Pictures from a Revolution

Edited April 25, 2017

The gates of the Shanghai Conservatory opened, and the cacophony of loud noise engulfed the spectators.  A lorry moved slowly through the gate, blasting revolutionary songs  through a bullhorn installed on the driver’s cabin.  On the open platform of the lorry stood a young man dressed in the army-like uniform with a platter-size lapel pin showing the envisage of Chairman Mao.  The zeal in his eyes expressed nothing but unflinching faith in the words he was shouting through a bullhorn held in his hand.  Behind the lad stood several older men dressed in grayish uniforms, their heads bowed, and large posters pinned to their chests and backs.  “Who are they” I asked my Chinese guide.  “They are the enemies of the people” she resolutely replied.  “And what do these posters they are wearing say?” “That they followed the old path of the imperialist culture.”

Shanghai During Cultural Revolution

As it turned out, the older men were the faculty at the Shanghai Conservatory hauled away by members of the Red Guard.  Their “crime” was their teaching of classical music, which the Cultural Revolution hack propagandists labeled reactionary and imperialist.  In my two-year stay in China in my youth during the peak of the Cultural Revolution I have seen this scene repeating itself in endless iterations – Red Guard lads publicly judging, condemning and reprimanding their teachers for espousing old reactionary ideas which the Communist Party apparatchiks deemed harmful to the people.

Red Guard - as Depicted in Cultural Revolution Propaganda Poster.

These scenes, which I vividly remember even though, or perhaps because, I was unable to record for the fear of severe consequences that my parents could face for such acts of “espionage,” come to mind today when I witness political discourse in the United States today.  On the one end of the political spectrum, you have the guardians of the conservative orthodoxy and the unflinching faith in the market and "liberty."  Any opinion deemed incompatible with these dogmas are immediately attacked by these guardians in the most vicious and vile way.  No substantive arguments are being offered, invective and name calling suffice, of which "socialist" is the most serious.  This is mirrored on the other side of the spectrum, where the guardians of the liberal, or rather neoliberal, orthodoxy attack unorthodox views in an equally vile and vicious way, using terms such as "racist" or "fascist."   If you are foolish enough to engage these self-styled guardians of the orthodoxy, you are told to move to another country by the conservatives, or to grow up by the neoliberals. 

Red Guards Fighting Caricatures

Of course, this zealous defense of the orthodoxy is not new.  As HL Mencken observed:

“It was Americans who invented the curious doctrine that there is a body of doctrine in every department of thought that every good citizen is in duty bound to accept and cherish; it was Americans who invented the right-thinker. The fundamental concept, of course, was not original. The theologians embraced it centuries ago, and continue to embrace it to this day. It appeared on the political side in the Middle Ages, and survived in Russia into our time. But it is only in the United States that it has been extended to all departments of thought. It is only here that any novel idea, in any field of human relations, carries with it a burden of obnoxiousness, and is instantly challenged as mysteriously immoral by the great masses of right-thinking men. It is only here, so far as I have been able to make out, that there is a right way and a wrong way to think about the beverages one drinks with one's meals, and the way children ought to be taught in the schools, and the manner in which foreign alliances should be negotiated, and what ought to be done about the Bolsheviki.”

What I find far more interesting, however, is that this phenomenon is spread not among people lacking  education, but among those who have college credentials.   One would think that having a college degree makes people think more critically and rationally, yet the opposite seems to be the case.  Many otherwise intelligent people turn themselves into propaganda tools of the establishment ideology, be it the Communist Party during the Cultural Revolution in China or the Republican or Democratic Party lines in the United States.  Why?

Several hypotheses are possible. The first hypothesis, often heard in certain segments of the sectarian Left is the supposedly corrupting role played by the educational system itself, especially the academia.  Schools are reactionary institutions, this argument goes, whose main role is to instill ideas, attitudes and behaviors that are instrumental to the interests of the ruling class.  Therefore, graduates of the “elite” educational institutions form the phalanx defending the established status quo in cultural wars.  I find this explanation trite, boring and unconvincing.  Suffice it to say, that a mirror version of this argument is heard on the right accusing academic institutions of being bastions libertine ideas corrupting the minds of the youth.  It is clear that both arguments are caricatures of academic institutions that cannot be taken seriously.

Another possible explanation is self-selection.  It is well known that certain institutions tend to attract people exhibiting certain personalities.  Thus financial investment institutions tend to attract greedy unscrupulous bastards, religion and political parties tend to attract demagogues and shysters, the police and the military tend to attract sadistic and violent types, and so on.  By this logic, academic institutions, especially of the elite variety, tend to attract sycophants who love sucking up to authority figures, be it the faculty or rich and powerful people in the so-called real world.  While there might be some truth in this argument, it certainly does not tell the whole story.  Certainly not every elite university student is a sycophant eager to serve the rich and the powerful, and not every sycophant in the academia becomes a stooge of the regime.  I strongly suspect that most of the latter end up as middle managers meandering through the corporate landscape by keeping a low profile and sucking up to their bosses. 

The third possible explanation, which I find quite interesting, is that academic training trigger certain social role playing that often leads young people to stomping on the faces of others, seen as the enemies of “progress” or other bigger than life ideal.  This explanation was suggested by the Czech writer Milan Kundera  in his novel “The Joke” – whose protagonist was betrayed by his comrades and expelled from a university in the Communist Czechoslovakia.  A keen social observer, Kundera wonders why so many talented and intelligent youth threw their support behind the Communist regime in the post- World War 2 Czechoslovakia.  Some of them, like one of the characters in the novel who backstabs the protagonist, were opportunistic sycophants changing their faces to win the graces of powers that be.  But most other did not fit that mould. 

The reason suggested by Kundera is that education, especially university education, infuses young people with a cognitive illusion that they can achieve anything they want and change the world.  It encourages them to think that the knowledge they are acquiring uniquely positions them as agents of social change and transformation of the world of ignorance that they inherited from the past.  This is why, according to Kundera, so many bright students (the prominent Polish intellectual Leszek Kolakowski comes to mind ) were attracted to communist parties in the post WW2 Eastern Europe.  The ideology professed by these parties offered them a vision of a new society based on rational ideals, and an illusion that they can be agents of change implementing this new rational vision.  Given the wide-spread disillusionment with the pre-World War 2 politics and the devastation caused by the war, this was enough to attract significant following. 

One of the darker aspect of this "can reach the stars" mentality is hostility to social tethers that may hold the aspiring young star from achieving his (it is mostly males who fall for this delusion) goals.  Hence their propensity to attack the "old."   Oftentimes this hostility toward the old is manifested by the rejection of “old” aesthetic values, destruction of their cultural symbols, and espousing of the new avant garde culture.  When this is limited to the sphere of cultural representations, this can be very creative and rejuvenating.  However, when this creative zeal is manipulated by political interests to attack their enemies it becomes dangerous. 

This was certainly the case of the entrenched rear guards of the China’s Communist Party, who launched the Cultural Revolution  to purge the party reformers trying to modernize the backward rural economy.  They managed to capture and direct the zeal of millions of China’s youth to take on their teachers and prominent intellectuals who posed a threat to the ossified Party elite.  As a result, the country’s development was thrown back by decades. 

Youth for the Powers That Be.

   

Likewise, the “Reagan Revolution” in the United States unleashed a similar process, albeit far better greased than the Cultural Revolution.  The young and ambitious people that they are on the verge of creating a brave new world unlike anything before – the new economy, the new technology, the end of history as we know it.  They are the rising stars in the making of this new world order.  However, the prospect of success is threatened by the entrenched interests of the “old” as designated by the Republican Party apparatchiks – the unions, the teachers, environmentalists, labor lawyers and “liberal elites.”  

Democrats - always followers, never thought leaders - finally caught up with this trend during the 2016 presidential election.  Anyone who doubted the virtues of the glorious leader Hillary Clinton was viciously attacked as "racist", "sexist" , "brocialist" (the neoliberal version of the right wing invective 'socialist'), a Russian troll, or simply an immature and childish person who does not have enough common sense to grasp the self-evident truth of the Democrat party line.

Like in Orwell’s dystopia 1984, the Party apparatchicks designated enemies of the people, and the these otherwise smart and educated people followed the cue and led the charge against them. So here we are – intelligent, educated, and idealistic youth turning, under the watchful eye of the Party into the Hitlerjugend, Komsomol, Red Guard, Republicans or Democrats and stomping on the faces of people conveniently designated as enemies of the Party and the people. 

Back to the future of America: Permanent Cultural Revolution

Warsaw Uprising Redux

In 1994 the Baltimore Sun published an editorial commemorating the Warsaw Uprising.  The Sun piece took the standard Polish nationalist position squarely blaming the Soviet refusal to aid the Uprising for its defeat and heavy civilian losses that followed.  However, conveniently forgotten was a more nuanced view that the Soviet refusal to aid the Uprising was a result of the combination of several factors: their initial inability to continue the Belorussian Strategic Offensive against the Germans, the Polish staunch anti-Soviet stance and a refusal to make any political compromise, and the Western Allies unwillingness to provide any meaningful support to the Uprising. 

Adding this more nuanced view to the conversation was the main reason I decided to write a letter to Sun’s editor, an edited version of which was published in The Sun.  Not surprisingly, it provoked angry responses from the readers.  I was accused of many unsavory things, including harboring Communist sympathies, which ironically has some truth in it.  I use the qualifier “some” because, I usually try to take a nuanced view and abstain from radical bombast, either in favor or against. 

Since August is the month of Polish national martyrdom prominently exemplified by the Warsaw Uprising, I findit a good opportunity to post the letter I wrote some 18 years ago.

---

October 7, 1994

Editor,

The Sun

501 N. Calvert St.

Baltimore, MD 21278

Editor,

Your October 7 [1994] editorial “When Warsaw Dies Again” is high on rhetoric but thin on historical substance.  Taking a high moral ground and accusing the Soviets of betraying the Polish Resistance fighting in Warsaw is inconsistent with historical evidence.

Angered by the Western Allies position on Poland’s postwar boundaries (eventually ratified at the Yalta Conference) that shifted these boundaries westward, resulting in the loss of territories east of the Curzon line, the internally divided Polish government-in-exile in London took a radical anti-Soviet position and refused any bona fide negotiations with Stalin, even though the boundary changes resulted in a net economic gain for Poland.  While the backward semi-feudal agriculture prevailed on the eastern territories seceded to the USSR, the newly gained from Germany area was highly industrialized.  As a result, Poland’s post-war industrial infrastructure actually increased by some 50% as compared to the pre-war level.  However, the agrarian interests, dominating the Polish government-in-exile, never accepted the loss of their feudal privileges and were determined to fight for them “to the last Pole.” The nationalists, led by General Sosnkowski, the commander-in-chief of the Polish forces in exile, hoped to restore Poland’s pre-war boundaries, even if that meant fighting against both the Germans and the approaching Red Army. The plans for an uprising launched by the local Resistance forces loyal to the London government were a key element of that strategy.

The irrationality of that position can be evidenced by the following facts.

·         The Roosevelt administration clearly informed the Polish government-in-exile that the Western Allies did not intend, under any circumstances, support the planned uprising in Warsaw.  That information was never passed to the Resistance commanders in Warsaw who, to the very end, planned the Uprising on the assumption that Western aid would come.

·         Western Allies lacked the technical capability of carrying air raids over Poland on their own.  Consequently, after the Uprising broke out, they refused to send anything but largely symbolic supply missions to Warsaw.  The losses were heavy and most of the supplies were intercepted by the Germans.  General Sosnkowski, frustrated by the lack of cooperation from the Allies, ordered the Polish parachute brigade to take a kamikaze mission to Warsaw. Fortunately, his orders were ignored.

·         The Soviet government offered military assistance to the Uprising in exchange for certain political concessions; including the resignation of some of the hardline anti-Soviet cabinet members in the Polish government-in-exile.  These resignations were also demanded by the British government.  The Polish government refused the offer.

·         As the Red Army vanguards reached Warsaw suburbs, they were running out of fuel and supplies, and faced a powerful counter-offensive by the German forces.  Most sources agree that the Soviets were not capable of aiding the Resistance fighters in Warsaw, at least within the first few weeks of the Uprising.  While the Polish intelligence adequately informed London about the combat capability of the Red Army, that information was never transmitted back to the Resistance command in Warsaw.  Consequently, the order to start the Uprising relied almost exclusively on information submitted by the commanders of the Resistance combat units, who lacked skills in intelligence gathering.

These facts suggest that the responsibility for the Uprising’s defeat, and heavy “collateral damage” resulting from it, falls primarily on the Polish government-in-exile.  It is utterly naive to expect that the Soviets would aid an effort ostensibly directed against their own interests, without attaching a political price tag to their support.  Would the Kennedy administration help Fidel Castro?  However, Polish nationalists, blinded by staunch anti-Sovietism, refuse to acknowledge their own political myopia, and blame the Allies for their own mistakes.

What's So Outrageous About Pussy Riots

The sentencing of the Pussy Riot collective for an act of "hooliganism" in a Moscow church provoked a world-wide reaction.  Particularly surprising, at least to a Western observer, is not just the harshness of the sentence but also the medieval reaction of the majority of the Russian society, condemning the three women for their act.

Mark Ames is up to something when he writes:

"Part of the hostility to Pussy Riot is that they’ve become a cause-célèbre in the West. Russians have not had a very good historical experience with things the West think Russia should do, going back a few centuries — the memory of America’s support for that drunken buffoon Yeltsin while he let the country and its people sink into misery is still raw — "a painful memory" like John Turturro's character says in "Miller's Crossing," a memory woven tightly into the Russian RNA’s spool of historical grievances. And nothing triggers that reactionary Russian live-wire gene like an earful of Westerners moralizing about any topic, even the most obvious topic, even the topic where it’s 100% clear we’re on the right side for once."

However, he misses another dark aspect of the Russian soul - sexism. If the stunt in question was done by a bunch of young men, the mob's reaction would certainly be very much different.

To be sure, counter-cultural protesters receive a raw treatment from the police and mainstream society in most so-called democratic countries, including the US and Canada.   David Graeber makes a good point about it in his book "Direct Action." The reason is that such protest questions the tacit authority relations in society and this pisses a lot of people off, because it reminds them how much they suck up to authority in everyday life and call it "choice" and "freedom".  They are being spat in their faces by their bosses and the powers that be and they think it is raining, but as soon as someone unmasks those power relations for everyone to see, their self-image is shattered, they get mad and curse the messenger.

But it also matters who the messenger is, especially in predominantly "traditional" societies where stereotypical gender roles are still an integral part of the popular culture.  If the questioning of tacit authority relations that requires guts and taking personal risks is done by men - it goes with the sexist stereotype of male "bravery," fearlessness, boldness, chutzpah etc.  It is therefore more acceptable in such societies, even if it reveals some inconvenient truths.  But the situation changes dramatically if such acts are performed by women - which not only reveals some inconvenient truths but also goes against deeply embedded gender roles.  A good Russian woman is supposed to be prone, accept her fate and pray - especially in church - not to fight back.  Acting against this stereotype is not just inconvenient - it touches a raw nerve.


As Barrington Moore observed in his book "Social Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy", to maintain traditional value systems, “human beings are punched, bullied, sent to jail, thrown into concentration camps, cajoled, bribed, made into heroes, encouraged to read newspapers, stood up against a wall and shot, and sometimes even taught sociology. To speak of cultural inertia is to overlook the concrete interests and privileges that are served by indoctrination, education, and the entire complicated process of transmitting culture from one generation to the next."

This is particularly evident in many countries of Asia or Africa, especially those facing the challenges of modernization. In Saudi Arabia, Iran or Pakistan they punish women for far less serious "offences" against the so-called "public morals." Going medieval and insisting on strict adherence to "tradition" or rather its caricature created for propaganda purposes seem to be a common reaction of mobs being threatened by social change.  I do not think Russia is a particularly outrageous example of this. However, Russia is not seen as a "backward third world country" but rather as a relatively modern world power.  Hence such a medieval reaction against a rather benign act of three women appears more shocking. I am pretty sure, however, that similar attitudes can be found in the so-called industrialized democracies of Western Europe or America - they just do not get as much publicity.

Bye Bye Labor Unions?

The great American economist John Kenneth Galbraith once remarked about what seems to be a dual motivation system used in conventional economics, one for the rich and one for the poor. The rich will not work if not sufficiently compensated, while the poor will not work if compensated too much.  This duality is echoed in the popular views of corporations and labor unions.  A successful corporation that maximizes its bottom line and shareholders' profits is regarded as a great public good and often awarded tax "incentives".  By contrast, a successful labor union that gets good salaries and benefits for its members is often regarded as public bad and needs to have its rights limited and gains reduced.  Such views are not limited to the professional-managerial class but are shared by the American population at large, including segments of the de-facto working class.

Such sentiments go back to Max Weber's analysis of pre-modern and modern rationality.  Pre-modern rationality, Weber argued, represented among others by the backward Eastern European peasantry, requires that a person works only as much as to accumulate adequate means for survival and then rest.  The modern rationality, by contrast, requires that one works to maximize return whether he/she personally needs these returns or not.  This accumulation and maximization of returns is indeed a divine mission embedded in the “spirit of capitalism.”

The Weber connection suggests that this curious double standard for management and labor is not simply hypocrisy or even brainwashing with business propaganda.  It has something to do with the Weberian notion of legitimacy, more specifically, a general belief who can make a bona fide claim to representing public interests, or for that matter, propose bona fide rational solutions.  It seems that corporate management is seen as a legitimate agent of both, while labor (organized or otherwise) lack this legitimacy - it can only represent their own "special interests" and their own point of view (rather than universally recognized rationality.)

The real question is, however, why is it the case?  If the study of the professions and the role of legitimacy in constructing professional status (see for example Andrew Abbott book, "The System of Professions" or) is any indicator, the key to legitimacy is the association with knowledge, or at least with what passes for knowledge at a given historical time.  Doctors are generally seen as legitimate medical professionals while healers are not.  It is so, because the former claim to posses what is widely recognized as objective knowledge on which their practice is based, whereas the latter do not.  The outcome of the practice does not matter that much, as both can be ineffective or only accidentally effective.  What matters is the believable claim of possessing legitimate knowledge, which is considered a "public good" in itself.  Likewise, the management practice is supposed to be based on the application of "objective knowledge" (economics, psychology, business management studies, etc.) whereas labor does not.

Of course this connection to knowledge is not self-evident.  It is carefully constructed and cultivated to the point of becoming what sociologists call "stock knowledge" i.e. a belief taken for granted without the need of any proof.  The professions, especially in the US,  carefully engaged in that construction and cultivation - the process known as "professional projects".  Such projects have been carefully described by Magali Sarfatti Larson “The Rise of Professionalism”).  Andrew Abott (“The System of Professions”) describes how many different professional groups collaborate on creating mutually supportive systems of professions that supports the professions' special claim knowledge, while my paper “The DiscreetCharm of the Nonprofit Form” focuses on professional projects in situations where the "system of professions" does not work.

In contrast to the professions, labor did not cultivate any claim to knowledge, at least in the US.  In fact, it often took the opposite path, that of anti-intellectualism and derision of formal knowledge, schooling, and its agents contemptuously dubbed "egg-heads.”   A recent example may be “blue collar” unionsjoining forces with business to launch an assault on teacher and public sector unions.

By so doing, the labor shot itself in the foot.  It undermined its own claim to legitimate representation of public interests and consequently it is seen only as a "special interest group" that needs to be held in check by those who legitimately represent "public interests."  In the era of austerity measures forced down on society by the professional-managerial class, this perception further erodes the standing of labor unions and may even lead to its final demise. 

Auf Wiedersehen Tegel

Tegel is a funny airport - quite minimalist for the capital of a major European power.  In that respect, it it reminiscent of Bonn - a sleepy provincial town that used to be the the capital of the Federal Republic (prior to the unification.)  Both Tegel and Bonn create an illusion of visiting Disneyland - where structures are scaled down to create a sense of gemuetlichkeit - yet they are fully functional real-life places, not hyper-reality theme parks created for entertainment.

Tegel is actually quite functional - my only complaint is the absence of rail connection to the city, which is rather unusual for Europe.  However, its small size is bad for long distance travel.  I once missed a Continental flight to Newark due to a late arrival of my connecting Lufthansa flight.  It turned out that it was the only flight to the US from Tegel - as a courtesy, Continental offered me place on their next day flight without a surcharge (sic!) which I politely declined.  Lufthansa, otoh, had plenty of transatlantic flights, but all of them from Frankfurt or Munich.

After the transfer of the capital to Berlin, Bonn reinvented itself as a "UN - city"  to retain some of its previous stately splendor.  The end result, however, is the retention of the Disneyland character of the city where the international rubs elbows with the provincial.

It is too bad that Tegel has to go to create room for a more modern airport. The new Berlin architecture is absolutely dreadful, just as most modern architecture in general and airport buildings in particular are.  So in that respect, Tegel will share the fate of Penn Station in NYC, an interesting but not quite functional building replaced with architectural monstrosity in the name of efficiency.  The French converted d'Orsay terminal into an art museum.  The Germans could do something similar with Tegel.  Do not raze it. Convert it to, say, a cultural center similar to the Smithsonian combining museums of transportation, natural history, art from all over the world, international cinematheque - in a word a place offering a virtually connection to the world in the way that the old airport never could.

On Activist Cultural Identity

The role of aesthetic and cultural tastes in class distinctions is equal if not greater than that of economic factors, as Bourdieu had argued in his book "Distinctions".  This creates an almost impossible situation for many radical activists - they claim to fight for the interests of the subordinate classes, yet the subordinate classes reject them as "upper class brats" based on their cultural appearances.  But if they give up their activist culture to gain acceptance, they basically sell out their souls to the devil of the mainstream society.  Damned if you do, damned if you don't.

FROM AMRITSAR TO DERRY: BLOODY SUNDAYS AND BEYOND

Today is the 40^th anniversary of the Bloody Sunday, an event in which the British Army opened fire on unarmed civil rights protesters in the Bogside area of Derry, Northern Ireland, killing fourteen.  Although the recent debate in the UK focuses on culpability of the army and the authorities, this event also gives us an opportunity for a more general reflection on the usefulness of the civil disobedience tactic today. 

A good point to start is to quote what Orwell had to say on the subject in 1949:

"[Gandhi] believed in "arousing the world," which is only possible if the world gets a chance to hear what you are doing. It is difficult to see how Gandhi's methods could be applied in a country where opponents of the regime disappear in the middle of the night and are never heard of again. Without a free press and the right of assembly, it is impossible not merely to appeal to outside opinion, but to bring a mass movement into being, or even to make your intentions known to your adversary. Is there a Gandhi in Russia at this moment? And if there is, what is he accomplishing? The Russian masses could only practise civil disobedience if the same idea happened to occur to all of them simultaneously, and even then, to judge by the history of the Ukraine famine, it would make no difference. "

It thus appears that Orwell was skeptical about the civil disobedience tactic because it would work only in a democratic state where, one may add, it is one of many ways of voicing political dissent.  However, it is pretty much ineffective in a totalitarian regime. 

I like Orwell as a writer, his writing is very engaging and clear, qualities that not that many European writers possess.  I wonder, however, to what extent, if any, Orwell’s view on the effectiveness, or rather lack thereof, of civil disobedience had been influenced by the memory of the Jallianwala Bagh massacre, in which the British war criminal in the rank of Brigadier General Reginald E.H. Dyer ordered his troops to open fire on unarmed civilians in the Indian city of Amritsar in 1919, which incidentally also took place on a Sunday (has Her Majesty secretly proclaimed Sunday the “Shoot a Protester Day” ?), killing as many as 1,000.  

The Jallianwala Bagh massacre offers a compelling case against civil disobedience – it reinforces Orwell’s point that such a tactic amounts to a mass suicide, if the protesters face an enemy who is determined to shoot to kill.  It goes even further than that, it illustrates that bourgeois democracies are not much better than totalitarian regimes in its willingness to shoot civil rights protesters, a point further reinforced by similar events in other democracies, such as the Adalen massacre in 1931, the Kent State massacre in 1970, in addition to the Amritsar deja vu  in Derry in 1972.    

What these events demonstrate is that opening fire on unarmed civil rights protesters is actually less damaging to the political system in a democracy than in an authoritarian regime.  If such an event occurs in a totalitarian state, two things are likely to follow.  First, the regime tries to cover it up as if it did not occur and censor the news of the shooting.  Second, the foreign press gives this event as much publicity as possible, especially if the authoritarian regime in question is labeled “communist.”  So the more the regime tries to censor the reports of the shooting, the more credible and more in demand the foreign reports appear.  So at the end, while the protest itself had minimal, if any at all, impact on the regime, the massacre of the protesters undermined the credibility of the regime and contributed to its subsequent demise (c.f. in Poland after 1970 rebellion in Gdansk, which I witnessed, and after the martial law in 1981.)

However, no such thing happens in a bourgeois democracy.  To be sure, bourgeois democracies do not shoot protesters very often, but when they do – two things occur.  First, the event is covered by all media outlets from every imaginable angle, which immediately removes any suspicion of a cover-up.  Second, a special government commission is appointed to investigate the event, and after many years of deliberation it issues a report that invariably exonerates the people who did or ordered the shooting, but opens the door for civil litigation against the government, i.e. the taxpayers.  In other words, bourgeois democracies are very efficient in protecting their functionaries while socializing the cost of the massacre, just as they are very efficient in protecting the interests of well-connected businessmen, while socializing the cost of their business practices.

Thus, Orwell’s critique of the effectiveness of civil disobedience stands, especially in bourgeois democracies.  First, a civil disobedience protest poses very little risk to the powers that be, even if it is violently suppressed.  Such suppression fails to delegitimate a bourgeois democracy that, unlike authoritarian regimes, mastered the art and science of manufacturing of consent and legitimation.  Instead of censoring the news of violent suppression of protest, bourgeois democracies drown them in noise and spin manufactured in endless quantities by the media and government bureaucracy, which introduces enough moral ambiguity to effectively neutralize the delegitimizing potential of the attack on protestors.

Second, far from undermining this consent and legitimation manufacturing, acts of civil disobedience actually reinforce  a bourgeois democracy.  The fundamental assumption of any civil disobedience protest is the existence of the so-called “civil society,” or a public sphere where citizens can pursue their interests and voice their concerns.  The very existence of a protest action is a manifestation of the existence of this civil sphere, which in turn legitimates the political system that “guarantees” its existence.  This connection between protest and legitimation of the political system can be illustrated by a visiting NGO activist from Kenya whom I met and who was greatly impressed by the fact that people could freely protest against the current administration in the National Mall in Washington DC.  In his native Kenya, any anti-government demonstration would likely be dispersed by the police.

In sum, civil disobedience actions are more likely to legitimate the status quo in a bourgeois democracy than undermine it, even in an unlikely event of state violence against the protestors. Thus, such actions are not only ineffective as Orwell claimed, but they are counter-effective.  It is so, because bourgeois democracy has mastered the art of privatizing the profits and socializing the cost, both in business and in politics.  They protect the businessmen and functionaries while dissipating their responsibilities, and socializing the cost of their actions.

To be effective, a protest action must reverse this privatization of profits and socialization of costs tendency of  bourgeois democracy.  Street demonstrations cannot do it because they cannot inflict enough damage to corporate and government functionaries who hide behind the curtain of “the system” – even if they blink and abuse their power.  They only expose protestors to personal risk.  An effective protest action must do the opposite: threaten or inflict damage to corporate and government functionaries while minimizing the personal risk of the protestors.

A good example of such an action was a recent protest campaign against proposed anti-piracy legislation (SOPA and PIPA.)  This campaign demonstrated that a great number of libertarian minded “netizens” – who typically are “swing” voters – are willing to take politicians responsible on an issue that is dear to them.  This was a serious threat, especially in an election year, and the political support behind this legislation folded like a house of card.  Although pundits interpreted it as “democracy at work” – this was in fact a successful protest action at work.  What made it successful is a credible threat it posed to the political functionaries (aka “elected representatives.”)

So instead of stomping their feet in the streets and risking being tear gassed and arrested, if not shot at, which threatens no one but the protesters themselves, a successive protest action must devise a strategy that poses a credible political risk to specific corporate and government functionaries responsible for the state of affairs targeted by the protest.  Of course, specific strategies of protest will vary depending on the circumstances, who is involved, and what credible threat can be posed, but protest organizers should plan their strategy based on the political cost/benefit considerations, instead of ritualistically engaging in tradition-honored forms of protest that simply ceased to be effective, if they ever have been.

ARBEIT MACHT FREI?

I like Graeber's writing, it is very thoughtful, even though I feel uneasy about some of his conclusions. 

In the last essay of his volume “Revolutions in Reverse” titled “Against Kamikaze Capitalism” he tackles the issue of work from an anarchist point of view - i.e. something to be avoided.  What is missing from this analysis is that different kinds of work have not been created equal, and that while some kinds of works are indeed drudgery to be avoided, other kinds of work are creative and satisfying pursuits that he elsewhere raves about.  What is furthermore missing is the explicit recognition that work is not some quasi -objective process defined by technical requirements of production, but a socially constructed process of breaking human activity into separate tasks and then organizing these tasks into "bundles" or "lumps" called jobs.  Finally, and most importantly perhaps, what is missing from this essay is acknowledgment that jobs are socially constructed based on the principle of social status inasmuch, if not more than on the principle of technical expediency. 

This unveils what I perceive as a significant weakness of anarchist thinking - it cedes vast stretches of social territory to its enemies and withdraws, or rather is being routed, to idealized if not utopian enclaves in which it feels comfortable.  It does not treat these territories as contested, something worth fighting for, but rather as something worthless and thus to be abandoned to the enemy without a fight.  It does this with the state, and it does this with work. 

Job satisfaction studies consistently show that non-pecuniary attributes of work, such as degree of autonomy, flexible schedule, co-worker respect, friendly atmosphere, amenities and the like are as important in defining what constitutes a “good job” as the wages.  There is no technical reason, why all jobs cannot have these attributes.  In fact, many capitalist firms recognize this and offer sometimes real, more often token, attributes of respect, autonomy, flexibility, collegiality and the like.  A visit to a local IKEA store staffed by "co-workers" is but one example.  Another example is a visit to a supermarket outside the US.  The first thing one notices is that their cashiers sit rather than stand at their counters.  Why cannot they in the US?

What is more, there is no reason why certain undesirable tasks, such as cleaning one’s workspace, have to be “bundled” into menial jobs instead of being spread out across all jobs.  I see no reason why at the end of the day a CEO cannot pick up the waste basket in his office and empty it into a dumpster on his way out, other than that such a “menial work” is somehow “unbecoming” of his status. 

But if the status of job incumbents is what it is in a large part about, then work is a contested territory.  The “status grab” by the managerial types by hogging the most desirable, creative and enjoyable task to themselves while relegating the menial tasks to those of a lesser status, can be effectively contested by a demand for a democratic process in defining jobs, their desirable/menial task composition, and the degree of amenities, such as autonomy, flexibility and the like. 

However, by declaring all productive work as a form of capitalist drudgery that cannot be reformed, rearranged and transformed into a festive and joyous human activity, the anarchists seem to cede this territory and  capitulate to the managerial claim that the organization of work they created is based on objective, technical and meritocratic criteria to which there is no rational alternative.  It fails to recognize that productive work, if democratically reorganized, can entail a significant amount of creativity, fun, joy, and sense of accomplishment.  The same can be said about the state, but that is subject to another discussion.

ANARCHISTS VS. VEBLEN

Graber’s book “Direct Action” does an outstanding job describing the values and mindsets of the anarchist types.  The impression that I get from his book, however, is that these guys are, in a way, like boy scouts.  The boy scouts do not simply want to travel from point A to point B.  Instead, they use travel as the justification for engaging in an elaborate process, or ritual if you will, that is the embodiment of survivalist ideology that renounces modern conveniences that make travel easy.  Likewise, the anarchist types use politics as the justification for engaging in the ritualistic practice of direct democracy that renounces every form of formal organizational structure.

This is not a critique of the anarchist movement.  Both boy scouts and anarchists can be very useful in modern society that has a hard time living without modern conveniences and formal organizational structures.  While it is not reasonable to expect them to be actual alternatives to these modern conveniences or formal organizational structures, they provide mechanism of socialization into a certain value system that can be instrumental in developing such alternatives.  And for that reason, I give the anarchists an unqualified moral support.

What rubs me the wrong way in the anarchist way of thinking is their utopian, ritualistic and unrealistic notion of democracy that makes it look almost impossible to attain in real life, save for small tightly knit groups of aficionados.  They are likeZeno’s paradoxes of motion that make any movement look like a sensory illusion.  Yet, a simple act of jumping out of a moving train can demonstrate that it is the other way around – it is the theory that is an illusion, not the perception of reality.  Likewise, the problem of democratic governance is over-theorized to death by the anarchist types.

In real life, democratic i.e. egalitarian and undemocratic i.e. hierarchical interactions coexist rather well without any apparent contradiction.  When I take a train or a flight, or have a surgery, I do not expect democratic governance.  I abdicate my control of the situation to others.  In fact, I would avoid a railroad, an airline or a hospital in which every decision must be vetted by collective rituals of democratic consensus building.  In such circumstances the abdication of responsibility to some technical authority and well defined chains of command are not only seen as a problem but it is a necessary requirement of effective performance.

Most people have no problems abdicating their responsibility and control of situation to others if the following two conditions are met.  First, there is a certain level of expertise, skill and coordination required to achieve a safe operation or a successful outcome.  Second, the abdication of responsibility and control is conditional and reciprocal.  That is, today I abdicate my responsibility and control to you because I defer to your judgment on X, but I expect you to abdicate your responsibility and control to me when it comes to deciding Y, which is my forte.

The pre-occupation with the hyper-democratic process among the anarchist types seems to be grounded in two sources. First is the influence of bourgeois concept of democracy as a formal process rather than substantive guarantees.  In this conception democracy means simply guarantee of opportunities and due process to achieve a good life rather than substantive guarantees of resources that make a good life.  This concept of democracy is basically a set of laws that, as Anatole France aptly observed, “forbids the rich and the poor alike to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal bread.”

The second source of insistence on hyper-democratic interaction is the lack of reciprocity in most current institutional arrangements.  That is, institutional arrangements of modern societies permanently deprived certain classes of people of voice and control of the situation. These arrangements are justifiably resent it by anyone with a sense of human decency, but some go further by demanding a process that abolishes all formal institutional arrangements, since these can undermine direct democracy.  It is like being upset by potholes in the roadway, and demanding that the roadway be eliminated to correct this problem.

In reality the problems of democracy can be easily solved by employing principles of reciprocity.  Workers' councils making strategic decisions or deciding salaries and tenure of management would be an example.  This is not that difficult to implement in an institution. And this micro-institutional level is what that matters the most - democracy at a national level is an abstraction and empty word most of time.  In other words, reforming the dysfunctional bourgeois demo is not as difficult as the anarchist rituals seem to suggest.  We do not need to abolish the state, the “wage system” and any formal organization, and turn anyone into a political boy scout each time finding his path without any organizational props anew.  We do not need to abolish the road of policy and organization to fix the potholes in it. 

Of course anarchists and many Marxists would counter that the solution is not as easy as it seems, mainly because the state and the bosses always collude to wrestle democratic control from workers on the factory floor as well as in the national politics.  And they have a valid point – government supported neoliberalism created social inequalities on an unprecedented scale, and seriously undermined any victories that the labor achieved in the 20^th century.  Clearly, fixing the potholes in the road of democracy seems far more difficult than my narrative suggests.

However, while I agree with this assessment of the current situation, I disagree with Marxist and anarchist diagnosis of the causes.  For the anarchists and many Marxists, “the people” are like Christian god, they can do no wrong, so if evil exists in the world, it must be caused by something else.  For the Christians that something else is the Satan, for anarchists and many Marxists – it is the state.  The power of state is what imposes the evil of capitalism on the people and prevents them from progressing to socialism.  While I recognize that anti-statism is well entrenched on this side of the pond, not just among anarchists and Marxists, and arguing against it is an uphill battle, I will nonetheless counter this view with two arguments.  

First, the view of the state as monolithic juggernaut crushing the power of labor is inaccurate.  Amore realistic view of the state is that of multiple centers of bureaucratic power connected to various social interest groups and shifting alliances among them.  This means that the "state" is not a monolith - some elements of it are more likely to side with the bosses while other - with workers and for various reasons that constantly change.  What is more, the oppressive power of the state is far more limited than anarchists and Marxists believe, as the history of the downfall of ‘state socialism” in Eastern Europe demonstrates.  In these supposedly monolithic socialist states there were in fact different alignments between different parts of the technostructure and different factions of the political structure and the opposition.  The factional alignments constantly shifted, sometimes resulting in a thaw and sometimes in tightening the screw, but at the end the control of the state was handed on a silver plate to the opposition, in which labor unions played a prominent role.  The main points here are that one cannot automatically assume that the state is always anti-worker for it really depends on historical circumstances, but even when it is anti-worker, its power of oppression are limited.

My second argument provides an alternative to anarchism and Marxism explanation of the existence of “evil,” that is, capitalism.  My argument follows, in a way, that of ThomasAquinas, who believed that evil is caused not by some dark force, but by the defect of human agents who fail to achieve good embedded in their nature.  Likewise, capitalism is not caused by the evil force of the state colluding with the bosses, but a certain defect of the human agents, including the working class and the “downtrodden masses” to act rationally and responsibly.

This defect is social status attainment.  As Veblen aptly observed, social status attainment is a major force that determines not only the division of labor, but also consumption patterns.  Jobs are defined to accommodate social statuses of the incumbents, menial jobs for low status incumbents, honorific jobs for high status incumbents.  Likewise, goods are purchased because they are associated with high social status, even though their utilitarian value is limited if any.   So while Western social commentator attributed to “downfall of Communism” to exotic political causes, such as unquenched thirst for liberty or the supposed economic inefficiency of socialism, they miss the importance of social status in popular dislike of Eastern European socialism.

The flattening of social hierarchies by the socialist states in Eastern Europe was initially cheered by the "downtrodden masses" but it soon became resented by the same masses.  The sons of workers and peasants who -thanks to the socialist education system - became members of the technostructure quickly started resenting being on a more or less equal footing with the proles.  But even the proles themselves resented the relative absence of what Veblen called "conspicuous consumption" - i.e. purchase of goods that are associated with high social status regardless of their utilitarian value.  A good example is popularity of US made blue jeans that could fetch a month salary (or more) in Eastern Europe.  The US made blue jeans had no more utility than locally produced trousers, but they had a brand name tag that signified the high social status of the ass on which it was displayed. 

The relative scarcity of social status consumer products and the relative absence of social status distinctions were among the most frequently voiced grievances against the socialist system in Eastern Europe, especially in informal conversation.  On the record, however, it was about "freedom" and kindred lofty sounding abstractions.

Social status attainment and the role of conspicuous consumption in this attainment is the most powerful weapon of capitalism against socialism.  This weapon operates independently of formal power structures, although it often receives backing of the latter.  It acts as the "fifth column" that undermines the solidarity of the working class and "downtrodden masses" in general.  The competition for status in the workplace was among the mechanisms of labor control in both socialism and capitalism.  Michael Burawoy describes the labor process  as a "game" (instigated by the bosses, to be sure) that the workers play against each other.

The role of social status in the workplace has been extensively studied by feminists and labor market sociologists as well.  Their arguments boil down to the proposition that contrary to meritocratic pretenses, the division of labor is based to a significant extent on social status of the incumbents.  The close fusion of division of labor and social status is the main mechanism that legitimates that division of labor, even among those who receive the short end of this bargain.  Reskin & Roos provide case studies of deskilling of certain, mostly male dominated, occupations through "feminization."  One of the most important observations they make is that this work because female job applicants tend to be more accepting of lower social status of the newly redesigned (and Taylorized) jobs than male applicants.

Social status distinctions, which are deeply embedded in our culture, are the main mechanism that undermines not just workplace democracy, but socialism as well.  Social status attainment makes people responsive to commercialism and conspicuous consumption demands that the capitalists are more than willing to satisfy.  And if an attempt is made to curb this through rational planning of the economy and abolition of social hierarchies, this will only increase popular receptiveness to capitalist commercialism and conspicuous consumption.  

This - not the supposed "state repression" or some other external coercive force- is the main reason why democracy  and socialism- both at the micro-structural and the national levels - is rather difficult to implement, but it can be rather easily derailed by commercial interests.  This is the “fifth column” that must be neutralized to mend bourgeois democracy, or for that matter, build socialism.  Ironically, the rituals of the anarchist sects may be useful to achieve this goal – not by being a substitute for formal organization, of course, but by socializing people into a value system that shuns conspicuous consumption as the means of social status attainment.

ONE NATION UNDER GOP

Here is a modest proposal for reforming the US electoral system.

Why wasting money on gerrymandering, electoral campaigns that look more farcical than professional wresting games, bribing politicians with "campaign contributions," stacking the so-called "Supreme" Court with corporate stooges who can appoint the president of the "republic" when needed, and the like?  The goal of One Nation under GOP (or is it under God?) can be achieved through much simpler and cost-efficient means.  Just change the ballot design.  Here is an idea.

SOPA? THANKS, NOPA!

I normally do not side with the internet libertarian types, but this time I did and I sent petitions to my so-called elected "representatives" to oppose SOPA and PIPA.  I did it for two reasons. 

First, the proposed legislation amounts to collective punishment.  Imagine that you are on a flight from, say, Bogota to Miami.  Just before the takeoff, the cops storm the plane, pull out a guy suspected of smuggling cocaine and then announce that the airline who sold the accused smuggler the ticket is banned, and the flight is grounded.  Or that you are comfortably sitting in a movie theater watching the recently released Hollywood kitsch, and the SWAT team storms the theater to get someone smoking a joint and getting a blowjob in the last row, and then announces that the theater is closed for facilitating illegal drug use and prostitution.

I am pretty sure that the Hollywood schmucks would cry bloody murder if this happened to the airline or the movie industry,  yet they propose the same treatment of ISPs that sell services to folks who pirate their crap.   Because this is the type of medicine prescribed by SOPA: go after companies that sell internet access services to guys who may be breaking the law. 

Second, and more importantly, I do not believe in protecting intellectual property rights (IPR).  To be sure, I do believe that creators of intellectual products should be paid for their work, I just do not believe that intellectual property legislation is a good way of doing it.  The usual argument against IPR cites unscrupulous distributers using them steal music from artists.  A modern version of such abuse is the practices of agribusinesses like Monsanto to “patent” seeds.

Cheating of a few entertainers or inconvenience of a few farmers alone, however unfair it may be, is not a sufficient reason for opposing a legislation design to protect a greater good.  Ban on smoking tobacco in the public is certainly unfair to the smokers, but their inconvenience is a fair price to pay for protecting large numbers of non-smokers from harmful effects of the second-hand tobacco smoke.  However, if the legislation serves no clear public benefit, but instead inconveniences the public to protect profits of those in a position to pay for such protection – there is no rational reason for defending such a legislation, at least by the public that is inconvenienced by it.

So the question boils down to what public good is served by the IPR?  My answer is very little, if any.  The typical argument in favor of the IPR is that is somehow enables the creation of art and other intellectual products, by ascertaining that the creators are paid.  That this argument is a bunch of horseshit is evidenced by the fact the IPR is a relatively late Western invention introduced in the 19^th century.  So if good art could not be produced without the IPR, then it follows that Acropolis, Taj Mahal, The Odyssei, the Sistine Chapel, Lady Macbeth, and not to mention great religious art should not exist.  In fact, the opposite seems to be true, the art created without the IPR “protections” seems to have a far more enduring value than most of the crap “protected” by the IPR.

In addition to value judgment about the aesthetic qualities of copyrighted products, there is also a more compelling logical argument against IPR.  Intellectual products are what economists call “public goods,” i.e. goods that are “non-excludable” and “non-rival.”  In plain English, this means that the producers of such goods cannot effectively bar non-payers from enjoying the benefits of such goods, at least without significant infringements on their quality, and that the enjoyment of the benefit of such goods by one person does not infringe on the benefits of another person. 

Of course, non-excludability and non-rivalry of a particular good or service depends on technologies and institutional settings of their production.  For example, a roadway is a public good because anyone can use it and one driver’s using it does not infringe on the ability of other drivers to do so.  However, a public roadway can be transformed into a toll-road, if the effective means of excluding non-payers exist, and if there is political will to do so, i.e. to finance roads by user fees rather than general taxes.  Likewise, if a certain level of congestion is reached, the use of a roadway can become “rival,” which in turn may justify implementing means of limiting access by excluding certain users. 

Intellectual products are natural public goods, because they consist of ideas that every competent human being is capable of understanding and following.  If someone comes up with a new idea of doing things, say, paining his house white to reduce heat absorption, nothing prevents others from following his example.  Nor do other people painting their houses white infringe in any way on the benefit of so doing in reducing heat absorption.  In other words, nobody will be worse off if all people in the community copycat the original idea and paint their houses white, but everyone will be better off.  This is different from a product manufactured for the same purpose (e.g. a cooling fan), which requires cost and effort.  If the members of that community simply took cooling fans made by others without paying for them, the fan users may be better off, but the fan producers will certainly be worse off.

One of the main political implications of the public good theory is that such goods must be paid by taxes.  It is so, because everyone benefits from them, and it is difficult, impractical, or undesirable to restrict this benefit to non-payers.  It follows that the most fair and practical way of paying for such goods is a compulsory fee aka tax paid by every member of the community.  In other words, the most effective and fair way for paying for public goods, from arts to knowledge is taxes.  In short, public goods should be publicly financed.

The fact that they are not reflects a political and, I may add, ideological decision to privatize these public goods, typically to benefit advantageously situated individuals.  The IPR is the main mechanism of this privatization.  They are necessary because public authorities refuse, or are being prevented by special interest groups, to provide adequate public funding for public goods.  Then the public is told that if it wants to receive these goods, it must buy a protection racket in the form of the IPRs.  In short, typical gangster capitalism – first I take away something from you and then I make money by selling it back to you.

Unfortunately, many artists and inventors bought this protection racket as the only possible way of being paid for their efforts.  Obviously, I sympathize with their concerns over their paychecks – I earn mine by producing intellectual products myself – but I do not understand the failure of their social and political imagination.  They do not have to be held hostage to intellectual property rights gangsters, there are alternatives to it.  For example, Europe that has muchhigher level of public spending on culture than the US not only can support more artists but also make art more accessible to wider population. 

C’mon people, do not be duped by corporate propaganda.  People create new things because they have creative instincts and ambitions.  Surely, they need to be paid for their work, but there are better ways of doing this than passing and enforcing byzantine property rights legislation that serves mainly corporate profits.  How about cutting corporate welfare and increasing public funding of public arts and public education and science instead? 

EDUMACATION IN AMERIKA

There is an open season for teachers in America.  Assorted do-gooders and politicians, from Gates Foundations to Obama administration’s “race to the bottom” – or is it the top? –and with the support of economists who, true to their vocation, eagerly provide the needed conclusions, properly backed up with charts, graphs and statistics, to those in a position to pay for them, set their sights on “reforming” our schools by disciplining out of control teachers and their unions. 

These thinly disguised political attacks and their pseudo-scientific support are, of course, nothing new in America.  After all, this is the country that, as Stephen Jay Gould aptly demonstrated, successfully transformed crude racist and classist propaganda of assorted Euro-bigots and fascists to the respected science of intelligence testing taught at top universities.  Clearly, the craze of standardized scholastic ‘aptitude’ testing, or measuring the ‘quality’ of teaching is the latter-days version of this old American tradition of employing scientific procedures to unscientific goals of measuring human moral worth and social standing.  Many academic careers have been built on these efforts, and an entire testing-industrial complex has been created.  But less evident is the fact that these education “reform” efforts manifest a broader cultural change - the redefinition of the concept of education from the old fashioned learning to the new brave all-American technical management of instruction. 

Learning is an interactive process that involves the learner, the teacher and the social environment in which the learning takes place.  I spent my entire adult life in educational institutions of one sort or another, either as a student or as a teacher, and from that experience I can tell that *the* most important element of a successful learning experience, like in a marriage, is a good interpersonal relationship between the learner and the teacher.  However, establishing that relationship depends on the social environment of the learner and the student. I can illustrate this with a personal example. 

When I was in high school, my "helicopter" parents traveled overseas on business, and I was raised by my grandparents for whom I could do no wrong.  I used this newly acquired freedom to test the limits how far I could go, and I associated myself with the neighborhood thugs in a way not dissimilar to that depicted in the film "This is England".  I was a nerdy kid often shunned and pushed around by popular kids, so being, or rather acting, like a thug was a sort of vindication of my respectability and dignity. 

Acting out the "thug role" had a significant impact on my academic performance. To make a long story short, I made a conscious effort to be the most disruptive kid and collect the greatest number of failing grades in the entire school.  My efforts were duly recognized and I was slated for expulsion, which meant the definitive end of my academic career due to the "early tracking" system that Poland, as most other European countries, used.  However, my parents made a deal with the principal that I would be home schooled overseas, where my parents lived at that time, and after a year I would come back to school in the senior year to be able to graduate.

 

After my return, I started hanging out with a different crowd - counter-cultural nerds interested in poetry, philosophy, arts, literature, and kindred “hobbies” as my father, himself an engineer, called such pursuits.  This again had a significant impact on my academic performance.  No, I did not become a "good student" - toeing the line and jumping the hoops when told, which are an integral part of the scholastic life, was more than I could take.  I was still a trouble maker, but of a different kind than before my forced temporary exile.  Instead of an aspiring thug, I became an aspiring counter-cultural intellectual.  In practical terms, this meant reading "controversial" books on art and philosophy and then using this newly acquired knowledge to challenge the conventional wisdom of the teachers.  Consequently, I was able to graduate with decent grades, but as my final act of defiance I switched my "track" from science leading to a technical university and eventually a productive occupation in widget production aka the national economy, to the pursuit of a “hobby” – the study of philosophy in a liberal arts college.

 

By the simple method of inductive reasoning, this case identifies factors that could explain my change from a slated for expulsion thug to an aspiring countercultural intellectual during my high school years.  The teachers were a constant throughout my high school years - pretty much the same bunch in my senior year as in my freshman year.  So was the school - still in the same building as I write this - and the administration, the aging and old-fashioned functionaries of the educational bureaucracy. Therefore, the school and teaching quality cannot explain the change I underwent.  What changed was my social environment effected by parental intervention, which had a significant impact on what is today called "availability for instruction." This change in environment can satisfactorily explain the change in my educational outcomes.

The main problem with the American view of education is that this relational and social character of the learning process is not recognized and acknowledged, at least officially.  The chief reasons are, of course, political: creating favorable environment for the testing-credentialing industry and privatization of public services, managerial control of the workforce, teacher unions busting, and covering up dysfunctional aspects of social life in this country. 

But these politically motivated efforts would not succeed without two central features of the American popular culture: aspirational individualism and compulsive managerialism.  Aspirational individualism stresses the centrality of the individual as the focus of virtually every aspect of human life, which in turn stipulates the moral imperative to "free" individual from the "constraining influence" of the collective.  Compulsive managerialism is the tacit assumption that all life problems can be effectively solved if they are properly managed by energetic, motivated, gung-ho, can-do, entrepreneurial, all-American individuals. 

Viewed through the lenses of these two cultural biases - aspirtational individualism and compulsive managerialism - learning ceases to be a relationship between two equally involved and collaborating partners, the student and the teacher, and their social environment. Instead, it becomes a technical management problem in which the student is a passive material shaped by the teacher, and the outcome of this process is solely decided by the managerial skills of the teacher. In a word, it is like fixing that all-American dream - the automobile.  The outcome depends solely on the skill and effort of the mechanic, while the material and the owner of that material have nothing to do with it. 

This perception of the learning process dove-tails the political agendas of many social forces in the US whose interests otherwise diverge. These include not only the privatizers and teacher union busters - both Democrats and Republicans - who sell their agenda as steps to "improve" the technical skills of teachers-managers, or school administration that sells their effort to control workforce as the means to improve technical quality of instruction, but also parents and their advocates, politicians, and assorted do-gooders who blame teachers and schools for the failures of their children and absolve themselves - or the "downtrodden masses" in general - from the responsibility for their children's educational achievements or perhaps lack thereof.

It seems, therefore, that resisting educational "reforms" that center on "improving" or otherwise disciplining teachers is an uphill battle in this country that goes against not only powerful business interests, but popular perceptions, and excuse- and scapegoat-seeking as well. 

OF LIBERALS, RADICALS, AND REACTIONARIES

One of the most interesting aspects of the American society is that it is pretty much devoid of politics in the traditional sense - as tactical pursuits of power for the sake of wielding power. Instead, the traditional polity bifurcates into two adjacent areas - business and religion. Or more precisely, politics is either an instrument of money making or - if it does not fit that mode - it becomes a religious ritual.

One consequence of this is that outright rejection of the marriage between money and politics almost invariably movers one into the realm of religion. This is what happened to the left-of-the center here.  It bifurcated into "liberals" and “radicals.”  The main political pursuit of liberals, who In the political arena they operate mainly through the Democrat party, is defending certain occupational or regional interests, such as teachers or public education more generally, manual labor or ethnic minorities who tend to perform it, public services, urban populations, etc.  On the other hand, radicals left the political arena altogether and engage in what amount to religious pursuits, such as interpretation of the scriptures, incantations, or observance of rituals (e.g. street demos.) This is demonstrated, inter alia, by the centrality of scripture exegesis (e.g. endless quotations from both the classics - Marx, Engels, Lenin - as well as younger crop of writers), abstract theoretical analyses of little practical relevance, and eschatological concepts such as "classless society" "end of work" or "abolishing the wage system" in the radical discourse. These concepts are secular versions of the religious notion of "heaven." They are all words that have no empirical meaning by definition - as they are all constructed by simple negation of empirical reality as we know it - all they have is emotive connotations of the state of ultimate satiation, bliss, ecstasy, sexual gratification, and general happiness.

The only exception from this business/religion bifurcation of politics in the United States is what Corey Robin describes as reactionary activists - they pursue politics for the sake of power rather than just pecuniary gains. Although pecuniary gains typically follow their political action, I buy Robin's argument that this is not what primarily motivates these guys. Their primary motivation is wielding power at any cost and devising clever stratagems to gain it - and this is why they stand head and shoulders above both, the political mainstream (Democrats, liberals, and centrist Republicans) and the religiously radical left.

This peculiar bifurcation of the American polity into religion and politics in which crypto-fascists play increasingly prominent role explains why liberals are under constant ideological attack from two sides: the religiously radical left and the reactionary activists, albeit for different reasons. For the “religious” radical left, liberals are the part of the politics-as-business which the radicals reject, but they also occupy areas that are adjacent to that claimed by the radicals. This poses a danger for the radical identity. Nobody will confuse, say, a centrist Republican with a radical, but the demarcation line between liberals and radicals is blurred, and taking one for another is more likely. This calls for radical measures of turf demarcation - of which scorn and vocal denunciations are an important part.

Reactionary activists, on the other hand, launch ideological attacks on liberals for tactical reasons. Unlike radicals, they do not feel threatened by liberals in any way - and this is precisely what makes liberals useful for reactionary rhetoric. The success of reactionary rhetoric depends on creating the sense of fear and endangerment, which in turn calls for "defensive" measures entailed in reactionary political moves. However, the manufactured danger cannot be real, for that poses the risk of defeat. On the contrary It must be phony to be safe for reactionary demagogues, but it also must look scary.

Liberals serve that function rather well - they are not powerful to begin with, and they are not very combative, so the chance of them inflicting a serious damage on reactionaries is small. However, their views can easily be demonized by rather crude propaganda, that the Fox “News” & Co. must have taken from the pages of Völkischer Beobachter, portraying them as out of whack with what most red blooded 'Muricans consider "common sense."  Thus sensible liberal proposals for environmental protections become “loony tree hugging” in the reactionary rhetoric, asking to observe due process guaranteed by law becomes “being soft on criminals and terrorism,” proposals for funding arts, science or public infrastructure become “wasteful government spending” and so forth. 

But other than these two factions, being liberal is not a reason for hostility or eve scorn at all. Centrist Republicans or conservative Democrats may disagree with them, but they do not scorn them - they have no reason to.  However, their political style is being overshadowed, first by the spectacle of professional wrestling manufactured by fascist-dominated Republicans who, no doubt, set the tenor of political discourse in the United States, but then also by the radical left that insists on religious-like purity of their ideology and uses liberals as a convenient reference point to mark that purity.  This reminds me of the situation in the 1920s Italy, where radical Communists staunchly refused to join ranks with more moderate socialists and social democrats (viewed as a “liberal wing of the bourgeoisie”) against fascists, even as their own ranks were rapidly shrinking under the fascist assault.  But for a true believer, unflinching faith is the only way to salvation, and death in defense of that faith is martyrdom that guarantees instant salvation – while compromise is a temptation with which the road to hell is paved.