entrepreneur”). Of course, this isn’t necessarily fair, either, if we consider questions of initial social distribution of assets and privilege.</p><p>The other issue that seems to be conflated in Piketty’s story is an attitudinal one. P’s entrepreneur has ambition – a dream. Her two potential coop partners just want a job. This is P’s character thinking like a boss. She wants to hire people to fulfill <u>her</u> dream using <u>her</u> money, and feels annoyed that a coop structure might give them too much power to influence the direction of that dream. Successful coop recruitment, I would think, requires a different mindset. You need to think more like an organizer than a boss. Persuasion, again. You need to seek people who are not just hungry for a job, but who are capable of being infected with your dream, and then you need to spread it to them.</p><p>A large coop may be able to tolerate a range of levels of commitment to the mission or vision. Also some members may be motivated less by the mission, per se, than by social solidarity (or friendship) with their comrades. Diversity of motives is probably a good thing. (Even better when most people have more than one.) But a small coop like P’s example needs a high level of shared purpose, I would think, to succeed. In this it is like any human enterprise that is not able, due to external forces, to be structured purely hierarchically. But capitalism is based on hierarchical structures of capital over labor, bosses over employees, managers over line workers, and Piketty, for all his research and creative thinking, has trouble shaking this mindset.</p><p>[Alt language at end of note not incorporated: Conflates issues of capital and social structure of firm, and involves quite a lot of classical bourgeois background assumptions.]</p><p>7/2/20 This ended up being the last post in this sequence. I had intended to continue, but decided I did not like this raw dump approach. Then I was going to synthesize an over-all book review, but couldn't get that to go in a way that satisfied me, so I dropped that, too. Live moves on.<br />
</p>David O. Knuttunenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14031797720106188357noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3670925889748799179.post-596917996133734702020-05-04T16:05:00.000-04:002020-05-04T16:05:44.178-04:004/19/20 Piketty “Capital & Ideology” p. 410<p><em>This blog has been disused for a while. Hardly anybody ever read it, so I decided to hardly ever write for it. But now I’ve decided to use it, for a while at least, to start posting comments on things I am reading, copied from my notebooks. These are not edited, and particularly not made to function as stand-alone essays. I.e., I have not tried to paraphrase the arguments from the books that I may be discussing. The first book I’m doing this with is Thomas Piketty’s “Capital and Ideology”. Page references are to the 2020, hardcover, English language edition, published by Belknap Press.</em></p><p><strong>4/19/20 Piketty “Capital & Ideology” p. 410</strong></p><p>I don’t think the far flung parts of the world had previously “ignored” each other. Extensive and important trade networks had always existed, effectively linking people from Scandinavia to the Far East, and large parts of at least Northern and Eastern Africa. The Americas were largely unknown in Europe, but Norsemen had already explored them, some, and attempted colonization. Also, there had been important military excursions west to east and east to west dating at least from the Bronze Age (Sea Peoples), or even before. In the Middle Ages, the Crusades and the Mongols are obvious examples, not to mention the Moors in Spain and Sicily. </p><p>What changed in early modernity was the possibility of European domination, based on improvements in technology (including weaponry and transportation) and organization. Prior conflicts had been reduceable simply to force of man against man, similarly armed, organized, and equipped. Such struggles had never shown the West to have the superiority it liked to claim.</p>David O. Knuttunenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14031797720106188357noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3670925889748799179.post-20148545813977931972020-05-04T16:01:00.000-04:002020-05-04T16:03:12.877-04:004/17/20 Piketty “Capital & Ideology” p. 368<p><em>This blog has been disused for a while. Hardly anybody ever read it, so I decided to hardly ever write for it. But now I’ve decided to use it, for a while at least, to start posting comments on things I am reading, copied from my notebooks. These are not edited, and particularly not made to function as stand-alone essays. I.e., I have not tried to paraphrase the arguments from the books that I may be discussing. The first book I’m doing this with is Thomas Piketty’s “Capital and Ideology”. Page references are to the 2020, hardcover, English language edition, published by Belknap Press.</em></p><p><strong>4/17/20 Piketty “Capital & Ideology” p. 368</strong></p><p>This analysis of state power and functions in terms of tax revenues is interesting, if, I think, oversimplified. To get a complete picture for all types of state, you’d also need to look at local taxes, and other forms of elite income, especially in states where the line between the wealth of the state and the personal wealth of the ruler(s) is not clear (as in feudal societies), as well as the types of bonds within the ruling class, e.g., dependence of kings on the goodwill of nobility and clergy (sources of men and money) for extended military campaigns in Plantagenet England.</p><p>This does not counter Piketty’s points, just meant to elaborate on the in certain cases.</p><p>Similarly some empires (Ottoman? Chinese?) may have relied on local rulers/strong men, supported by local taxes/tax equivalents, for a lot of “state” functionality, including “watchman” function. Of course, this was a potential source of rebellions (and new central dynasties).</p><p>Then, there were lots of times and places when the “watchman” function pretty much broke down, altogether – bandits, highwaymen, condottieri, bands of armed men terrorizing the populace – Medieval times, Renaissance Italy, the American frontiers (North and South America)…</p><p>The other thing he hasn’t talked about (at least, yet) is the connection between the <u>overall</u> national income level and the tax revenues available to the central state. The closer the national income is to the subsistence level, the less excess exists, part of which can be taxed away by the state. A very poor family may not be able to sustain a 10% annual tax, especially if already required to tithe to the church and labor part time in the lord’s fields. It takes a fairly prosperous family to sustain a tax of 30-40%, or more. (It helps if some of those other levies are eliminated, or at least made voluntary.)</p><p>His analysis (p 369 ff) of why Europe developed a strong states with tax powers (when other places didn’t) doesn’t seem particularly compelling to me. My sense is that the Ottoman Empire was weak enough that states tended, effectively, to develop within it. Why couldn’t they develop into strong, European-style states? Similarly, I don’t think Mughal domination in India was so strong at all times and places that local political formations and competition couldn’t have developed within it. Again, I don’t know, I’m just not convinced by his explanation.</p>David O. Knuttunenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14031797720106188357noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3670925889748799179.post-42928230417752102542020-05-04T14:02:00.003-04:002020-05-04T16:03:12.935-04:004/12/20 Piketty “Capital & Ideology” c. p. 250<p><em>This blog has been disused for a while. Hardly anybody ever read it, so I decided to hardly ever write for it. But now I’ve decided to use it, for a while at least, to start posting comments on things I am reading, copied from my notebooks. These are not edited, and particularly not made to function as stand-alone essays. I.e., I have not tried to paraphrase the arguments from the books that I may be discussing. The first book I’m doing this with is Thomas Piketty’s “Capital and Ideology”. Page references are to the 2020, hardcover, English language edition, published by Belknap Press.</em></p><p><strong>4/12/20 Piketty “Capital & Ideology” c. p. 250</strong></p><p>I think his “ternary” or “trifunctional” classification of societies is wrong, but not totally off, and the distinction with later “proprietarian” societies is valid. [See 4/4/20 for earlier thoughts.]</p><p>I think the target he’s aiming at is societies based on <u>orders</u>, that is traditionally defined, maybe divinely ordered classes of people, usually though not exclusively heritable, where the paradigmatic type of the class includes wealth (or lack thereof), status, functions (duties), and privileges. This may be more-or-less amenable to lumping into the three “estates” of the Ancien régime, certainly those divisions would have been seen as primary in Medieval Europe – but a society of the orders doesn’t <u>end</u> there. It also defines you as a yeoman farmer, a Roman provincial colon, a miller, a blacksmith or other artisan, a mariner, fisherman, or merchant. These roles may be 100% determined for you by inheritance, as per the edict of Diocletian, or they may be determined for you early in life, as in an urban Medieval guild apprenticeship, but once chosen, they are (at least theoretically) all-embracing, and determine all the important circumstances of your life.</p><p>Unlike the strict ternary model, the society of the orders model can maybe be pushed way, way back, even to hunter-gatherer societies, where fixed roles might be defined only by sex/gender (possibly with some “two-spirit” alternative), along with transitory roles defined by age cohort. (Of course, aristocracy is not impossible in early societies, and slaves may exist.)</p><p>In terms of “inequality regimes”, it seems to me this gives us three relevant ideologies:</p><ol> <li>Society of the orders: Inequality is justified by traditional roles (maybe divinely inspired), each with its duties and privileges.</li>
<li>Proprietarian society: Property is in principle available to all, and may increased by hard work. Property is sacrosanct: otherwise, there is no guaranteed reward for work, and society will fall apart. Property may be unequally distributed, but this is because some people work harder, or worked harder, than others, and, in any case, redistribution of property (other than by free contract) is a cure worse than the disease. Anybody who cannot get ahead by their work is lazy or incompetent, and therefore undeserving.</li>
<li>Social democratic: The aggregate wealth of society is the product of the labor of us all, and should be shared more-or-less equally between us. People who cannot work, for some reason, should be well-cared-for by reason of our common humanity. Material things (capital) is obviously necessary for production, but the legal fiction of private ownership of that capital contributes to production not in the slightest, and should not be allowed to exist (let alone richly rewarded). No one should be paid handsomely just for already being rich; in fact, all the capital of society should be collectively owned (socialized), and decisions as to its use made socially and democratically by all.</li>
</ol><p>[Note the “social democratic” model above doesn’t specifically tie to anything Piketty has said, up to this point in the book.]</p><p>This may be controversial, but it seems to me that the main difference between what I’ve called the “social democratic” model and early Leninist communism is the addition by Lenin of vanguardism: until the people are ready to assume their full, democratic role, they must be led by a vanguard or party that has already attained the correct consciousness.</p><p>I am not distinguishing between social democracy and democratic socialism. I do not accept that the regulated capitalism in fact accepted by many social democrats as a compromise should be allowed to redefine the term. [Although Piketty, when he gets around to talking about it, uses the redefined term.]</p>David O. Knuttunenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14031797720106188357noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3670925889748799179.post-14858261369455069372020-05-04T13:57:00.000-04:002020-05-04T16:03:12.824-04:004/6/20 Piketty “Capital & Ideology” p. 103<p><em>This blog has been disused for a while. Hardly anybody ever read it, so I decided to hardly ever write for it. But now I’ve decided to use it, for a while at least, to start posting comments on things I am reading, copied from my notebooks. These are not edited, and particularly not made to function as stand-alone essays. I.e., I have not tried to paraphrase the arguments from the books that I may be discussing. The first book I’m doing this with is Thomas Piketty’s “Capital and Ideology”. Page references are to the 2020, hardcover, English language edition, published by Belknap Press.</em></p><p><strong>4/6/20 Piketty “Capital & Ideology” p. 103</strong></p><p>French revolutionaries, like 19th Century Radical Republicans, were unable to conceive two ideas that could have led to more egalitarian societies, in each case:</p><ol> <li>That centuries of exploitation – working the land for someone else’s benefit – might give people (peasant or freedman) a “property right” in the land greater than that of the titular owner who had been exploiting them, and,</li>
<li>The idea of cooperative ownership, i.e., of former plantations in the U.S.A., or things like mills (“banalités”) in the French case.</li>
</ol>David O. Knuttunenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14031797720106188357noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3670925889748799179.post-31248814570799408612020-05-04T13:47:00.000-04:002020-05-04T16:03:12.909-04:004/4/20 Piketty “Capital & Ideology” p. 52<p><em>This blog has been disused for a while. Hardly anybody ever read it, so I decided to hardly ever write for it. But now I’ve decided to use it, for a while at least, to start posting comments on things I am reading, copied from my notebooks. These are not edited, and particularly not made to function as stand-alone essays. I.e., I have not tried to paraphrase the arguments from the books that I may be discussing. The first book I’m doing this with is Thomas Piketty’s “Capital and Ideology”. Page references are to the 2020, hardcover, English language edition, published by Belknap Press.</em></p><p><strong>4/4/20 Piketty “Capital & Ideology” p. 52</strong></p><p>Sometimes I think Piketty does not know how much of historian he is <u>not</u>.</p><p>I’ve been trying to project his tripartite model onto the classical, and, to a lesser extent, the ancient world. Greece and (pre-Christian) Rome didn’t really have a priestly class. They didn’t really have a military class, either. The main categories were citizen, non-citizen free people, and slaves. In later Roman society, the military was professionalized, as was the (Christian) priesthood, but powerful landowners stood apart, not primarily military nor priestly (nor clerical, intellectual, or administrative). The military was not a socially privileged class in the way of the Medieval nobility, although it could provide a path, for some, to wealth and political power, even supreme civil power.</p><p>It seems to me the trifunctional society in Europe rose from the barbarian invasions. The ruling class was, perforce, military, since the conquerors consisted of a numerically small military elite. The clerical class they inherited by their adoption of Christianity, and the clerics were useful to the rulers because, (1) they believed their souls needed saving, and, (2) they needed scribes and clerks (and disdained to do that work, themselves, and, (3) because they needed some respectable class to absorb second, and especially third, fourth, etc. sons in a society committed to non-partible inheritance (although that wasn’t true in all parts of Europe, I guess.)</p><p>For the ancient (Mediterranean) world, I don’t know enough. Based on what I do know, the trifunctional society MAY have fit at least some cultures in the Middle East. Not sure about Minoan and Mycenean societies. It seems a stretch to apply it to Egypt. </p><p>May have fit China, Japan, Korea better, especially if the clerical class is understood to be a class of educated administrators, and not necessarily religious. India, okay probably, although the caste system was more complex. [He actually has a much more thorough discussion of this, later in the book.] </p><p>I think it’s a stretch at best to try and fit this “trifunctional” model on the Muslim world, also. Maybe. Not sure.</p><p>I mean, I don’t know enough about all these societies, but based on what I do know, trying to divide their social arrangements into these three specific classes seems to do violence to the facts.</p><p>[See additional comments made on 4/12/20.]</p>David O. Knuttunenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14031797720106188357noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3670925889748799179.post-52086707319495366552016-12-29T09:29:00.000-05:002016-12-29T09:29:36.600-05:00Freedom<p>When I was a very young man, back in the early 70s (some time before decided, around the early 80s, that I was actually a socialist) I I read a book called “How I Found Freedom in an Unfree World” by self-styled libertarian Harry Browne, and decided that I, too, was a libertarian. I later realized that what I liked about the book (and still do, at least in my fading recollection) has little to do with libertarianism as usually conceived. It is a theme that does run as a thread through libertarianism, submerged beneath a fetishization of property* and a mytho-heroic cult of the individual**, but it is far broader. It is a theme in philosophies as old as classical stoicism and as new as the existentialism of Sartre and de Beauvoir. This is the theme that, in the truest sense, freedom is not something that we strive for, but something that all humans inalienably have. </p><p>In this idea of freedom, freedom is defined as the ability to choose between real alternatives. This freedom is always constrained, by what the existentialists called “facticity” – by circumstances outside of ourselves that limit the alternatives actually available at any given time. But the choice is real – and this is the only kind of choice we ever really have. What we usually think of as “freedom” is to have a choice between more attractive alternatives. This improvement of the conditions of choice is something that humans can often accomplish, but only if we start by exercising our freedom; by making good choices between the actual alternatives available to us, right here and now.</p><p><em>Hoofnotes:</em></p><p>*A case in point would be the political philosophy of Robert Nozick.</p><p>**Courtesy of Ayn Rand, I take it. (Her, I haven’t read.)</p>David O. Knuttunenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14031797720106188357noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3670925889748799179.post-51944526276706840672016-12-11T10:28:00.000-05:002016-12-11T10:28:42.801-05:00Thoughts on Democratic Socialism and intersectionality<p><em>These are some thoughts on how I might word the part on the interplay of class and other forms of oppression in an “Introduction to Democratic Socialism” talk – as an alternative to the usual, “We know that race and gender oppression are not subsumed under class, but…”</em></p><p>Early in the socialist movement, socialist analysis tended toward economic reductionism: all historic forces, all forms of oppression, were subsumed in the concept of “class”. Modern Democratic Socialists realize that this analysis is not correct. The oppressions that people suffer because of their race, gender, sexual orientation, or other characteristics of their identity, each has its own history, its own dynamic, which is intricately wrapped up with their class position (as each also is with the others), but not dependent on or uniquely determined by class. This kind of analysis is called an “intersectional” one, and modern Democratic Socialists understand that an intersectional analysis of oppression is required. Democratic Socialists oppose all forms of oppression and exploitation, whatever their source, and our vision is of a world in which all people are equally valued, and equally free.</p><p>If Democratic Socialists still focus largely on class, it is because – who but us? The history and experience of our movement uniquely position us to understand and appreciate the roles of class and class exploitation in producing injustice in the world. In many ways, this focus and these analyses are the particular contribution that we can make, as socialists, to modern liberatory movements. It is important that class as a source of oppression be understood, and fought. There is no implication that class is the only source of oppression, or even, in many cases, the most important.</p><p>There is one unique feature of class oppression that is worth pointing out. Human differences based on race, gender, sexual orientation, culture, are to be embraced and celebrated; only the oppression is to be opposed. But ending class oppression pretty much depends on ending a system of production based on economic class. In struggling for gender justice, we seek a world in which social forces targeting people’s gender do not negatively impact their well-being; we do not necessarily seek a world in which nobody has gender*. But it is perfectly reasonable that the struggle for economic justice should end in a classless society, and this has historically always been a goal of socialism.</p><p>*This is not to say that “gender”, in a future, non-oppressive society, will be understood the same way as it is now. There are many ways in which our culturally determined concepts of “gender”, “race”, etc. are determined by, and serve, the oppressive situations in which we currently live. Part of struggling for liberation is a struggle to redefine these things appropriately; but not, necessarily, to obliterate the underlying reality. Understanding that “race” is an artificial, unscientific concept, originally constructed to falsify moral legitimacy for oppressive systems of colonization and slavery, does not mean we seek a so-called “melting pot”, from which all of our descendants ultimately come out the same hue. But a socialist economy, with all the productive forces of society collectively owned and controlled, with no division into “owners” and “workers”, i.e., a classless society, is a perfectly reasonable thing to seek.</p></body>David O. Knuttunenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14031797720106188357noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3670925889748799179.post-30521726187766046772016-11-22T07:36:00.001-05:002016-11-22T07:36:21.524-05:00An Atheist InvocationThe universe is an empty thing, bound and developing according to the logic of its nature, but devoid of mind, consciousness, or purpose. In this mindless universe, living things evolved from replicating chemicals, and these living things evolved a new thing – purpose, will, desire. Because replicators with a sense of purpose were often more successful at leaving prosperous progeny than those without one.<br />
<br />
One of these species of replicators is our own. And we have evolved so many purposes, goals, desires. Some time ago, long before we were human, we discovered that we could accomplish some of those goals better if we worked together – and we developed community, solidarity. But others of us love to place their personal goals above the goals of others – to dominate the community in their selfish greed.<br />
<br />
I celebrate the solidarity of our human species that lets us, alone in an empty universe, work together for our common, noble goals, and overcome the powerful few who would set their selfish, private goals above the good of the community, and I celebrate the human, compassionate spirit that gives us the strength to fight, and overcome, the forces that would oppress us.<br />
David O. Knuttunenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14031797720106188357noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3670925889748799179.post-66407615834148109272016-05-14T14:42:00.000-04:002016-05-14T14:42:34.578-04:00Natural Selection’s Reasons<p>If we say, “I have a good reason for being here, today,” and “The reason you slipped is because there is ice on the path,” we are using the word “reason” to describe two very different concepts. Both deal with cause-and-effect. My reason for being here (whatever it may have been) caused me to come, and the ice on the path caused you to slip. But one sentence involves a purpose. I had goals in mind, and in pursuit of those, I used my ability for mental analysis (another sense of the word “reason”), and made the decision to come. But no sentient being (presumably) had a goal in placing the ice on the path, let alone in causing you to slip thereon. In that case, the word “reason” refers to an explanation only, and not to a purpose.</p><p>Interestingly the dictionary does not well distinguish these two senses of “reason”. At least, the Webster’s edition that I consulted gives as the first definition “a statement offered in explanation or justification,” which, it seems to me, specifically conflates the two concepts – a justification involves a purpose, an explanation need not.</p><p>The distinction between these two concepts is very important when considering the workings of evolution by natural selection. There are reasons that certain traits are selected (preserved), in the sense that there are explanations for their selection, but they were not selected “for a reason”. Evolution has no purpose in selecting them. Evolution is not, in fact, an agent that can conceive a purpose. There is no end goal for the process of evolution. In Aristotelean terms, evolution has efficient causes; it does not have final ones. Evolution is a mechanical process - as mechanical as the process of fusion in a star producing heat and light. Everything accomplished by natural selection has a reason why it happens (explanation); it does not happen for a reason (purpose).</p><p>It is hard to keep your head wrapped around this distinction. We are so used to conflating the two concepts. I do not think our use of the same word for both is the reason (explanation) for the conflation. I think the conceptual conflation is the reason for the multiple meanings of “reason”. For us, in our daily lives, so many things are explained, at least partially, by the reasons that people have for doing the things they do. It is natural for us to think of chains of events in terms of purposes. It is natural for us, also, to project agency onto things that do not actually have it (onto events that do not actually have a sentient agent behind them). This is what the philosopher Daniel Dennett has called our “hyperactive agent detector”. Being a Darwinian, he of course posits explanations – reasons – for how we might have evolved such a characteristic by natural selection.</p><p>Now waitaminnit. Suppose we evolved a hyperactive agent detector, as Dennett suggests, because it was safer to err on the side of imagining a non-existent agent, for instance imagining a tiger when we hear the wind in the grass, than to possibly ignore a real agent (by assuming it is the wind when it is really a tiger). The consequences (cost) of one class of error are greater than those of the other. But don’t we have a purpose in evading the tiger? Isn’t evading tigers a goal of ours? So doesn’t purpose enter into the process of natural selection? Don’t we have a reason for evolving that trait, as well as there being a reason why we did?</p><p>The answer is that, while yes, we may have a purpose in evading that tiger, no, that purpose does not influence the process of natural selection. If I think I hear a tiger, I may well decide I want to get away; I conceive a purpose – to escape the tiger. This may cause me to climb a tree. (Well, a really skinny tree. Tigers can climb trees, I think, but they’re heavier than I am.) My purpose may be intimately involved in my actually escaping the tiger. But it had nothing to do with my possessing that nagging anxiety that asked, “What is that sound? Was that a tiger?” If Dennett’s hypothesis is correct (I suspect it is), then proto-people who possessed a hyperactive agent detector were more likely to survive, and have offspring, than proto-people who did not. The fact that they may have DESIRED to survive and have offspring was not causally efficacious in the natural selection process. In fact, the desires to survive and to have offspring (or at least, to have sex) THEMSELVES evolved, by natural selection, by exactly the same purposeless but explicable process: proto-creatures that didn’t have such desires (or didn’t act as if they did, anyway) tended not to have descendants.</p><p>It is not necessarily true that purpose – the ordinary purposes of people like us – can NEVER have a role in natural selection. Darwin, after all, modeled the idea of natural selection after the kind of selection practiced by (for instance) human stock breeders, who allow only animals with certain desirable traits to reproduce. Humans are in nature, and stock breeders are an important element in the environment of their animals, just as are predators the environments we collectively call “the wild”. Calling one form of selection “natural” and the other not is at least a little bit an artificial distinction that comes from a definition of “nature” as “everything but humans”. But we humans and our cultures also constitute a very, very important part of our OWN environment. Artificial selection can produce significant phenotypical changes in a very small number of generations – geological time scales are not required. Mightn’t humans also have evolved to conform to our own cultural expectations, not just culturally (by learned/taught behavior), but also biologically, by natural selection, i.e., by genetic change? <a href="http://persistentwondering.com/2016/01/rationality-morals-and-jonathan-haidt.html">Jonathan Haidt</a> thinks so (and cites other researchers). To some extent, don’t theories of <a href="http://persistentwondering.com/2009/12/altruism-and-human-evolution.html">group selection and the evolution of morals</a> depend on something like this? At the very least, it seems that such a hypothesis, if true, would strongly support certain group selection theories.</p><p>But the idea that humans and their purposes form an important part of the environment in which natural selection of humans takes place is very different than saying that evolution itself has a purpose, or that any specific trait arises “for a purpose”. As easy as it is to slip into that kind of language, that just ain’t the way it works. From time to time, new traits arise. The ones that work well stick around, simply because they work well. The ones that don’t work so well, go extinct. If everything seems to fit in the end, it’s because the things that fit are the ones that are still around. For now.</p>David O. Knuttunenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14031797720106188357noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3670925889748799179.post-52945414216974045802016-03-21T09:17:00.001-04:002016-03-21T09:17:42.547-04:00Advantages<!--[if gte mso 9]><xml>
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Conservative parties have a certain natural advantage over
the Left that I don’t think I’ve ever heard discussed.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>If your goal is the preservation of the
status quo, then much of the way forward may seem relatively clear – just do
more of the same.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Among other things,
this may make it easier to build consensus in your own party.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>If your goal is change, on the other hand,
particularly if it is revolutionary change, then the same degree of clarity may
be missing.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>You may have a theory, but
practical experience of the world you are seeking is, by definition, absent.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Is this one reason the Left tends to dissolve
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Of course, objective conditions may make a mockery of
expectations based on the conservatives’ experience.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Then, they will fail, and times will
change.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Then, the Left may be swift and
flexible enough to grasp the whirlwind.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>If not us, then the fascists.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>They
are arguably even better at this than we are.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i>[Side note:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Don’t try
to read too much analysis of current events into the above.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This was mostly generated by some historical
musings.]</i></div>
David O. Knuttunenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14031797720106188357noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3670925889748799179.post-85420364142349602982016-02-20T08:58:00.001-05:002016-02-20T08:58:57.589-05:00Navel gazingWith all the talk about "democratic socialism", these days, including attempts to define the term that make it essentially indistinguishable from "New Deal Democrat", I've spent some time thinking about how I would describe my own political/philosophical leanings to an interested stranger. Every day is different, but today I am thinking "radical democratic socialist" because I do NOT think that capitalism with a human face is sufficient. Private ownership of capital is essentially incompatible with democracy (which is why I've sometimes argued that "democratic socialism" is a tautology). Further, paying people, let alone paying them generously, just for owning stuff, let alone just because they already own a lot more stuff than anybody else, is morally indefensible.<br />
<br />
On the other hand, I need to add something like "pragmatic radical", because I know that wishing don't make it so, and I do not believe in letting the best be the enemy of the good (or even of the "better than now"). Morally, it is better to do something to make things better, for at least some people, than to do nothing. Pretending to a high moral stance from "keeping your hands clean" is not actually better, morally, than being "compromised" by accepting, and working for, limited reforms. Life is short and (to quote a prominent liberal), in the long run we are all dead.<br />
<br />
This leaves out a lot. Feminism, anti-racism... or, better, pro-POC... "embracing" LGBTQ (a phrase I learned recently from a friend, and like so much better than "ally"). I like to think of socialism as not limited to the economic realm. Socialism is democracy, taken to its ultimate conclusion. Socialism is the end of all exploitation, all preferential advantage or privilege of one group over another, for whatever reason, from whatever source.David O. Knuttunenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14031797720106188357noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3670925889748799179.post-71161239773060854132016-01-10T18:29:00.000-05:002016-01-10T18:29:00.130-05:00Rationality, morals and Jonathan Haidt<p>Rationality, as it turns out, far from being the defining quality of humans, is very often used by humans only post hoc, to justify decisions we have already made based on unconscious, irrational processes. In fact, rationality may actually have evolved, not so much to help us make effective plans in the physical world, as to help us out socially, by “explaining” our decisions to our peers. This, at any rate, is one of the key lessons from Jonathan Haidt’s book <em>The Righteous Mind: Why Good People are Divided by Politics and Religion</em>. At least, that is a main “take-away” for me, which fits in well with some of the other reading I’ve been doing over the past couple of years, including Gerd Gigerenzer’s <em>Rationality for Mortals: How People Cope with Uncertainty</em>, and Hilary Kornblith, et al, <em>Naturalizing Epistemology</em>. Although, as a person who makes my living as an engineer, I may have more respect than psychologist Haidt for the role of rationality in helping us deal with our non-social reality. </p><p>This particular argument about rationality, Haidt documents well with experimental data (although the Gigerenzer book offers a caution in its chapter specifically on how statistical analysis is misused in most published psychology research). Some of Haidt’s other themes are also very interesting, but raise more issues for me; at least, I have more questions about them. </p><p>Haidt’s main interest, in the book is with moral psychology, including how moral systems actually function in our (conscious and unconscious minds), and how and why we evolved moral systems in the first place. (The evolution of moral systems by natural selection is counter-intuitive to a naïve, “red in tooth and claw” view of nature and “survival of the fittest”.) Haidt’s scientific work is mostly descriptive; i.e., he is trying to find out how moral psychology actually works, not how it ought to work. His main foray into the prescriptive, in this part of the book, is to advise us that we should try to understand how our minds (including our moral systems) actually work, and not shrink away from the knowledge, even if it makes us uncomfortable. This is a prescription I heartily endorse. Later, he veers into some prescriptions I think less of, as I discuss below.</p><p>A main element in his taxonomy of moral systems is that they center around a number of separate “modules”, which function unconsciously, and provide the automatic moral reactions that our reason later tries to justify. He identifies six of these: Care/harm, Liberty/oppression, Fairness/cheating, Loyalty/betrayal, Authority/subversion, and Sanctity/degradation. He defines them all, and suggests reasons why it might have been beneficial for our ancestors, long ago, to evolve such centers. He and his colleagues identified these modules experimentally (by questionnaires, interviews, and laboratory experiments). When he gets around to discussing politics, he says liberals care mostly about the care/harm module, a little less about liberty/oppression and fairness/cheating, and not much at all about the other three. Conservatives, on the other hand, care equally about all six, although they interpret some of them (care/harm and liberty/oppression) somewhat differently. This makes it possible for conservatives to appeal to more people than liberals*, since they can reach them on more levels. It can also make it very hard for one group to understand the other. For instance, in interpreting some family law situation, liberals may focus strictly on the wellbeing of the child (care/harm), which conservatives care about, too, but conservatives also care about parental rights (authority/subversion), state interference (liberty/oppression), and perhaps others; liberals tend to think these other things are irrelevant. He also says that his research has found that conservatives are better at predicting what liberals will think about a situation than the other way around, because the conservatives share the liberals’ concerns, but add to them, while the liberals don’t see the conservatives’ other concerns, at all.</p><p>Haidt’s assumption of six discrete modules bugs me. For instance, it is pretty well established that people tend to accept traditional authority as long as it is associated with responsibility, i.e., as long as the authority figure carries out a traditionally determined social role seen as having benefits for the community as a whole. It is not necessary for there to be any particular proportionality (let alone equality) in the distribution of benefits between the authority and the people. But if the traditional responsibilities are seen as being ignored, then people are more willing to rebel against the authority. (See, for example, Barrington-Moore, <em>Injustice: The Social Bases of Obedience and Revolt.</em>) So, is there a seventh module, responsibility/irresponsibility? Or is this subsumed under loyalty/betrayal, or fairness/cheating? Or both? Or all three? For that matter, couldn’t loyalty/betrayal just be a special case of fairness/cheating? And are liberty/oppression and authority/subversion really cognitively independent? At the very best, there seems to be a lot of overlap between these categories.</p><p>Ultimately answering these questions may require a detailed mapping of the moral modules on the brain/somatic structures that implement or create them. If this were done, then (for no particular reason but my gut feeling), I conjecture that:</p><ol> <li>There would be more than six modules, and,</li>
<li>Boundaries between modules would be fuzzy. There would be physical overlap between the structures implementing different modules, with some sub-structures involved in two, three, many different modules.</li>
</ol><p>I suspect that it is difficult to structure the type of research Haidt was doing so as to be free of question-begging. You have to make decisions, consciously or unconsciously, as to what types of traits you are going to look for, and you are more likely to find the traits you identified than to stumble across ones you never thought of (although Haidt does describe how discrepancies in early results led him to expand his taxonomy from an original five modules to the final six).</p><p>A significant amount of Haidt’s book is spent discussing group selection and its role in evolution. Many of his observations on this topic I have come across, elsewhere. One that I have not is his belief that there can be, and has been, significant pro-social genetic evolution in historic times (or at least from late prehistoric, but definitely human, times). Essentially, he believes that culturally determined group behaviors (such as religious practices) can create selective pressures that weed out individuals less willing to conform to group norms. This he sees as a form of actual group selection, because groups whose members were selected to make them cohere more closely, passed on more genes than groups who did not. </p><p>I have no doubt that some kind of group selection for moral, cooperative behavior did occur (see previous blog posts, linked to at the end of this one). I’m inclined to be dubious about Haidt’s very late time frame, though. He justifies it by comparison with intentional selection (by breeders) of domestic species, which can cause significant genetic change in a small number of generations. But I think selective pressures in a rich, cultural environment are much more diffuse than in a controlled breeding situation. He does give a nod to the time-frame difference, and admits that the genetic response he envisions would happen much more slowly than in domestic breeding. But if the cultural pressures are sufficiently diffuse, they will not outweigh chance, and selection will not occur, at all. I think there are just too many ways to escape conforming, in most social situations. I think the level of late, culturally induced genetic change that Haidt envisions is unlikely.</p><p>Haidt’s ideas on group selection are intimately connected with his ideas on religion, social organization, generally, and politics. It seemed to me that once he entered these areas, his scientist’s insistence on evidence tended to weaken. He becomes much more willing to assert things without offering any (or at least, much) proof.</p><p>Haidt clear wants to believe that religion is a good thing. He is critical of the so-called New Atheists and their tendency to see religious belief as the root of all evil. I tend to be <a href="http://persistentwondering.blogspot.com/2012/09/irrational-atheists.html">critical of the New Atheists</a>, also, but I think the social utility of religion is much less than Haidt thinks it is. Haidt makes a strong case for the utility of religion early in human history (or prehistory) as something that helped improve the coherence of groups. I think group cohesion, partly helped by shared religion, almost certainly helped human groups to survive in early times, and to outperform (and perhaps out-breed) groups that were less cohesive. (Dennet, Dawkins, and other New Atheist use these facts in constructing a theory of meme-level selection, which Haidt thinks feeds back into genetic-level change.)</p><p>Haidt makes a much less compelling case for the value of close group bonding in modern times, in a globalized world, with awesome weaponry of mass destruction. He makes a claim that having a vast network of small, closely bonded groups (including religious ones), makes, in-and-of-itself, for a safer and more stable overall society. He offers essentially no evidence for this claim. In the interest of convincing us, he over-emphasizes the positives, and downplays the negatives. By implication, we should think of groups like U.U. Social Action Committees, or the League of Women Voters, and not Daesh, Westboro Baptist Church, or the KKK.</p><p>He discusses some research on the survival of small insular groups, which he believes supports his position. Groups like communes and religious communities are found to survive longer (as groups) if, (1) they demand costly sacrifices of their members, and (2) they “sacralize” the sacrifices (i.e., refer them to God’s will). Surely, it is not obvious that this is a net good, at least for the members of the group. What actual benefits does their membership in the group provide that outweigh what they are asked to give up? Haidt doesn’t even raise that question, let alone try to answer it. He seems to take for granted that survival of the group is a sufficient value, in-and-of itself. It seems to me, on the other hand, that the members might well be better off if the group dissolved, and they were re-absorbed back into the mainstream. (Survival of the group is not a precondition for survival of the members, after all.) The study Haidt cites seems to support Dawkins’s idea of religion as a parasitic meme at least as well, if not better, than Haidt’s idea of religion as a positive force. Another comparison that comes to mind is with drug addiction (i.e., a community of willing addicts).</p><p>Thinking of group survival as a “good” makes me think, re. morality, in general: is survival, pure and simple, a sufficient justificatory basis for morality? Or do other things matter? How about knowledge and truth for their own sakes, and not just instrumentally?</p><p>Because, when it comes to religion, Haidt does not seem to be a believer. The impression I got is that he is an atheist. But religion, as a social phenomenon, appeals to him deeply, and he wants to believe it is good, and should be promoted. But if religious beliefs are all wrong about matters of fact, does its appeal (to some people), and its (supposed) social utility justify our supporting and encouraging it? This seems to skirt perilously close to Plato’s Noble Lie. There is something elitist (and ignoble), it seems to me, about promoting beliefs you personally think are false, because of their social utility. (Tolerating them may be another matter.)</p><p>When Haidt turns to political analysis, he leaves the scientific method even further in the dust. He wants to prove that each of the different political constellations (which he identifies as “liberal”, “libertarian”, and “conservative”) has its own share of truth; therefore, we should learn to broaden our moral views, so that we can effectively listen to each other. He gives examples. For libertarianism, he gives a story entitled “Markets Are Miraculous”. And a “story” is exactly what it is: an entirely fictional, made-up scenario about an imaginary insurance scheme that proves exactly nothing.</p><p>Haidt’s approach to politics invites comparison with George Lakoff. Lakoff has also been very concerned that people improve their understanding of the latest scientific theories of how cognition functions, and apply them to political work, and, like Haidt, he believes that conservatives tend to do a better job of this, here and now, than liberals do, and this concerns him. But Lakoff unabashedly sides with liberals, and his interest is clearly that liberals should learn to better apply science in support of liberal moral views (although I know a lot of people who fail to understand that this is what he is saying). Haidt, on the other hand, strikes me as a former liberal who has become more conservative with age. He wants liberals to compromise on their principles, and he offers some fairly lame arguments for why they should do so.</p><p>Grains of salt are required. But the insights into the psychological structure or rationality and morality that Haidt’s work provides make his book worth the reading.</p><p>*I use the word “liberal” in this essay in the conventional, modern American way, because that is the way Haidt uses it, and not in the classical way still more in favor, I think, in Europe, which is closer to what Americans call “libertarian”.</p><p>Related posts:</p><p><a href="http://persistentwondering.blogspot.com/2009/08/natural-history-of-morals.html">http://persistentwondering.blogspot.com/2009/08/natural-history-of-morals.html</a> <br /><br />
<a href="http://persistentwondering.blogspot.com/2009/12/altruism-and-human-evolution.html">http://persistentwondering.blogspot.com/2009/12/altruism-and-human-evolution.html</a><br /><br />
<a href="http://persistentwondering.blogspot.com/2012/09/irrational-atheists.html">http://persistentwondering.blogspot.com/2012/09/irrational-atheists.html</a> </p>David O. Knuttunenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14031797720106188357noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3670925889748799179.post-10035073729161770712015-11-21T08:42:00.000-05:002015-11-21T08:42:55.036-05:00TaxesIt is true, as I understand it, that the modest amount of progressivity left in the Federal tax code means that most income taxes are paid by people who are at least moderately well off. It is also true that Federal income taxes, proper, are only a part of the overall tax burden, and when you factor in other taxes (FICA, sales taxes, gas tax, state income tax, real estate taxes) the overall tax structure in this country becomes regressive (poorer people pay a higher percentage of their income in taxes, overall, than rich people, and MUCH lower than the super-rich. That is a reason activists often give in explaining why having rich people pay more in income taxes is fair.<br />
<br />
But there's another reason I think is even more important. Wealth, ALL wealth, ultimately derives from profits - i.e., from something like a rent for the use of your property - and not from labor. This is true even if a high income is disguised as salary. NOBODY's labor is "worth" more than 200 times the median. Ultra-high CEO salaries come from their ability to control property (their own, and that of shareholders).<br />
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And profit is essentially a privatized tax - a tax that we pay on every good and most services that we consume, but that goes strictly to the benefit of a small class of individuals. (Small in percentage population terms; rather large in absolute numbers.) Profit represents the owning class blackmailing us by threatening to withhold the means of production, which would mean that we could not, with our labor, produce anything at all. And the more that wealth becomes concentrated, the stronger the stranglehold that property has on us, and the more they are able to squeeze out.<br />
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What progressive tax rates do, in a capitalist society that refuses to simply expropriate private owners, is to reclaim part of that private tax, for the public benefit. More progressive tax rates actually represent a LOWERING of the private tax that is capitalist profit.<br />
<br />
And that is why progressive taxes are fair.David O. Knuttunenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14031797720106188357noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3670925889748799179.post-75771340881925963012015-10-28T09:25:00.000-04:002015-10-28T09:25:02.696-04:00AssumptionsAs far as practicable, I would like to have no unexamined assumptions. Of course, there are practical limits. How do I know I'm not a brain in a vat? I don't. It is the nature of brain-in-a-vat arguments that you do not know they are false, ex hypothesis. All you can really say is, "I don't care. I am going to go forward, developing my ideas, ignoring that 'possibility.'' If it turned out that I was just a brain in a vat, and not a real-live boy, that would be sad, but then, ultimately, not much sadder than being an epiphenomenal consciousness arising in a meat-sack, pursuing my self-conceived goals for a brief period of time before dissolving into a stinking pile of mush. So be that as it may. In the mean time, I've got things to do...David O. Knuttunenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14031797720106188357noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3670925889748799179.post-19029987848570610652015-10-03T12:51:00.000-04:002015-10-03T12:51:10.826-04:00Presidency, democracy and stuff<p>I have just finished reading three big books on the U.S. System of government: Michael Glennon's "National Security and Double Government", Arthur Schlesinger's "The Imperial Presidency", and Andrew Rudalevige's "The New Imperial Presidency". It struck me that not one of the three authors EVER mentioned anything that could be construed as class politics. Class issues did not cross one of their minds, apparently, even once, in the writing of these three works.</p><p>Nor did any of them seriously question whether there were any alternatives for democratic governance to the model the modern world mostly uses, involving relatively small deliberative/legislative assemblies, elected periodically by an otherwise largely passive electorate. All three did devote some discussion of the question of whether a democratic government needs a strong executive, with all three ultimately concluding that it does. Only Schlessinger devoted any pages to the question of whether the executive should be fully independent of the legislative branch, as in the U.S. system, or nominally answerable to it, as in the British system. He ended up concluding that the U.S. system is better, because the British system ends up placing more de facto power in the hands of the executive, not less.</p><p>The only writer on politics that I can recall discussing the larger structural question, besides anarchists and radicals rooted in the New Left, is Robert Dahl, in "Democracy and Its Critics", who terms the system we use "polyarchy" ("rule by many"), and, after discussion of its limitations from the standpoint of democratic ideals, decides that while not a perfect democracy, it is the best democracy we can get.</p><p>One important distinction between the three books I just read was that both Schlesinger and Rudalevige focus is on what might be called the constitutional structure of government; they assume the powers of the branches, as defined in the Constitution are the things that matter, for instance, that the President really is in charge of the powers of the executive branch. Only Glennon's book addressed what might be called the shadow government, the fact that institutions take on a life of their own and may possess a power structure functionally much independent of the nominal hierarchy, especially when those institutions are under a secrecy regime such as pertains to our national "security" infrastructure. The only other reference I can recall reading to this sort of effect is in Richard Parker's biography of John Kenneth Galbraith. Parker reported Galbraith's impression that, during the Kennedy administration, the military establishment, if they didn't like a Kennedy directive regarding Vietnam, would simply ignore it. According to Galbraith, Kennedy frequently complained of his inability to get things done.</p><p>The whole premise of a democracy is that the people, in some way, shape and fashion, somehow govern themselves. All of these books I mention show aspects of the complicated problem of government that, in our current, alienating systems, most such nominally self-governing people, never, ever think about.</p>David O. Knuttunenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14031797720106188357noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3670925889748799179.post-69354438431770872592015-08-22T15:07:00.000-04:002015-08-22T15:07:43.957-04:00Mattering lives<p>Black lives matter. It needs to be said. It shouldn’t, but it needs to be said. Brown lives matter, too. Of course. Indigenous lives matter. LGBTQ lives matter. Of course. It’s not a competition. When someone says “Black lives matter,” and someone else responds with “All lives matter,” in theory, the counter-response should be, “Exactly! That’s the point.” But, really, they are <em>missing</em> the point, aren’t they? And if someone responds with “White lives matter,” or “Police lives matter,” then they’re REALLY missing the point. Not because the melanin-deficient or officers of the law DON’T have lives that matter, but because nobody is SAYING we don’t. At least outside of the paranoid fantasies of white racists afraid of losing privilege. Certainly, there are not massive governmental, economic and cultural institutions acting consistently and forcefully as if they don’t. The same is not true of the other categories I listed. Police are not acting collectively as if they could casually shoot any random white person (let alone each other), and expect no serious consequences to follow.</p><p>If, when you hear someone say “Black Lives Matter,” a person from some other oppressed group responds “so do ours,” that is at least understandable. When this reaction comes from a member of a privileged group, this is a classic “What about me?” response. “What about me”-ism happens when an oppressed person speaks about their oppression, and a relatively privileged person feels compelled to respond with some version of, "Well, we have problems too..." What has effectively happened is that the oppressed person has been silenced. Again. It's a way we privileged people have of telling less privileged people that only OUR voices count. </p><p>On the specific issue of murder rates, it does seem that “Black lives matter” needs special elaboration, above and beyond all the others. I haven’t seen data on Native Americans as homicide victims, but <a href="http://fivethirtyeight.com/datalab/black-americans-are-killed-at-12-times-the-rate-of-people-in-other-developed-countries/">one study</a> I read showed that black Americans are killed at about 12 times the rate of whites. Latinos are killed slightly more frequently (as a percentage of their numbers) than whites, but the difference is relatively small. Still, it all depends on time and place, doesn’t it? We’ve seen mass graves in Texas. Massacres of immigrants in border states, by vigilantes – maybe by Border Patrol? – are hidden in the dark of the night, and not tracked by statistics. Even one murder inspired by racism and mindless hatred is too many.</p><p>But the mattering of lives is not just about life and death. It is about our hopes and aspirations, the things we strive for in our short span between birth and dying, and our dreams for our posterity. Those of us with white-skin privilege, especially if we also have some share of class, male, straight, cis-gendered privilege, easily form and sustain many expectations in these areas. We may not achieve our dreams, but those governmental, economic, cultural institutions have not been organized to dampen our hopes. I’m not saying nothing ever stands in our way. That would be stupid. But what privilege is all about is that things stand in our way less often*. We get more encouragement, less discouragement. We get a lot more helps along the way. What “Black lives matter” is about is black people saying, “We want that, too. Our dreams matter as much as yours. We want as much chance to form them, and see them to fruition as you do.” Until EVERYBODY, black, brown, women, LGBTQ, WHATEVER has exactly the same chance at these things as white, cis-gendered, straight men**, then BLACK LIVES MATTER. It needs to be said.</p><p><em>Footnotes and afterthoughts</em></p><p>*Some people will object to this, because they’ve bought into the “reverse racism” bullshit, and they think the Great Society social programs actually succeeded in eliminating discrimination, have maybe even gone too far. I won’t go into detail on that, except to say, if that is you, study the actual data, not the sound bites. Listen to the actual life experiences of black people. If you believe racism and discrimination have effectively ended, you’re wrong.</p><p>**I don’t explicitly include class issues in this list, because wealth disparities simply need to be eliminated. There is no way to equalize the power distribution between rich and poor other than by eliminating poverty and wealth.</p><p>Another aside: Not a single thought in the above is unique to me. And I hope I don’t come off as “white-splaining”. I’m certainly not trying to teach people of color any of the above. But I encounter, continually, enough confusion and uncertainty about these ideas from other white people, that I thought it would be worth throwing my 2-cents-worth into the mix.</p>David O. Knuttunenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14031797720106188357noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3670925889748799179.post-78593254168488903882015-08-16T13:53:00.000-04:002015-08-16T13:53:40.482-04:00Free willWell, these are old thoughts – I wrote this out at length on <a href="http://persistentwondering.com/2013/06/choice-and-determination.html">6/22/13</a> – but I keep coming back to them. Some people say we lack free will, because everything we do is a determinate function of who we are and the circumstances we find ourselves in, and, further, who we are is a function of our history, including the chance formulation of our genetic makeup.<br />
<br />
First, I question the word “determinate”. At the very least, I challenge the speaker to show me how to make the term operational. (Cf. <a href="http://persistentwondering.com/2009/11/laplaces-demon.html">Laplace’s demon</a> 11/22/09)<br />
<br />
But even granting, for argument, that our choices are determined, in some sense, by these things, all you are really saying is that I have a mechanism by which I make choices, and I will make the choice that the mechanism produces. How could it be otherwise? What would it mean to make a choice other than by some mechanism? Some physical/chemical apparatus, presumably, but even if I believed in a divine spark, doesn’t the spark have some sort of nature? Some process? <br />
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If choosing, based on the dictates of my own nature, how best to respond to the circumstances I find myself in is being “unfree”, exactly who or what is it that is not free? Am I seeking the freedom to choose something other than I want to choose? Well, I could – if I wanted to. (Oops…)<br />
<br />
I conclude that the choices are accepting what we have as free will, or accepting that the question of free will is an undefinable pseudo-question. But this is a matter of semantics, not metaphysics. The conclusion “we lack free will” is not one of the alternatives.David O. Knuttunenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14031797720106188357noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3670925889748799179.post-75093343421315896852015-01-12T13:12:00.001-05:002015-01-12T13:12:43.993-05:00Property<p>Until maybe the middle of the 19th Century, most of the world thought that it was sometimes just for one person to own another. In any given instance, whether one person owned another was a matter for legislatures to legislate, and courts to decide (and, of course, for the individual conscience of the property owner). Now, we no longer feel that way. Slavery is considered to violate a fundamental human right, and therefore to be beyond the limits of what a legislature may impose, or a court enforce. On the other hand, we (most of us) hold that that it is sometimes (often!) just and meet for one person to own the means another person requires to live, and to hold that property, and profit by it, even if that means the other person goes homeless, or starves, or sickens and dies. How much of the means of life one person owns, and another does not, is a matter for legislatures to legislate, and courts to decide (and, of course for the individual conscience of the property holder). And for determination by the sacred market.</p><p>But there is no inherent reason why one property “right” is more obvious, just and eternal than the other. The right to own slaves was completely obvious to an ancient Roman, or a medieval Turk, or an antebellum Southerner, and to almost everybody else in their eras, and in between. The right of private individuals to own capital seems obvious to most of us. Maybe someday that will change.</p>David O. Knuttunenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14031797720106188357noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3670925889748799179.post-71224316175347025252014-12-28T14:59:00.000-05:002014-12-28T23:10:18.795-05:00Speaking the truth, precisely<br />
<p>“Nella politica di massa dire la verità è una necessità politica, precisamente.” - Antonio Gramsci</p><p>That Gramsci quote has been the tagline to my personal email account for quite a while, now. “In mass politics, speaking the truth is a political necessity, precisely.” It is one of my all-time favorite quotes. I think about it all the time. What does it really mean? Not so much to Gramsci, but to me. It flies so much in the face of most “pragmatic” political thinking, which is all about how you present the facts, phrasing, paraphrasing, restructuring, eliding, evading, to “win hearts and minds”… guided by your polls and focus groups. Political activists, even left ones, usually seem perfectly complacent with some version of Plato’s “noble lie”. But not Gramsci. “..to speak the truth is a political necessity, precisely.”</p><p>Lately, I’ve been thinking the difference is one of goals. If your goal is to win elections, even if your goal is to make people’s lives in some way materially better, then strategic lies and half-truths may be helpful. If your goal is to emancipate people, then to speak the truth, as precisely and clearly as you can, becomes an urgent necessity. You cannot free people with a lie. The best a lie can do is to help them exchange one chain for another.</p><p>(I wrote about another take on this quote back in <a href="http://persistentwondering.blogspot.com/2010/07/false-profits-and-gramscis-truth.html">July of 2010</a>.)</p>David O. Knuttunenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14031797720106188357noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3670925889748799179.post-28735740129460080912014-12-23T18:16:00.001-05:002014-12-23T18:16:22.347-05:00Entrepreneurial<p>Thomas Piketty, on page 572 of <em>Capital in the 21st Century</em>, worries that an excessive tax on capital income would “risk killing the motor of accumulation.” He means entrepreneurship. </p><p>So what if it did? Profit-driven innovation is not innovation for human need. It prefers idle whim, if backed by cash, to the most urgent necessity without. If inequality is extreme, this disfigurement of priorities is demonstrably exacerbated. We have people watching TV on iPhones, while others go hungry and homeless.</p><p>I begin to suspect that the entrepreneur, as conventionally conceived, is as useless as the capitalist – and I am convinced that the capitalist, <em>qua</em> capitalist, has no social value whatsoever. </p><p>If all capital were socialized, if all decisions about how to allocate material resources were made by some democratically accountable process – David Schweickart’s model of “Economic Democracy” shows one way this could be done* – if no one, ever again, would ever be paid just for already owning stuff, do we really think that all innovation, all creativity, all progress would stop? And suppose it did, or even just slowed dramatically, couldn’t that just be because people no longer saw any need for it? And wouldn’t that be a good thing? It would mean people thought things were good enough, and no more change was necessary.</p><p>I don’t think that’s likely. People are curious, creative, inventive – even just for the sake of those qualities, in themselves, but especially if they see need. People like to do good work. They like to be productive. They like to help. They like to make a difference. If someone saw a need, and the need was real, in a truly democratic world, they would convince others to go along, and resources would be made available, both material and in the form of people’s time and creative energy.</p><p>Desire for personal wealth is one possible human motivation. The theory of the invisible hand shows that, in some cases, this motive may suffice for a greater social good. The theory does not prove that it will always so suffice, nor that it is the only motivation that can do so. And the theory certainly does not show that greed is the motivator best-suited to curing humanity’s ills.</p>*David Schweickart explains the system he calls “Economic Democracy” in his books <em>Against Capitalism</em>, and <em>After Capitalism</em>.David O. Knuttunenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14031797720106188357noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3670925889748799179.post-48422372893782631292014-12-22T08:46:00.000-05:002014-12-22T08:50:37.520-05:00Natural that it be paid<p>Thomas Piketty, on page 423 of <em>Capital in the 21st Century</em>, says, “If capital plays a useful role in the process of production, it is natural that it should be paid.” Actually, I think it is not. </p><p>When I read those words of Piketty, back in October of 2014, I wrote in my notebook, “It is only the separation of property ownership from labor characteristic of capitalism (but not unique to capitalism) that makes this seem reasonable. If all the wealth in the world were evenly distributed (but still privately owned), and everybody labored, then I would expect to use my own property in my work. I would expect my labor to bear return, more than enough to cover any of my property used up in the production process (otherwise I am falling behind). But I would not naturally think of paying myself a rent on my own property. I would not demand a return on my capital, per se. It is only the fact that some have not enough property, while others have more than they need, that makes paying for the use of capital seem ‘natural’”.</p><p>Rereading those words, I have a couple of additional thoughts. One is that there is no reason to assume that property should be privately owned, rather than somehow held in common. Then, also, I question whether I would necessarily expect my labor to at least replace the capital “used” in it. Certainly, this would not necessarily be true if there were other, intangible, benefits to the labor. The real point is, I would expect my labor to bear fruit in some fashion (otherwise, I would not labor). And I would use whatever material goods I had access to in pursuit of my ends. But the idea that “my” capital should be “paid” is not necessarily intuitive. Consider also that, outside of capitalism, saved property does not generally multiply. Food stockpiled may be a hedge against starvation (as long as the stockpiles survive vermin and decay), stockpiles of fuel or clothing may guard against the cold, etc. But if I do not add to them, eventually my stockpiles will be used up. “My” fruit trees may naturally replenish their fruit, with little labor on my part. But most kinds of “stuff” do not naturally multiply on their own. I see no reason that it should be “natural” to assume that they would.</p><p>If you leave cultural bias aside, there is nothing more natural in an ethic that people should profit from “their” property than in an ethic that those who have more than they need should share with those who do not. People trained to “classical” (i.e., capitalist) economics may be tempted to assert that the former is enforced by the “invisible hand” of self-interest, whereas the latter necessarily requires collective action to counter “natural” selfishness. That reaction unjustly deprecates people’s very real impulse to selfless, generous social behavior, which exists alongside their impulse to self-interested greed. But besides this, it denies the massive cultural edifice we have erected to the protection of private property, starting with definitions of same, complex and controversial, which we have created so that people may know what is and is not “their” property, because people do not necessarily spontaneously see this the same way. Then there is almost the entire body of contract law, most of the police and court systems, arguably even much or most of the military. </p><p>The resources that go into regulating the “natural” relationship of people to each other’s private property are enormous! There is no obvious reason why the social structures required to support an ethos of sharing would be more unwieldy than those we have erected to support an ethos of greed. And they would probably generate a far, far better world.</p>David O. Knuttunenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14031797720106188357noreply@blogger.com1