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.

THE DAY AFTER NEOLIBERALISM

Despite the global crisis triggered by neoliberal policies aka the “Washington Consensus” and the highly unpopular austerity measures proposed to fix this crisis, the arch nemesis of neoliberalism - socialism (or even its cousin social democracy) is not gaining currency.  What we see instead, is the advancement of far-right nationalism in Europe and the US, and theocracy in the developing countries.

I cannot help but notice that far right nationalism succeeded because the "old left" abandoned its traditional social issues for neoliberalism.  The January 9/16 issue of The Nation  has a good analysis of the breakdown of the USSR.  One of the themes that emerges from it is that the party nomenklatura embraced neoliberalism to justify "privatization" or public property grab from which they immensely benefited.  Similar trends existed in other Soviet bloc countries as well.  It seems, though that the second and third tier apparatchiks that formed the cadres of the post-Soviet "left" parties took the cue from their former bosses even if they did not benefit from privatization.  It seems that they tried to appeal to the youngish technocrats and professionals who were absolutely infatuated with the free markets.  That, however, did not win them many supporters among the intelligentsia, but lost them the support of most of the working class.  Consequently, large segments of the working class became attracted to right wing nationalists (or theocrats in the developing countries) who, oddly enough, married the support for the welfare state with anti-immigrant, anti-foreigner bigotry.  This, I presume, is why many folks of otherwise progressive disposition are irked each time welfare state is being mentioned.  It is now part of the nationalist right agenda. 

To explain this, it makes sense to revisit the thesis advanced some thirty years ago by two Hungarian sociologists Konrad and Szelenyi, arguing that the "intelligentsia" as they are called in Eastern Europe, or "technostructure" as Galbraith (following Veblen) called them here is a new social class that is separate from both the working class and the traditional bourgeoisie.  It appears that the rise of this technocrat class may explain the ideological shift that occurred in the second half of the 20th century from socialism and social democracy to neoliberalism. 

As a nascent force in the 1920s and 1930s, technocrats had elective affinity with ideological movements that recognized their status as unique contributors to the production process - as neither the traditional proles nor the traditional bourgeoisie, but rather as "captains of industry" or skilled technicians steering the economy toward greater rationality and productivity.  For that reason, they embraced Keyenesiasim in the US, social democracy in Western Europe and socialism in Eastern Europe.  However, by the 1960s the elective affinity between the technostructure and social democracy/socialism started to disintegrate because of the universal benefits that social democracy or socialism offered.  Captains of industry ceased to be captains - they become functionaries, cogs in the bureaucratic machinery delivering standardized benefits to practically anyone, in a word, a little bit better paid proles. 

The attractiveness of neoliberalism to the technocrat class is thus grounded in the inability of social democracy/socialism to provide the same level of service as it used to, that is, continue granting the social status and recognition that the technocrats crave.  This resulted in the “legitimation crisis” of the 1970s, which prompted the technocrat class to look for alternatives. 

Neoliberalism promised them a way out of this “legitimation crisis” - first by redefining technocrat functionaries as “entrepreneurs” and “innovators” and then by enabling  public property grab aka privatization for which technocrats were uniquely situated as managers of the said property.  The marriage of pecuniary, if not kleptocratic, and ideological dimensions that neoliberalism accorded may explain its tremendous popularity with the new technocrat class.  The new technocrats do not just steal public property like common thieves or profiteer by sponging off the public treasury like common welfare queens - no, they are  the valiant captains of industry again who, like Ayn Rand "heroes", bring entrepreneurship and creativity to economy and society sagging under the yoke of mediocrity, “collectivism” "government regulations" and "socialism." 

If this analysis is correct, the technocrats (by which I mean engineers, lawyers, doctors, economists, experts, business managers and kindred professionals who manage the economy) - who form a separate social class in every respect - are unlikely to embrace the old ideologies of socialism or social democracy.  Neoliberalism elevated them to the position of status and respectability again, and they are unlikely to abandon it, especially when many of them are downwardly mobile as as result of their own neoliberal medicine they prescribed to others. They still want to think of themselves as captains, even though they run the ship they were steering aground.  Without their support, the only "organic intellectuals" the "old left" ideologies have are basically academics in marginalized departments of sociology or literary studies, while the laboring classes dumped them for nationalism and theocracy. 

In sum, I do not think that comeback of the "old" left is likely. Neoliberalism of the technocrats and the nationalism or theocracy that currently attracts the working class can only be overcome by a new ideology that accomplishes what the "old" left in the 1920s and 1930s –one that will offer the promise of a better economic organization while elevating the social status of the class that steers that organization.  This new ideology must combine the promise of superior productivity and technological advancement, or perhaps superior management of the economy, with ideological legitimation of both the new economic order and the social class champions it.  I used the word "management" here because I think that what is urgently needed is not producing more crap but using the existing resources in a less wasteful, and more sustainable and equitable way.  In other words, a management technique that optimizes the quality of life instead of cranking out more gadgets and stuff.  My bet would be on some form of environmentalism/earth stewardship ideology that combines advanced technologies with the rational management of ecosystems and with the attainment of good life and collective security by all humans and non-humans alike. 

PS (added April 3, 2013).  A new UK study shows that there are actually seven social classes in the UK: the elite, establishes middle class, technical middle class, new affluent workers, traditional working class, emergent service workers, and precariat (or lumpenproletariat in the old marxist terminology).  This is clearly influenced by Bourdieu's concept of class distinctions and it offers a finer classification of the group that I labeled "technostructure."  However, to follow Bourdieu, many of the "classes" identified in the UL study are more appropriately called "class fractions" or subsets of a class.  Thus, established middle class, technical middle class and new affluent workers are "fractions" of the class that I called technostructure.  There are two unifying elements of this class: its relationship to the means of production (selling knowledge, which is distinct from both financial capital and labor) and ideological identity (which again sets them apart from capital owners and laborers).  So with that in mind, it is more appropriate to speak of four classes: the elite, the tehchnostructure (with three class fractions), the working class, and lumpenproletariat.  The latter should be viewed as a distinct class based on objective (relation to the means of production) and subjective (ideological affinity) factors.  Unlike the working class, lumpenproletariat does not sell their labor power but rather exploits, by sponging off or extortion, the value produced by other classes (mostly working class).  It also has its own cultural identity that distinguishes it from other classes.