Smithfield Linked to Swine Flu
I will write more on this later, but I may actually change my research to study this. I'd have to learn Spanish and epidemiology.
Sunday, April 26, 2009
Tuesday, April 14, 2009
Socialist Day
I recently attended the Southeast Socialist Day School in Atlanta which consisted of a sort of church service worshiping the likes of Lenin. I mainly attended to see how the arguments about class were made, but much of the conference revolved around giving testimonials as to how bad the capitalist system was and how it exploited everyone. I had expected a tutorial on organizing, politics, and public engagement to which I left highly disappointed. As most socialist argue, theory and practice are intertwined creating a socialist praxis, which hinged on the idea of a large undifferentiated working class. I raised the question as to whether a chemical engineer or other professional position was the working class, and received that answer "of course," followed by a long testimonial in front of the congregation about the exploitation felt by such people.
Similarly, a discussion arose about farmers and the local food movement which of course peaked my interests. The ministers felt that the peasantry was too internally differentiated to be counted as part of the revolutionary proletariat, which contrasts starkly to the position on industrial and service workers (read urban). Of course, successful movements in recent years have focused on land reform and the end to the privatization - movements driven by peasant interests, notably the Zapatistas in Chiapas, Mexico. These still focus on ownership, but instead of seeing a form of collective ownership governed by worker's councils, they reorganize property rights in more complex and particularistic ways.
The problem with the approach is a failure to recognize an internally differentiated working class with wide ranging experiences. The experiences of a college educated chemical engineer contrast sharply with those of the janitor who works in that engineer's building, and, in practice, not appreciating that difference which organizing politically can be detrimental. To say that racism and sexism only serve the rulers is quite different from understanding racism and sexism as social forces that shape experience, and the latter is necessary for any organizing that builds solidarity and destabilizes social wall to be possible. Ultimately, socialist politics in the U.S. are caught in the adherence to 100 year old political views and strategies; strategies which have been refined and updated, but receive the pejorative of not being truly "socialist." The urban bias is also deeply problematic.
I have critiqued the failings of post-modernism, which I see as narrow and short-sighted, but the socialist line is broad and simplistic; both have much to add to the conversation but theorists and practioners of both sides of the debate could benefit greatly from a conversation between the two camps. Some of the theory is developing, hopefully to more productive effects.
P.S. According to socialist ministers there has probably been about two years of socialist revolution, the Soviets before bureaucracy.
Similarly, a discussion arose about farmers and the local food movement which of course peaked my interests. The ministers felt that the peasantry was too internally differentiated to be counted as part of the revolutionary proletariat, which contrasts starkly to the position on industrial and service workers (read urban). Of course, successful movements in recent years have focused on land reform and the end to the privatization - movements driven by peasant interests, notably the Zapatistas in Chiapas, Mexico. These still focus on ownership, but instead of seeing a form of collective ownership governed by worker's councils, they reorganize property rights in more complex and particularistic ways.
The problem with the approach is a failure to recognize an internally differentiated working class with wide ranging experiences. The experiences of a college educated chemical engineer contrast sharply with those of the janitor who works in that engineer's building, and, in practice, not appreciating that difference which organizing politically can be detrimental. To say that racism and sexism only serve the rulers is quite different from understanding racism and sexism as social forces that shape experience, and the latter is necessary for any organizing that builds solidarity and destabilizes social wall to be possible. Ultimately, socialist politics in the U.S. are caught in the adherence to 100 year old political views and strategies; strategies which have been refined and updated, but receive the pejorative of not being truly "socialist." The urban bias is also deeply problematic.
I have critiqued the failings of post-modernism, which I see as narrow and short-sighted, but the socialist line is broad and simplistic; both have much to add to the conversation but theorists and practioners of both sides of the debate could benefit greatly from a conversation between the two camps. Some of the theory is developing, hopefully to more productive effects.
P.S. According to socialist ministers there has probably been about two years of socialist revolution, the Soviets before bureaucracy.
Tuesday, April 7, 2009
The New Right
I've been trying to make sense of all the insanity coming from the right and it dawned on me that the connections made to "American principles" based in the American revolution comes from the playbook of the Austrian school of economics. I'm intimately familiar with the Austrians - their institute is in Auburn, Alabama and is called the Mises Institute after economist Ludwig von Mises. The strategy of the Republican party seems to be borrowed directly from the Ron Paul playbook in an attempt to build a political narrative based on the reationary illusion of returning to a pristine 1776, you know, when women, blacks, and landless men weren't allowed to vote in most elections but were counted in census roles to determine House seats.
Of course, this is somewhat immaterial, the narrative only plays to those who already vote Republican, but it sets the table for Austrian ideas to enter into the general election debate. In other words, as the Glenn Becks of the media world continue to spout this rhetoric, it opens space for ideas such as critiques of debt and the federal reserve board to seem less, well, wacky. It would seem that Saul Alinsky has, more or less, created the playbook for the political strategies of both parties, though the right would cringe if they actually knew who is the father of their politics.
Anyway, the critique of debt and the reserve is powerful. Our money, more or less, is created from thin air, and more specifically is created when someone applies for a loan and meets the credit rating criteria or as economic stimulus by printing money and selling treasury securities to investors and foriegn countries. The critique is that for an economy to actually be "free" whatever that means, money must represent something of "real" value like precious metals. In a sound economy, money shouldn't be allowed to "float;" it should be "fixed." All of this is arcane and is infinitely more complicated, but, basically, the critique from the right is going to be that the U.S. is in debt and this debt cannot be alleviated without a fundamental change in the monetary system itself. Also, floating money necessarily creates an interdependent globalized capitalism.
The left is not ready for this critique. I do not think Obama is in any danger, but House and possibly Senate races could hinge on these issues. The left should seize the debt narrative early and argue it from a Marxist perspective, without being noticeably Marxist, I might add. Little has been written on the credit system and money in the Marxist literature, and Marx himself saw no possibly way for the money system and the credit system to be collapsed. However, this is where we are at; money and credit are one in the same. Money, like all other commodities, can be bought and sold, but unlike other commodities, money greases the wheels of the circulation of commodities - it represents value in a particular way easing the exchange between unlike commodities. The left can argue that the collapsing of money into the credit system is certainly problematic, if and only if, the production of money gets no guaranteed value in return, such as by funding wars or subsidizing large corporations. The collapse of the credit system into the money system is proof that free market capitalism has grown beyond its natural limits - that there aren't enough natural resources on Earth to grease the wheels of commodity production. Capital is basically selling nothing (see credit default swap).
A left response would be to promote a system that could only produce money to build the infrastructure of the U.S. - healthcare, education, job training - social goods, and this is something which the Obama administration is already doing. Instead of the deregulation plus sound money which the right will propose, the left should propose reworked regulation plus social money. While it isn't a stretch, deficits and debt should be the central theme of the 2012 election. The left needs to be prepared; I would advise reading some Austrians economists.
P.S. The Green Party's Power to the People Campaign has nationalization of the Federal Reserve on the Agenda. Probably not a possibility as a general election talking point, but it shows the left (not the socialists, btw) are already hip to the issue.
Of course, this is somewhat immaterial, the narrative only plays to those who already vote Republican, but it sets the table for Austrian ideas to enter into the general election debate. In other words, as the Glenn Becks of the media world continue to spout this rhetoric, it opens space for ideas such as critiques of debt and the federal reserve board to seem less, well, wacky. It would seem that Saul Alinsky has, more or less, created the playbook for the political strategies of both parties, though the right would cringe if they actually knew who is the father of their politics.
Anyway, the critique of debt and the reserve is powerful. Our money, more or less, is created from thin air, and more specifically is created when someone applies for a loan and meets the credit rating criteria or as economic stimulus by printing money and selling treasury securities to investors and foriegn countries. The critique is that for an economy to actually be "free" whatever that means, money must represent something of "real" value like precious metals. In a sound economy, money shouldn't be allowed to "float;" it should be "fixed." All of this is arcane and is infinitely more complicated, but, basically, the critique from the right is going to be that the U.S. is in debt and this debt cannot be alleviated without a fundamental change in the monetary system itself. Also, floating money necessarily creates an interdependent globalized capitalism.
The left is not ready for this critique. I do not think Obama is in any danger, but House and possibly Senate races could hinge on these issues. The left should seize the debt narrative early and argue it from a Marxist perspective, without being noticeably Marxist, I might add. Little has been written on the credit system and money in the Marxist literature, and Marx himself saw no possibly way for the money system and the credit system to be collapsed. However, this is where we are at; money and credit are one in the same. Money, like all other commodities, can be bought and sold, but unlike other commodities, money greases the wheels of the circulation of commodities - it represents value in a particular way easing the exchange between unlike commodities. The left can argue that the collapsing of money into the credit system is certainly problematic, if and only if, the production of money gets no guaranteed value in return, such as by funding wars or subsidizing large corporations. The collapse of the credit system into the money system is proof that free market capitalism has grown beyond its natural limits - that there aren't enough natural resources on Earth to grease the wheels of commodity production. Capital is basically selling nothing (see credit default swap).
A left response would be to promote a system that could only produce money to build the infrastructure of the U.S. - healthcare, education, job training - social goods, and this is something which the Obama administration is already doing. Instead of the deregulation plus sound money which the right will propose, the left should propose reworked regulation plus social money. While it isn't a stretch, deficits and debt should be the central theme of the 2012 election. The left needs to be prepared; I would advise reading some Austrians economists.
P.S. The Green Party's Power to the People Campaign has nationalization of the Federal Reserve on the Agenda. Probably not a possibility as a general election talking point, but it shows the left (not the socialists, btw) are already hip to the issue.
Sunday, April 5, 2009
Whiteness, Maleness, and Privilege in Community Activism
The systematic looting of language can be recognized by the tendency of its users to forgo its nuanced, complex, mid-wifery properties for menace and subjugation. Oppressive language does more than represent violence; it is violence; does more than represent the limits of knowledge; it limits knowledge. Whether it is obscuring state language or the faux-language of mindless media; whether it is the proud but calcified language of the academy or the commodity driven language of science; whether it is the malign language of law-without-ethics, or language designed for the estrangement of minorities, hiding its racist plunder in its literary cheek - it must be rejected, altered and exposed. - Toni Morrison, Nobel Speech 1994
My recent dive in community activism in our neighborhood has yielded some profound observations. Born in boredom and my desire to put my training to use, we organized the neighborhood to oppose a rezoning. During our meeting grievances were aired, and we generally felt that our developer had abdicated his duty. But first a little theory.
Neoliberal capitalism has a founding principle of decentralization and privatization. Our neighborhood is unquestionably a result of this broad strategy. Being a planned development, the county decentralizes its responsibility to the homeowners' association, a misnomer because there aren't actually any homeowners' in the homeowners' association. What HA's really are is a de-facto governmental body for neighborhoods controlled by the developer, collecting dues (taxes), and supposedly provide services for the neighborhood. But, like privatization strategies everywhere, once the business functioning as the government loses the profit motive, that business has no incentive to continue to provide services, and sense HA's are undemocratic they cannot be removed from "office." I call it a mini-dictatorship of the rich, the fiefdom of McCalla.
Anyway, more to my point. There is general solidarity in the group, they are concerned about the neighborhood and want to oppose the developer. However, the language we are choosing to use, a technical calcified language, the language of government, fundamentally excludes certain interests as being "too emotional." For instance, numerous claims of sexism on the part of the developer have no bearing on the planning hearing as they have no bearing on the technical, "provable," grievances such as disrepair and neglect. The structure of the government, the language in which in proceeds, and the logics through which these operate create a network of power exclusionary to grievances voiced by women.
Furthermore, many of the residents are concerned that a public fight will make the community "look bad," thereby diminishing the community, nevermind the degradation caused by the developer. This casts light on capital's sensibility and its magnetic attraction to whiteness and maleness; indeed, the de facto positive for this sort of cultural sensibility, pervasive in our region, is that business and white men are de facto blameless, while those challenging them are trouble makers. And while the idea that a public contestation may indeed make the community "look bad," this is a problem of a perception rooted deeply in both the fear of public activism, possibly emerging from the Civil Rights movement, and the cultural privilege afforded the rich, white, and male. So goes the world of power, in spite of a nominal democracy, the violence of language, its logics, and the cultures built upon it continues to exclude all but those who know the rules, unwritten and hidden. In order to contest, we must become, at least in some way, those whom we are contesting.
My recent dive in community activism in our neighborhood has yielded some profound observations. Born in boredom and my desire to put my training to use, we organized the neighborhood to oppose a rezoning. During our meeting grievances were aired, and we generally felt that our developer had abdicated his duty. But first a little theory.
Neoliberal capitalism has a founding principle of decentralization and privatization. Our neighborhood is unquestionably a result of this broad strategy. Being a planned development, the county decentralizes its responsibility to the homeowners' association, a misnomer because there aren't actually any homeowners' in the homeowners' association. What HA's really are is a de-facto governmental body for neighborhoods controlled by the developer, collecting dues (taxes), and supposedly provide services for the neighborhood. But, like privatization strategies everywhere, once the business functioning as the government loses the profit motive, that business has no incentive to continue to provide services, and sense HA's are undemocratic they cannot be removed from "office." I call it a mini-dictatorship of the rich, the fiefdom of McCalla.
Anyway, more to my point. There is general solidarity in the group, they are concerned about the neighborhood and want to oppose the developer. However, the language we are choosing to use, a technical calcified language, the language of government, fundamentally excludes certain interests as being "too emotional." For instance, numerous claims of sexism on the part of the developer have no bearing on the planning hearing as they have no bearing on the technical, "provable," grievances such as disrepair and neglect. The structure of the government, the language in which in proceeds, and the logics through which these operate create a network of power exclusionary to grievances voiced by women.
Furthermore, many of the residents are concerned that a public fight will make the community "look bad," thereby diminishing the community, nevermind the degradation caused by the developer. This casts light on capital's sensibility and its magnetic attraction to whiteness and maleness; indeed, the de facto positive for this sort of cultural sensibility, pervasive in our region, is that business and white men are de facto blameless, while those challenging them are trouble makers. And while the idea that a public contestation may indeed make the community "look bad," this is a problem of a perception rooted deeply in both the fear of public activism, possibly emerging from the Civil Rights movement, and the cultural privilege afforded the rich, white, and male. So goes the world of power, in spite of a nominal democracy, the violence of language, its logics, and the cultures built upon it continues to exclude all but those who know the rules, unwritten and hidden. In order to contest, we must become, at least in some way, those whom we are contesting.
Friday, April 3, 2009
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