Wednesday, February 29, 2012

Quotes of the Day - February 29, 2012

I just finished To the Finland Station, and there are a number of great lines I want to highlight and review.

The following is noteworthy, considering much of the world is still embroiled in some form of crisis:
"Marx believed that a new rebellion on the part of the petty bourgeoisie would upset the big bourgeoisie in France...and they announced in the last number of the Revue that "a revolution can hope for success only when the modern factors of production and the bourgeois tecnhique are at varience. A new revolution is possible only after a new crisis" (pg. 201).
Thoughout the book, Wilson makes numerous references to Marx's Jewish background. Perhaps I like these passages because I can relate to them, or perhaps it's because they flatter my sense of Jewish tribalism.
"If Marx is contemptuous of his race, it is primarily perhaps with the anger of Moses at finding the children of Israel dancing before the Golden Calf" (pg. 207).
"It was here that Karl Marx as a Jew had his great value for the thought of his age. The characterisic genuis of the Jew has been especially a moral genius. The sacred books of the people of Israel have served as a basis for the religions of three continents; and even in the case of the great men among the jes who do not occupy themselves with religion proper, it is usually a grasp of moral ideas which has given them their peculiar force" (pg. 301).
At certain points, passages like the one above make me uncomfortable with Wilson's philo-semitism.

In the chapter "Karl Marx: Poet of Commodities", Wilson provides a fantastic explanation and simplification of Marxist economic thought:
"The capitalist system was based on private property andso was inevitably competitive. The aim of every manufaturer was always to undersell the rest, sothat there would be a contunyal stimulus to more efficient methods of production. But the more efficient an industry became - the fast the machiens were able to do the work and the fewer people were needed to tend them - the more people would be thrown out of jobs and the more would wages be reduced. That is, the more the commodities produced, the fewer the people who would be able to buy them. In order to get rid of his goods under these continually tightening conditions, the manufacturer would have to undercut his competitors, and that would mean further reduction of wages and still more efficient machinery, consequently again in the long run, fewer people able to buy what he was making. This situation had already produced a jam and a depression about every ten years; and the only way for the manufacturer to get a reprieve from the vicious cycle was to find new foreign markets for his prodcuts - an escape which would not save him in the long run" (pg. 313).
Back to the topic of the Jews. Wilson's comparison between the marginlization of the Jews in Europe and the marginalization of the proletariat is instructive.
"...proletarian children, as Engels had said, were not aware that they were unfortunate or unhappy because they had never known anything else; whereas the Jews, though their outlook had been narrow, had been accustomed to intellectual traning" (pg. 314).
This may actually explain the attractiveness of socialism to European Jewry and the presence of Jews, like Trotsky and Zinoviev, at the forefront of the Marxist struggle. For, of the proletarian Wilson writes:
"The men who employed him had an interest in keeping him ignortant. By vertue of his very position, he was deprived of the things that would enable him to rise to a higher status. The mediaeval dissabilities of the Jew were in the nature of a mere national accident; the disabilities of the proletarian were disabilities indissoluble from his class" (pg. 314).
My favorite part of the book is Wilson's discussion of Lenin. While Wilson certainly glosses over the negative aspects of Lenin's personal life and philosophy, his comments on Lenin's Marxism are definitely worth highlighting.

Lenin's political philsophy, Wilson writes,
"grew out of his intellecutual enmity toward the striving for petty ends, toward out-and-out pragmatism, and toward all that is ideologically without form and theoretically ungeneralized" (pg. 430).
There is also an honest critique of Lenin's authoritarianism.
"[H]e is quite clear about the intellectual inequalities between the intelligentsia and the masses. He quotes in What Is to Be Done? as 'profoundly true and important' a statement by karl Katusky to the effect that the proletariat, left to itself, can never arrive at socialism; socialism must be brought them from above: 'the vehicles of science are not the proletariat but the bourgeois intelligentsia.' And 'our very first and most pressing duty...is to help turn out worker -  revolutionists on the same level in regard to party activity as intellectual revolutionists" (pg. 387).
" 'All power to the Soviets' had never really meant what it said and that it had soon been exchanged by lenin for 'All power to the Bolshevik Party'"(pg. 431).
Though written over seventy years ago, the following phrase shows Lenin to be more relevant to American politics than ever before:
"In What Is to Be Done?, Lenin characterizes Russia as 'a politically enslaved state, in which nine hundred and ninety-nine of the inhabitants have been corrupted to the marrow of their bones by political subservience and by a complete incomprehsension of party honor and party ties'" (pg. 388).
Just switch out Russia for America, and you definitely have a voice that might add something to contemporary political discourse!

These aren't all the passages I want to highlight, but unfortunately I neglected to note every passage of interest in my copy of the book.

Wednesday, February 15, 2012

Quotes of the Day - February 15, 2012

I have a bit more free time now that I've been accepted to college, which means I finally have time to start working on my never-ending reading list.  At the risk of turning this into a book-blog, I've decided to record some of my favorite quotes and my thoughts about the books I read.

At the moment, I'm in the middle of reading To the Finland Station by Edmund Wilson.
"Marxism gave a meaning to modernity. It said that, wittingly or not, the individual performs a role in a drama that has a shape and a goal, a trajectory, and that modernity will turn out to be just one act in that drama" (Foreword, xv).  
Essentially, Wilson puts for the point that attachment to private property prevented the Revolution from realizing its full emancipatory potential.
"After Thermidor, he rallied around him those elements of the Revolution who were trying to insist on its original aims. In his paper, The Tribune of the People, he denounced the new constitution of 1795, which had abolished universal suffrage and imposed a high property qualification. He demanded not merely political but also economic equality. He declared that he would prefer civil war itself to 'this horrible concord which strangles the hungry.' But the men who had expropriated the nobles and the Church remained loyal to the principle of property itself. The Tribune of the People was stopped, and Babeuf and his associates were sent to prison" (pg. 73).
"The cause of revolutions is the bending beyond what they can bear of the human springs of society" (pg. 76).
"The 'truly human' is that which is to be realized when we shall have arrived at the society without classes. In the meantime, those elements of society which alone can bring about such a future - the disenfranchised proletariat and the revolutionary bourgeois thinkers - in proportion as they feel group solidarity among themselves, must cease to feel human solidarity with their antagonists. Their antagonists - who have 'left between man and man no other bond but crude self-interest and callous "cash-payment'" - have irreparably destroyed that solidarity" (pg. 159).
The above quote is hard for me to get behind. It makes sense; it's the logical conclusion of the analysis of the exploitive relation between capital and labor. Yet, I have a problem renouncing my basic human solidarity with the exploiters - do they necessarily surrender their humanity because of their crude and callous self-interest? Or, does a strand of universal solidarity prevail in spite of the existence of exploitation? Perhaps I'm too attached to the sort of liberal universalism that sometimes gets in the way of revolutions.

Tuesday, February 14, 2012

The Crisis Generation

Much of the current generational writing - about the Millennials in particular - defines generations based on their relation to the development and growth of the internet.  Hence the description of the Millennials as the first generation to grow up on the internet and the last generation to remember a time before the internet.  This approach to generational writing is problematic for (at least) two reasons.

Firstly, the progression of the relation between members of a generational cohort and the internet does not take place in a vacuum. There is, of course, a broader geopolitical and socio-economic context for any generation. The web-centric approach to discussing the Millennials may be useful for a certain kind of writing, but by ignoring the greater context it ignores one of the most important political events in recent history  - September 11 - which separates the younger Millennials (my peers and me) from our older brothers and sisters.  Both cohorts may have grown comfortable with the internet, but every aspect of life - including the way people interact with the internet - changed in the wake of 9/11; the United States entered into a state of siege and the mindset of "total war all the time" from which it has never emerged.

With the expansion of the national security state the younger Millennials, the oldest of which are now in high school, have lived a near dystopian existence. For us, war has been the status quo, ignorance blissful, and dissent consistently construed as an act of treason.  Out of fear of arrest or loss of future career opportunities we are afraid to step on to the streets, unlike our older brothers and sisters - grad students and post-grads - who stand at the front of the Occupy protests. Hemmed in on all corners since we were toddlers by the expanding state apparatus and the digital extension of the global market, we have opted for inaction in order to preserve the modicum of comfort provided by obedience and conformity. As our cohort had just learned to read when the Patriot Act was passed, we have been raised with considerably less freedom than our older brothers and sisters.

Secondly, the rate of change in the nature of the relation between younger Americans and the internet accelerated rapidly with the passage of each year. Those of us still in high school can hardly remember a time before Facebook, let alone a time before wireless connectivity. In fact, these rapid changes eliminated many of the commonalities critics now use to draw a unform picture of the Millennials. Such a uniform picture, however, does not exist; those born in the mid- to late-nineties experienced the internet - considered the linchpin of writing on the Millenials - in a drastically different way. Younger Millennials never met the cyber flaneur, since our whole internet experience has been privatized and commercialized from the get-go, while our older brothers and sisters had the opportunities to experience the web without the endless paywalls and omnipresent advertisements.

For us, the generational clash is about far more than economics and class identity.  It's about reclaiming our lives from the state that has turned our schools into prisons and our streets into warzones and from the market that has invaded our homes and once-personal spaces. Perhaps, then, we shouldn't even be considered part of the Millennial Generation; the post-9/11 world into which we were raised is far darker and oppressive than the angsty boredom of the 1990's during which our older brothers and sisters came of age.

Sunday, February 5, 2012

The Wall Street Journal Just Doesn't Get the Middle Class

I like to think of the Wall Street Journal as the organ of the privileged class, the paper of the "Haves." Though many on the right criticize the New York Times for being elitist or the newspaper for wealthy liberals, it speaks mostly to the striving and upwardly mobile, or the "Have-some, Want-Mores." For example, you don't find the ads for luxury items in the Wall Street Journal that you do in the New York Times because luxury items aren't seductive or elusive for the Wall Street Journal's readers. Want proof? Open up the front section of today's Times. It takes only one page turn to be confronted with an advertisement for Tiffany and Co.  Now open up, say, the Review section of the Wall Street Journal. Not an ad for a luxury item in sight.

Strategically positioned on the pages of the Times, the Hublot watch or Dior dress is the object of desire for the "Have-some, Want-Mores", not for the "Haves." Readers of the Wall Street Journal, the "Haves", don't need advertisements in order to dream of possessing the symbols of fabulous wealth; all they need to do is open their closets or drawers. And nothing, at least recently, demonstrates the way in which the Wall Street Journal writes for the privileged class more than its recent review of the popular TV show "Downton Abbey".

In "The Secret Appeal of 'Downton Abbey' conservative writer Anthony Daniels, under his typical pseudonym Theodore Dalrymple, unintentionally lays bare the disconnect between the Wall Street Journal  and the middle class.  The essay begins with the assertion that "everyone needs (and almost everyone) finds someone to look down on", "however egalitarian we may be in theory and however nervous we might be about our own position in society." The writer assumes that the condescension with which the "Haves" refer to the inhabitants of the lower rungs on the social ladder is a universal trait; the impulse to exploit or profit from the labor of others is a natural human impulse. According to Daniels, the desire to derive pleasure from the arduous labor of others isn't something of which to be ashamed.  If anything, it provides the impetus for self-improvement - to move, like the characters in a Horatio Alger story, from rags to riches - without which no one would work hard to improve their lot in society. 

In the eyes of the Daniels, "for many Americans watching 'Downton Abbey' must be like indulging in a guilty passion." It affords the average viewer a glimpse into the world of their supposed dreams wherein they become the exploiter, finally with a subordinate and "someone to look down on." Furthermore, for the victims of post-fordism, "the series...satisfies a secret or vicarious longing for elegance without imposing the hard work that's necessary to achieve it in reality." Workers, unwilling to face the reality put forth by Social Darwinists that only assiduousness can bring about true wealth, can experience all the luxury without the labor.

It isn't that viewers today, living in a second Gilded Age, identify with the plight of the servants and the precariousness of their employment. Instead, according to Daniels, widespread interest in the series can be attributed to the desire of today's plebeian masses to be as refined and well-dressed as the underclass of early twentieth century British society.

Daniels does not contextualize the series; he does not ask, why, during the most severe economic downturn in recent memory, has a show that lays bare class disparities become widely popular?  For him, the very fact that the series allows the "Have-some, Want-Mores' to fantasize about being fabulously wealthy is enough to explain the series' appeal.  Look, he seems to say, even the servants are sophisticated and stylish.  See, being poor isn't so bad.  But this is far from the truth.

"Downton Abbey" owes its popularity to the frustration of a middle class that is facing imminent proletarianization. As Slavoj Zizek writes in "The Revolt of the Salaried Bourgeoisie", the protests that have swept through much of the industrialized world "are not proletarian protests, but protests against the threat of being reduced to proletarians." Viewers see in the relationships between the servants and the gentry a reflection of their own relations with their bosses and managers. Frustration with the corporate hierarchy renders the class struggle seen in "Downton Abbey" a visceral representation of the real challenges faced by workers today.

What Daniels does get right is that the series glamorizes the beleaguered servants of the Grantham estate, putting a human face on bitter class relations. "The series portrays an aristocratic world in which butlers and footmen dress far better than today's billionaires." For the workers of today, the perceived luxury to which the servant class has access in "Downton Abbey" is attainable only in dreams. And when the show is over and the TV is turned off, the viewers must return to the drudgery of the labors, be it blue collar or white collar, left with only the empty hope that someday all the hard work they've been told to do will finally result in the promised riches.

Wednesday, February 1, 2012

Millennials, Obama, and the Status Quo

In his essays, such as "Generation Sell" and "Generational Conflict", William Deresiewicz seems focused on understanding the social and political ramifications of what he calls "the commercial personality" - the mannerisms and ethos adopted enthusiastically by the Millennials in their attempts to fix "the world by making things and selling them." Yet, in his exegesis of contemporary consumer and youth culture, Deresiewicz actually explains how and why Barack Obama was elected, and why the Left shouldn't have expected anything from him in the first place.

Indeed, for a while now, Deresiewicz has been complaining about kids these days. The Millennials, he gripes in a recent essay, are "motivated more by narcissism than anything else." At a time when the country is in crisis, young people have withdrawn from politics in favor of social entrepreneurship. They see politics and activism as destructive and would rather work outside the system than change it from within, take it over, or even destroy it. Taught from a young age to play nice with others in the sandbox, the Millennials favor consensus, and shirk from confrontation. Thus, any dissent or disruption of everyday life to draw attention to a problem is thought by Millennials to be "uncool" and unproductive; agitating for a cause doesn't change the world, but creating some sort of socially beneficial entrepreneurial venture does. To illustrate this, Deresiewicz writes:

"A Stanford professor told me about two internships that were open to students at his college last year. One, for a small East Bay nonprofit, drew several hundred applications. The other, for the office of the Speaker of the California State Assembly—the second-most-powerful person in the eighth-largest economy on the planet—drew three."
Deresiewicz's actual gripe with the Millennials is not just that they are narcissistic and consciously apathetic, but that they have eschewed the most logical avenue to effectuate change - politics. But the problem lurking beneath the surface is not the self-aggrandizement and narcissism implicit in the Millennials' belief that entrepreneurial activity rather than politics can result in meaningful societal change. The problem is the word "change" itself. 

Barack Obama was elected as the candidate of change, supported ardently by the vast majority of Millennials. Young, multi-racial, fresh - Barack Obama was one of them. He had stylish posters with the hipster stamp of approval thanks to Shepard Fairey, a presence on social media, and a slogan behind which anyone raised in the era scheduled play-dates could rally: CHANGE. Obama's candidacy made it acceptable for Millennials to engage, albeit cautiously, in the political process.  But why?

The rallying cry of change carried with it none of the baggage that had made politics so untenable for Millennials. It was vague but generally inspiring, and suggested action without specifying direction. Obama's candidacy embodied the characteristics Deresiewicz sees as lamentable in the Millennials: "no anger, no edge, no ego." It was as if the Obama campaign team had lifted the slogan from some California start-up, which naturally made Obama the favorite candidate of those most enamored with the cult of entrepreneurship that has become the social creed of the Millennials. The way Obama appealed to these young voters - with the incessant repetition of  CHANGE to the point that it became a sort of mantra - should have been a warning that Obama's presidency was destined to be as bland, effete, and inoffensive as any Millennial who thinks his or her newfangled water filtration gadget will save the world.

When Barack Obama campaigned with his platform of CHANGE, his candidacy did not suggest a paradigmatic shift or systemic reform.  Instead, his candidacy represented merely an aesthetic change and, for the Millennials, a change from leadership by the older generation to leadership by the newer generation. Equipped with saccharine and banally optimistic rhetoric, as well as savvy marketing, Obama presented a packaged promise of a somehow nondescript political future. This remarkable power the Obama campaign had over young voters (read: Millennials) was primarily due to the lack of direction suggested by the word "change."

By virtue of its lack of direction, change implies neither revolutionary nor reactionary movement. And, due to its lack of specificity, a call for change is essentially a call for the maintenance of the status quo, albeit with a superficial alteration.  This is because a call for change in the language of today's politicians is actually a call for exchange - of issues, compromises, constituents, and anything to maintain the status quo. Change does not herald the arrival of something new; it simply notes the exchange of an idea or policy from one hand to another. The healthcare plan put forward by the Obama administration is the best example of this. Initially a Heritage Foundation counter-plan to Hillarycare, the idea of an individual mandate first belonged to those on the right. Current presidential candidate Mitt Romney instituted this plan in his homestate of Massachusetts. But then change happened. Lo and behold, the individual mandate had switched hands and the best deal for private insurance companies in the history of mankind was championed by the president many assumed would be the most progressive in a century. 

Many on Left have been disappointed with the way President Obama's first term has played out. In 2008, CHANGE appeared as a form of salvation from the nightmare of the Bush years, but it has been translated by Pres. Obama into few if any political gains.  Liberals projected onto Obama their desires for progressive change, most of which have not been realized. With Deresiewicz's analysis of the Millennials in mind, Pres. Obama's inaction should come as no surprise. 

As much as liberals would like to believe otherwise, Obama's "change" promised nothing in the first place. He did not advocate for progress, which would suggest an alteration of the status quo. And he certainly did not advocate for reaction, which would constitute an attempt to undo reforms that had previously been made. Obama offered essentially no direction; the change he promised was solely aesthetic, designed to put a human face on a status quo that was becoming increasingly unpalatable for many Americans.  For Millennials, this was all they wanted - politics without the contention, debate without anger, and politicians without ego. 

The birth of the Tea Party movement and the recent conflagrations at Occupy Wall Street protests show that the American public has grown tired with the status quo - tired of the exchange of old ideas dressed up in the language of change.  The partisans on the Left and the Right, much to the chagrin of many Millennials, want direction; they want to be participants in the grand clash of ideology, as old as the state itself, between reaction and revolution. Naturally, the Millennials are opposed even the very recognition of this clash, and not just because it violates their general rule of non-confrontation. 

The Millennials have become remarkably successful because of their docility, eagerness to conform, and nearly unthinking respect for authority. Reaction and revolution alike would threaten the Millennials' acquired privilege. Reaction, with its accompanying austerity, would strip them of their privilege by increasing indebtedness and inequality. Revolution, or more pragmatically progress, would negate their relative privilege through redistributive policy. The Millennials want none of this, so they vote for change because they know that it will not alter the status quo, but for a few aesthetic shakeups here and there.