Getting Beyond the Label
Whenever anyone admits that he is a socialist, it takes about seven seconds before Soviet Russia finds its way into the discussion. The USSR was evil, the USSR was socialist, therefore socialism is evil.
But when faced with this objection, Chomsky often points out that there is an “R” in USSR — it’s the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. But no one claims that republics are therefore evil, do they? Why not?
Well, Chomsky answers, it is simply because calling something a “republic” doesn’t mean it really is one, nor does the title “people’s democracy” mean that a true democracy exists. By extension, then, the mere fact that Russia was once called “socialist” doesn’t mean it really was.
The essense of true socialism is the decentralization of power, taking it from the hands of an unaccountable elite and placing where it belongs: in the hands of the people. When seen in this classical sense (rather than in the more popular American version), ”socialist” and “libertarian” are synonyms, not antonyms.
Neo, Chomsky, and Misfits in General
“Either you repeat the same conventional doctrines every-body is saying, or else you say something true, and it will sound like it’s from Neptune.”
So says Noam Chomsky, and I concur.
I, for one, find it disturbing that I have to look over my shoulder to make sure the coast is clear before I voice any discomfort about our country’s killing of hundreds of thousands of innocent civilians in Iraq. I find it eerie that I have to speak in hushed tones about the driving force of our economy — greed — being a vice. I find it disheartening that the two “options” we will have to choose from in November merely represent different sides of the same corporately-owned, sabre-rattling coin.
Seeing the Matrix from without rather than from within is rather surreal and Orwellian.
Now if I could just remember this week’s official position on whether Oceania defeated Eurasia, or if it was the other way around….
Must We Run?
In the Bright Eyes song “At the Bottom of Everything” Conor Oberst sings:
We must blend into the choir
Sing as static with the whole;
We must memorize nine numbers and deny we have a soul;
And in this endless race for property and privilege to be won
We must run, we must run, we must run.
It’s parody, obviously, but it got me thinking….
Must we progressives be resigned to simply toe the line with respect to the way the wind is blowing in the popular culture? Must we dissidents “blend in to the choir,” add to the “static,” and reduce ourselves to a statistic in the cultural matrix? Must we participate in the American Dream and run after all the property and privilege to be won?
And of not, how do we rise above it?
When Democracy Gets in the Way of Reform
As a follow-up to my previous post, consider these words from John Williamson, a senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics, during a speech on economics given in 1993:
“One will have to ask whether it could conceivably make sense to think of deliberately provoking a crisis so as to remove the political logjam to reform.”
A couple things are noteworthy here: First, according to the model Klein has dubbed “Disaster Capitalism,” things such as the will of the people playing a role in how their societies are run (or, “democracy”) are seen as “political logjams.” This is precisely why Friedman advocates keeping neocon ideas alive until a moment of crisis or disaster — after a shock, people are less able to resist such “reforms.” I mean, it was kind of hard for the 4000 or so members of the New Orleans teachers union to do anything about their union being busted and their jobs stolen away since they had been evacuated to other parts of the country after Hurricane Katrina.
And secondly, the metaphor Klein uses to describe this economic policy (i.e., pickpocketing the stunned victim of a car accident) is only half correct in many cases. Before you can slip your fingers in and grab the wallet, you’ve gotta first run them off the road.
The “Shock Doctrine”
When Milton Friedman died, we were reminded again of the mythological tale he supposedly spun. You know, the one about how democracy and free markets go hand in hand, and if we only liberate people to make their own choices, they’ll choose capitalism as a matter of course.
The problem is, Friedman didn’t always see the need to whitewash and euphemize his own views the way his biographers do.
In point of fact, Friedman understood the context in which capitalism inevitably takes hold not as democracy but as crisis. He writes:
“Only a crisis — actual or perceived — produces real change. When that crisis occurs, the actions that are taken depend on the ideas that are lying around. That, I believe, is our basic function: to develop alternatives to existing policies, to keep them alive and available until the politically impossible becomes politically inevitable.”
In other words, it takes a 9/11, a Hurricane Katrina, or a CIA-sponsored coup to bring about the psychological shock necessary to implement the economic shock of deregulation, privatization, and the cutting of social services. And if there is resistance, then there’s always the physical shock of torture to keep the rabble in line.
Just ask las madres de los deseparecidos.
War and Fleece
Award-winning author Naomi Klein has argued that the so-called “reconstruction effort” in Iraq is not reconstruction at all. In fact, it’s the sale of the century.
Here’s how it works: The U.S. invades the country and destroys its infrastructure (its bridges, its roads, its hospitals, its schools). Then, the Bush administration hands out no-bid contracts to companies to rebuild the stuff we blew up (companies like Halliburton, whose former CEO, Dick Cheney, still owns stock options and receives compensation, and whose profits since the invasion have saved the company from bankruptcy).
So basically, we have turned Iraq into a capitalist’s dream, a shopping mall in which the products sold are the resources of someone else’s country. And in the aftermath of shock and awe, the country was declared “open for business” by Paul Bremer before the dust had settled, before the lights had come back on, and before the U.S. contractors had successfully rebuilt a single bridge.
And this universal restructuring of the Iraqi economy was completed before elections were held. The basic issues any democracy wrestles with, like “Should we have private or universal health care?”, “How should our resources be distributed?”, and “How much of our public companies should we allow foreign companies to own?” were all decided unilaterally by the U.S. And once we had pillaged and plundered the country’s resources we decided that we should probably let them vote.
Not much has changed since Columbus sailed the ocean blue in 1492.
John Cleese’s “Letter to America”
In view of your failure to elect a competent President and thus to govern yourselves, we hereby give notice of the revocation of your independence, effective immediately.Jihad, American Style
Here’s a little sociology lesson for you: In your mind, exchange this soldier’s uniform for a white robe and replace his helmet with a turban. With me so far? Good. Now, picture him kneeling on both knees rather than one, with his face to the ground and a little mat underneath him. And finally, change the English letters at the bottom to Arabic ones, and the word “Lord” to “Allah” with a Quran reference instead of one from the New Testament.
GASP! Look at that fanatical extremist! How can those animals kill innocent women and children with such indifference and even glee? They must have ice running through their veins….
Just ’cause murder is done in the service of a different God doesn’t make it holy war.
Fascism in Ten Easy Steps
In The End of America, Naomi Wolf lists the ten steps that have historically preceded the “fascist shift” that occured in Nazi Germany, Mussolini’s Italy, and that is occuring in our land in the present day:
1. Invoke an External and Internal Threat
2. Establish Secret Prisons
3. Develop a Paramilitary Force
4. Surveil Ordinary Citizens
5. Infiltrate Citizens’ Groups
6. Arbitrarily Detain and Release Citizens
7. Target Key Individuals
8. Restrict the Press
9. Cast Criticism as “Espionage” and Dissent as “Treason”
10. Subvert the Rule of Law
Are you shuddering yet?
The Middle Children of History
In one of his rousing speeches, Brad Pitt’s character in Fight Club says:
“I see all this potential, and I see squandering. An entire generation pumping gas, waiting tables; slaves with white collars. Advertising has us chasing cars and clothes, working jobs we hate so we can buy shit we don’t need. We’re the middle children of history, man. No purpose or place. We have no Great War. No Great Depression. Our Great War’s a spiritual war… our Great Depression is our lives. We’ve all been raised on television to believe that one day we’d all be millionaires, and movie gods, and rock stars. But we won’t. And we’re slowly learning that fact. And we’re very, very pissed off. “
The anti-consumerist refrain that runs through this film is incredibly appealing (though living in a dillapidated tenement is not).
Maybe Tyler Durden is right. Maybe invention is the mother of necessity. Maybe we Americans spend way too much time living as wage slaves in order to scrape together enough stuff to distract us from the truth we dare not face.
It may do us some good to remember that the American Dream does not come for free. And no, I’m not referring to our boys in uniform who lay it all on the line to ensure our way of life, but to the thousands of people all over the world who have to endure poverty and squalor in order to enable us to have Blackberrys for ourselves and Barbies for our kids.
