Public money private pockets

Recently the Washington Post published an article on the transit center being built in Silver Spring, MD where I live.  In short, the center is unsafe and unusable even before it opens because of shoddy design and construction.  This is of considerable interest to me for two reasons.  First, I am using public transit daily, and having to walk around a defunct transit center adds considerable inconvenience to my daily commute.  Second, that boondoggle is financed by my tax dollars.

A typical reaction of the gullible American public to this news can be summarized in one line "government failure"  and it is sheer nonsense.  Yet another example of how the American mind is inculcated with business propaganda.  

I do not think it is the local government failure.  It is the utter failure of the "public-private partnership" business model that prevails in this country.  Public money private pockets, which is a recipe for private businesses milking the taxpayer and cutting corners to boost their bottom line.  Bloomberg News had an article on this not long ago showing that comparable public projects cost about twice as much in the US than in EU where the governments have much greater capacity for designing and implementing projects themselves instead of contracting them out .  

The "defense" industry has been using this public- private partnership scheme for decades to milk the taxpayers for military gadgets, and the developers are following the suit.  Another good example is the newly opened Paint Branch High School in Montgomery County (also financed with my tax dollars) - inferior design, shabby construction, and the taxpayers footing the bill for what is labeled as "education spending."  A more appropriate way of labeling it is "corporate welfare state" in which taxpayers subsidize corporate salaries and profits.

This is not a failure of the local government.  This the failure of the economic model in which private business is a sacred cow and the government is a scapegoat for all private business failures.  As long as it so, failures like this will be a part of business landscape, private developers will laugh all the way to the bank, and the taxpayer will keep paying for it through the nose.  It also a proof that the public sector's  capacity to carry out public works itself instead of relying on private contractors will better serve public interests than the crooked public-private partnerships.  Keep this in mind next time you hear pro-business mouthpieces calling for "small government."

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.