The Canard of Liberty, part II

liberty |ˈlibərtē|noun ( pl. -ties)

1 the state of being free within society from oppressive restrictions imposed by authority on one’s way of life, behavior, or political views :compulsory retirement would interfere with individual liberty.• (usu. liberties) an instance of this; a right or privilege, esp. a statutory one : the Bill of Rights was intended to secure basic civil liberties.• the state of not being imprisoned or enslaved : people who have lost property or liberty without due process.• ( Liberty) the personification of liberty as a female figure.

2 the power or scope to act as one pleases : individuals should enjoy the liberty to pursue their own interests and preferences.• Philosophy a person’s freedom from control by fate or necessity.• informal a presumptuous remark or action : how did he know what she was thinking?—it was a liberty!• Nautical shore leave granted to a sailor.

The way “liberty” is discussed in this country, you’d think it was some kind of cut-and-dry concept, when in fact it is much more complex than it seems.  When is our liberty “threatened,” “increased,” “decreased” and so on?

This seems counterintuitive.  How is the concept of liberty not simple?  As an example: Impinging on my right to own firearms would be a threat to my liberty, right?

Yet taken to its extreme, even this argument gets fuzzy.  If owning a gun is fundamental to liberty, why not owning a machine gun? An assault rifle?  A missile launcher or low-grade nuclear weapon?

In Arizona in January 2011, this thinking was on display after the shooting that wounded congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords and killed several others.  The legislature’s response to the shooting was to make it easier to purchase firearms; to make it legal to bring them on college campuses (though the shooting was at a Safeway); and to reduce limits on concealed weapons.  The legislators had waited, seemingly, for the emotional shock of the shooting in order to ram through this legislation, seeing gun laws as some kind of threat to liberty.

Infrequently do we hear an alternative to the right’s jejune calculus of liberty.  Is it possible that increasing the number of gun owners might actually reduce liberty?  If my freedom to feel safe is decreased by liberalization of gun laws, then haven’t I lost liberty?

For if I feel compelled to buy a gun because everyone else has one and I feel threatened by them, haven’t I experienced a reduction in liberty–namely, the liberty to be comfortable not owning a gun.  I have reduced liberty in the latter sense of the above definition.

I consider myself a libertarian inasmuch as I support policies that increase individual liberty; however, most traditional, Friedmanian libertarians would view my views as utterly contrary to their beliefs.  I believe in public housing, widespread and cheap/free public transportation, universal free healthcare and the liberty to pursue free tertiary education.  These are all liberty-increasing ideals, in the realest sense; millions stand to benefit from the increased liberty provided from improved health, education, transportationand safety.  Yet these are much-spurned by neoliberals.

It is not that extreme, then, to see walls and private property as threats to liberty, too.  My liberty to hike, travel, enjoy nature and move about the planet is impeded by our culture’s ludicrous conception of private property.  Few acts would increase liberty more than its abolition.

Let us revel in the great irony in understanding how traditionally leftist ideas are actually extremely “libertarian.”

The Canard of Liberty

The word liberty gets thrown around an awful lot in these United States.  Republicans and libertarians would have you believe that “it”–our liberty, that is–is getting trounced on, spat upon, thrown out the window by the scapegoat of the day.

In the republican worldview it is usually a vast, fictive “elite” that is at work attacking and dismantling said liberties.  This seemingly contradictory belief was best expressed in the small volume “The Ruling Class,” a book that has become a manifesto of sorts for conservatives and Tea Partiers nationwide. Note the astounding irony of the title, as “ruling class” is a phrase originating in Marx: the writer (himself an academic!) is clearly an entitled member of the class he purports to abhor.  An excerpt from the American Spectator description:

In The Ruling Class, Angelo M. Codevilla reveals:

• How higher education has indoctrinated The Ruling Class with a sort of group think;
• How the government has become a focal point and main employer of The Ruling Class;
• How The Ruling Class is a direct result of progressive policies and the agenda of the Left;
• And how The Ruling Class taxes and redistributes one third of what Americans produce.

The greatest success of the American right is rhetorical: they have managed to completely reverse the logic behind governance, taxation and the public sector, and to do it in such a way that it is easily understandable by the working class.  This, I will argue again and again, is reflective of the failure of contemporary leftists to distill their political philosophies into readily relatable ideas.  Rather, the right has become adept at this:  Along with Codevilla, Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck are the supreme puppet masters of the working class, whereas Milton Friedman and Ayn Rand are their philosophical and rhetorical forebears.

Central to the aforementioneds’ political philosophy is the idea of “liberty:” that we have it, or once had it, and it is being impinged upon.  Their philosophy is tempting to the layperson: rules, it seems, are a threat to our liberty, which is being trounced upon as we speak.  Laws are a threat.  Regulation is a threat.  Things which you “own” are “yours,” and no one should tell you what to do with them.

In a way, this is a contemporization of Bakunin’s arguments for anarchism, yet re-engineered into a pro-free market context.  And it goes without saying that an immense corporate complex, operating in the shadows, is engineering and supporting these myths, knowing well that the libertarian future is also a pro-corporate future: a world without regulation, without taxation, a world obsessed with privatization and property, is the epitome of the shareholder’s fantasy world.

Taken to its extreme, the Hayak-Friedmanian libertarian vision purports to increase freedom and wealth for all by eliminating taxes and regulation.  For instance, the duties of the welfare state are subsumed by private charity.

For these reasons, the neoliberal/libertarian dream would also represent most humans’ nightmare.  The unseen world of regulation and taxation works to protect us and allow us far more “liberty,” as we shall see.  Let us analyze, though, the effect of increased liberty in the neolib fantasy, and see if it holds weight.

However, the concept of liberty is not as simple as it seems.  Take private property, for instance.  The sheer concept of the “private” represents the greatest threat to liberty imaginable; imagine if all land and roads were privatized, as Milton would have us do.  This would not be liberating in the least; in fact, it would be rather restricting.  I “pay” to use sidewalks, indirectly, through my tax dollars.  Sidewalks and public parks are an important constituent of the public sphere, something rapidly being dismantled.  As I have argued before, the failure of many libertarians to understand their co-ownership of public property stems from a failure to psychologically identify the consumer satisfaction in a transaction, which in this case comes about indirectly through taxation.

Another freedom, and perhaps my rhetorical favorite, is the freedom to own firearms.  [This is how the second amendment is interpreted by the gun lobby; nevermind that its original intent had nothing to do with this, but rather conveyed the right to form militias; gun lobbies re-wrote public perception of this "right" in the twentieth century.]  The right to own a gun and tote it in public seems like it could be liberating, in that it purportedly empowers the individual to protect themself.  Yet it also impinges on the rights of others to feel safe from fools with guns! The hubristic notion that guns are protective and libertarian was on display in Arizona, my embarrassing home-state, shortly after the attempted assassination of Congresswoman Giffords.  How ironic it is that the state legislature sees more, rather than fewer, guns as being the solution to prevent future shootings.  Of course, even in the presence of more guns, shooter Jared Loughner probably would have gotten at least one shot out.  Brain damage or death are, most would agree, rather large impediments to liberty.

One could argue that the most libertarian society would have no guns at all, and thus one would never have to fear death by a gunman.  Of course, now we’re getting into a discussion on the role of the state’s power and ability to police, a debate best left for another time.

Oddly, many of the tenets of libertarianism, if you think about them too hard–and very few libertarians do–are actually great impingers of liberty.  In fact, a “real” libertarian society would probably more resemble a libertarian socialist society: a world in which all property is public, social ills like pollution runoff and hazardous consumer products are regulated so as to prevent death or cancer (great threats to liberty indeed), and healthcare and housing are free and guaranteed.  Since this isn’t a world compatible with corporate capitalism, though, we probably won’t be hearing about it anytime soon.

Link: 40 Helpful Tips for Becoming a Successful Anti-Communist

I am compelled to repost this essay due to sheer cleverness.  The author has done a wonderful job of revealing common political illusions about leftist ideology, many of which go (stupidly) unquestioned in common debate.  Even years after the Cold War, these points are all still relevant today.

The link to the original post is after the piece.

 

40 Helpful Tips For Becoming a Successful Anti-Communist

by J. Slavyanski

1. Constantly insist that Marxism is discredited, outdated, and totally dead and buried. Then proceed to build a lucrative career on beating that supposedly ‘dead’ horse for the rest of your working life.

2. Remember, any unnatural death that occurs under a ‘Communist’ regime is not only attributable to the leaders of the state, but also Marxism as an ideology. Ignore deaths that occur for the same reason in non-Communist states.

3. Communism or Marxism is whatever you want it to be. Feel free to label countries, movements, and regimes as ‘Communist’ regardless of things like actual goals, stated ideology, diplomatic relations, economic policy, or property relations.

4. If there was a conflict involving Communists, the conflict and all ensuing deaths can be laid at the feet of Communism. Be careful when applying this to WWII. Fascist movements who fought against the Soviets or Communist partisans are fine, but try not to openly praise Nazi Germany. Save that for private conversations if you must do so.

5. You decide what Marxism “really means”, and who the rightful representatives of Communism were. Feign interest that Trotsky was somehow robbed of power by Stalin, despite the fact that you hate him as well.

6. Constantly talk about George Orwell. Quote from Animal Farm or 1984. Do not worry about the fact that he never set foot in the Soviet Union and both of those books are novels.

7. Quote massive death tolls without regards to demographics or consistency. 3 million famine deaths? 7 million? 10 million? 100 million deaths total? You need not worry about anyone checking your work, which is good for you seeing that you probably haven’t done any.

8. Everyone ever arrested under a Communist regime was most likely innocent of any crime. Communists only arrested harmless poets and political prophets who had a beautiful message to share with the world.

9. Everything Stalin did or didn’t do had some sinister ulterior motive. Everything.

10. Keeping with the spirit of #9, remember that Stalin was an omnipotent being, perhaps an incarnation of the Hindu deity Vishnu, who had full awareness of everything going on in the Soviet Union and total control over every occurrence which took place between 1924 and 1953. Everything that occurred during that time was the will of Stalin. Stalin knew the exact details of every criminal case that took place during that era and out of his boundless cruelty, had tons of innocent people shot for no reason regardless of where they were or their position in life. Being omnipotent, he was not dependent on information passed up from tens of thousands of subordinates.

11. Constantly attack ‘Communist’ regimes for actions that occur in capitalist regimes up to this very day.

12. Claim that Marxism is utopian because of its description of a possible future society. Alternately claim that Marxism failed because it never gave a detailed description of how a Communist society would look. Do not pay attention to the massive contradiction here.

13. Start referring to Marxism as being some kind of religious faith, Messianic, or whatever other spiritualist bullshit you can come up with. When people point out that you can draw similarities between virtually any political ideology and other religions, ignore them.

14. Remember the one-two anti-Communist attack: Attack the post-Stalin system on economic grounds, and claim it just doesn’t work. Since an informed opponent will most likely point out that actual socialist economics did indeed work during the Stalin era, and in fact worked very well, attack that era on human rights grounds.

15. Two words- Human nature. What is human nature? For your purposes, human nature is a quick explanation why political ideas or systems you don’t like are wrong.

16. Bolshevik revolutions were carried out with violence and bloodshed. Bourgeois revolutions were all carried out by democratic referendums, and there was no violence whatsoever.

17. Use words like ‘freedom’ and ‘democracy’ constantly. Do not accept any challenge to define these terms.

18. Communists can be for or against whatever is popular in your particular area. If you are preaching to a right-wing crowd, Communists are for degeneration and homosexuality. If you are preaching to a more mainstream audience, Communists were homophobic. Essentially, Communists are for moral degeneration and puritanical prudery at the same time. Again, do not notice the contradiction.

19. Constantly flog Stalin over the Molotov-Ribbentrop agreement, while totally ignoring massive support and collaboration with Nazi Germany, Fascist Italy, and Imperial Japan on the part of America, Britain, and France, long before the war and even after in some ways. As usual, do not allow your opponent to examine the context of the non-aggression pact.

20. Praise the newfound “freedom” of Eastern Europe. Ignore the massive depopulation via migration, plunging birthrates, huge alcohol and drug problems, political instability, civil wars, ethnic cleansing, sex trafficking and child prostitution, organized crime, high suicide rates, unemployment, disease, etc. Who cares about all that when you have freedom of speech?!

21. Constantly talk about the culture of fear in Communist nations, about that ‘knock on the door’ in the middle of the night. Ignore the ‘kick in your door in the middle of the night, stick a shotgun in your back, and haul your ass out of bed etc. because you are suspected of dealing,’ a normal occurrence in the American War on Drugs.

22. Attack Communists for suppression of religion. Attack Islamic fundamentalists for not being secular. What contradiction?!

23. Do not notice the irony that the US is currently fighting an incredibly expensive, losing war against an opponent which it funded, supported, and even handed its first victory in Afghanistan.

24. What should you say when confronted with all the continuing and often worsening problems in the world today, and asked for a solution? FREEDOM!! (Repeat as necessary until your opponent goes away)

25. Nothing from “Communists” can be trusted. Unless it somehow works in your favor, ala Khrushchev’s ‘Secret Speech’ from 1956, or anything Trotsky wrote.

26. Communist leaders were ‘paranoid’ for devoting so much time to security against counter-revolution. Ignore the mountains of evidence, including the restoration of capitalism in the East Bloc, that this threat was indeed real.

27. Communist regimes were never popular. If proof is presented in various cases to show otherwise, claim that the people were brainwashed. Make no effort to consider the budgetary and logistic constraints on such an undertaking.

28. Communist propaganda is crude and primitive. If someone mentions Red Dawn or worse, mentions the J. Edgar Hoover-endorsed comic book series known as The Godless Communists, run away.

29. Praise secularism in the name of ‘freedom’ and ‘pluralism’ until faced with a Communist. Then play the religion card.

30. Atrocities and other bad things that happen under non-Communist regimes are the fault of individual ‘bad people’. Anything bad that happens under a ‘Communist’ regime is the fault of the ideology and system. And Stalin.

31. Being an anti-Communist means not having to have any sort of ideological consistency whatsoever. Preach populist left-wing pseudo-socialism 90% of the time, and then compare the capitalist system to “Stalin’s Russia”(if you never really studied the subject, just read 1984 and Animal Farm). Bitch about capitalism 99% of the time, but balk when someone suggests Communism as an alternative. Far right wing Fascist? Constantly bitch about cultural degeneracy under capitalism, while remaining fanatically opposed to Marxism for no discernable reason save for your affinity for historic nationalism.

32. If you’re an anarchist, keep pointing out the ‘failure’ of Marxism while ignoring the fact that your ideology has a 100% failure rate throughout its entire history. Blame those failures on Communists, or stronger military powers. Ignore the fact that the most wonderful society is worthless if it can’t defend itself from reaction.

33. Neo-Nazi? Communism is Jewish!! Debate over.

34. Neo-Hippy? Tibet!

35. Constantly condemn the genocide that allegedly occurred under Mao, while ignoring the US’ relations with China established by Nixon, and the massive role capitalist China has played in the modern US economy. When you want to talk positively about China, it’s a capitalist country. If you need to criticize it, it’s still ‘Communist’.

36. Claim Marxism is not empirical. Neither are neo-liberalism, ‘democracy’, or ‘freedom’, but don’t worry about that.

37. Always insist that despite the location, country, historical era, past experience, and all other factors, Communists must want to recreate a modern-day copy of Stalin’s Russia, and all that entails according to you. Do not notice the inherent idiocy in this concept, such as your particular country being already industrialized, and not having a historical problem of severe backwardness.

38. Learn to use the magic word ‘totalitarian’. This word allows you to link two ideological opposites, Communism and Fascism.

39. Ignore the fact that socialist states experienced more economic problems parallel to the number of market reforms they made.

40. When challenged about numbers or historical context, resort to labels like “ruthless tyrant”, “cruel murderer”, and such. Remember, people like Stalin were mass-murderers because of all the people they killed, and we know they killed all those people because they were mass-murderers. It totally tracks!

 

(reposted from http://www.revleft.com/vb/group.php?do=discuss&gmid=33779)

For the record, I think #6 should be amended to read, “Constantly talk about George Orwell. Quote from Animal Farm or 1984. Do not worry about the fact that he never set foot in the Soviet Union and both of those books are novels, nor that he was a dedicated socialist who wrote in the original introduction to Animal Farm that “Everything I have ever written has been in favor of democratic socialism and against totalitarianism.”

The Political Economy of Burning Man

Most people have heard of Burning Man, the week-long annual arts festival held in Nevada’s Black Rock Desert, though far fewer seem to know or understand precisely what Burning Man “is.”  Superficially, a reader of the Burning Man literature would discover that the festival bills itself as “an annual experiment in temporary community dedicated to radical self-expression and radical self-reliance.” However, even knowing this, and even after attending, the political and social aims of Burning Man are difficult to pin down.

So what does “radical self-expression” mean, exactly?  Does it mean getting naked in the desert and doing lots of drugs, as one conservative writer opines?  Or is it “a big dumb druggie rave in the desert” as this Chronicle columnist claims?  Many detractors decry it for its cost, claiming that only yuppies attend.  There is definitely a class element present, as Burning Man is undeniably expensive–$180 to $360, depending on when you buy–and very remote, at least six hours from San Francisco and then a headache of a traffic jam getting in.  Packing in all that water, food, gear and equipment for a whole week in a lunar environment only adds to the cost.

I applied and received a scholarship ticket in 2010, meaning the cost to me was only $100.  My scholarship was given to me as a researcher on society and culture.  It’s been a while since the burn, but I wanted to comment on my observations, which, as someone who isn’t particularly passionate about drug consumption, is more observationally accurate than average.

First, I would argue with Burning Man’s claim that its festival is one of “radical self-expression.”  Self-reliance, certainly.  But to call Burning Man radical is, I think, a mistake.  Anyone expecting radicalism, as I was, will be slightly disappointed.  I would say that Burning Man falls well within the confines of the traditional American liberal spectrum; in fact, Burning Man is the epitome of liberal permissiveness. Participants walk around in all sort of bizarre garb, or lack thereof, in a Veblenian competition to outdo one another.  Perhaps this is radical to an isolated conservative living in a rural area, but to someone who has lived in San Francisco or attended a liberal arts school, a flash of genitalia or a whiff of marijuana smoke hardly constitutes radicalism.  Culturally, Burning Man is an extension of San Francisco with fewer regulations–which is precisely why the founders eventually ditched San Francisco’s Baker Beach (the original Burning Man location) for the middle of the desert, so they could express themselves in ways the city of San Francisco wouldn’t let them.  Most of these forms of illegal expression involve fire or vehicles with poor visibility, as nudity and marijuana are essentially legal in San Francisco already.

The theme of the festival is social libertarianism.  Want to run circles around the thousand-degree burning effigy, totally naked?  Go for it.  Want to participate in an orgasmic meditation ceremony?  Feel free.  Want to have intercourse on a pile of sand?  I should note that with the exception of item number one, the latter two are common San Francisco occurrences.

Burning Man, like San Francisco culture, is certainly an offshoot of the permissiveness engendered by the countercultural movement of the sixties; the actual aims of the festival, however, are obscure.  I was reminded of Jeffrey Heath and Andrew Potter’s writings in their book Rebel Nation: How Counterculture Became Consumer Culture.  Potter and Heath point out the contradictions between the counterculture movement and its “radical” mission.  One of their primary arguments is that counterculture actually became a force which drove consumer culture; in other words, capitalism adapted to counterculture values to make consumers think they were being subversive simply by buying. Case in point:  there is a clear and definite competitive side to the size of the elaborate Burning Man encampments, the wackiness of the residents’ dress and bicycles.  And this competitive drive spurs consumption, particularly of things like gasoline, RV rentals, geodesic domes (an excellent shade structure in the 100+ heat) and clothes, clothes, clothes.   What other counterculture festival drives so much consumer expenditure (particularly in the economic spheres of RV rental, bottled water and black market hallucinogens).  I don’t dare estimate the amount of money Burners spend on clothing, but with 50,000 participants last year and seven days to wear different costumes–two per day, night costumes being usually illuminated with LEDs or glow sticks–you can imagine it’s quite large.  It’s keeping-up-with-the-Joneses, out there on the desert playa.

There is one stipulation here with regards to the nature of personal competition at Burning Man: specifically, the competition, particularly that between encampments, lacks a monetary incentive.  You heard that correctly: even the big name musical performers at this year’s Burning Man paid for the cost of their ticket, the cost to haul their equipment there and so on.  And some of the theme camps are incredibly elaborate and creative–dance clubs with sprawling jungle gyms, a “stilts” bar (it was 10 feet tall, reachable only by stilts wearers),  enormous solar arrays,  cafés and one-day restaurants of all variety.  Someone even hauled a soft-serve machine to the middle of the desert.  Creativity abounds at Burning Man; it is the keystone of the event.

It is important to note that this all happens within a gift economy.  If you’ve never heard of a gift economy, you can be forgiven–it’s not an economy that officially exists in any country, or which is taught in most economics textbooks.  A gift economy is one in which no money changes hands.  Everyone gifts what they have brought, meaning even those serving food and liquor are simply giving it away for free.  The lengths people go to are incredible–some of the  installations, art cars and food operations must have cost hundreds of thousands of dollars, not including hauling them to a remote desert. I watched a semi truck unload crates of liquor for a popular “bar” on the playa.  Each was full of top-shelf liquor, and there looked to be dozens, if not hundreds in the truck.

Pinning down the political aspirations of Burning Man is a bit like looking at inkblots: you see what you want to see.  I find it fascinating how many different politicos have claimed Burning Man as theirs.  One interesting long-time Burner is Brian Doherty, editor of libertarian Reason Magazine, who has even written a book about Burning Man.  As one might expect, some anarchists are enthralled by the festival.  And a liberal Huffington Post columnist, Jay Michaelson, is a long-time Burner. He writes that the festival is happening “without capitalism:”

There’s no vending at Burning Man — it’s a gift economy. Entire “theme camps” exist just to give away spaghetti, to serve people free margaritas, to make pancakes. Yes, it does cost a lot to get in (between $150-350), but that mostly pays for the rental of the land from the government, the porta-potties and other infrastructure, and grants made to large-scale art projects. No one — not the celebrity DJs who were there this year, like Armin van Buuren and Carl Cox, and not the people who build the solar electrical grid — gets paid. No one is making a buck.

Personally, I fall in his camp, with the leftists who think Burning Man epitomizes leftist doctrines.  To me, I felt what resonated with me most was the concept of the gift economy as an element of a socialist economy.  James P. Cannon, socialist writer, described the ideal socialist economy as being one of excess.  He argued that Marx believed that socialism could not exist without industrial excess. Indeed, this seems to be precisely what Marx noticed, and what led him to write–namely that while a few men got rich, the masses suffered, while there was plenty to go around.  Why not re-allocate it?

Nobody grabs when the table is laden. If you have a guest, you don’t seize the first piece of meat for yourself, you pass the plate and ask him to help himself first.

I think this accurately describes the culture of Burning Man. The most astounding thing about the festival is the culture of gifting. Everyone has brought an excess of goods, and there is always more than enough to go around.  Yes, there are “restaurants” and “bars” in Black Rock City, but not in the conventional sense: their menu is free and generally their stock is abundant.  Any exchange of money is frowned upon–even for drugs and alcohol, where there is a black market but which are dispensed for free.  Within this culture the gift economy thrives, in that there is an overabundance, an excess, of goods at every turn.

Each year there is a census at Burning Man that asks, among other questions, what the income of each participant is.  What is remarkable is that Burning Man attracts a similar number of very poor  and very rich constituents.  Walking down Haight Street in San Francisco a week before Burning Man, Haight being a favorite hangout of many street dwellers and vagrants, one is frequently approached by young men and women with signs asking for a ride to the fabled festival. A surprising portion of these people’s already meager income went to the price of the ticket.

Meanwhile, the festival also attracts an international crowd and a fair number of affluent Americans, many of whom rent lavish RVs and spend what I estimate to be in the tens of thousands of dollars. (This is based on the sheer size of the physical spectacle some patrons put on: multi-story dance clubs with thousands of pieces involved in construction, rental of 18-wheelers, kilowatt solar arrays and generators of varying consumption).

This flies in the face of the common anti-socialist argument that people will only “innovate” given a monetary incentive.  The incentive at Burning Man is not monetary at all–it’s some combination of creative impulse and intercompetition that drives residents to transport thousands of dollars of liquor or art or natural gas or fireworks or ice cream to the Nevada desert and share with thousands of people across the socioeconomic spectrum simply out of their own goodwill.

Rebuttal: is the beehive collective’s “true cost of coal” poster a bourgeois, capitalist project?

A rebuttal of The Seams & The Story‘s response to my own critique of The Beehive Collective’s “True Cost of Coal” canvas, I suppose, would start with the title. We seem to agree on most aspects of the image; I admit I cringed at the words “bourgeois, capitalist,” which I don’t believe the image is; but the main premise of my critique is simply that The True Cost of Coal failed to provide a systemic critique of any economic system. As S&S writes,

The Beehive Collective is purposefully refusing to forward a particular political ideology or agenda. Why? Because their artistic process is rooted in listening to people with a diversity of strategies and beliefs. Their positionality is not one of decision-making or movement leading– they’re storytellers and media-makers.

I suppose this is all well and good, but I feel a little uneasy about the rhetorical vagueness implied by incorporating this “diversity of beliefs.” A non-radical Seattleite acquaintance of mine works for Google and lives in a condo in a gentrified area (CapHill), and proudly displays this work on his living room wall. That he could not see any irony indicates to me that there is no irony to see–he isn’t made uncomfortable by the imagery of Wall Street immolating itself, precisely because the poster fails to provide any critical connection to his own lifestyle and beliefs. He may, perhaps, relate with the “renewables” imagery–Google, after all, just invested billions in a wind farm complex off the coast of New England–yet I would hardly call the corporations’ actions noble, moral, or representative of any systemic value beyond accumulation of capital. The greenwashers at Google firmly believe in the long-term potential of their utopian, capitalist society. Likewise, if you refer back to my piece, I noted how pro-establishment, even pro-military publications like Popular Science and Popular Mechanics frequently advocate solar and wind power technologies. Are these really the people and ideas that are going to lead us forwards in reclaiming Appalachia from the poisoned talons of the mining industry?

Yet this is a bit of a minor quibble, as it really goes back as to whether or not you believe in political compromise. The more direct critique, and which I think S&S missed, was the post-structural component. For those unacquainted with the term, post-structuralism simply refers to the move away from viewing the world in terms of dualities and strictures. When I speak of my critique as post-structuralist, I mean quite simply that I was disappointed at the singularity of the image, particularly with who is portrayed as “evil” (and the fact that good and evil even exist at all in their image narrative).

So while I’m not a proponent of free market capitalism, I would not say that it is “evil” in the Judeo-Christian sense. However, I would opine that, judged against the lens of environmental quality, the liberal arts, intellectualism, eliminating poverty, and the capacity for humanity to survive as a species  the long-term, capitalism is extremely bad at doing any of these things.

Whither, then, the issue of coal? Humans “need”–in the cruelest economic sense–energy. Coal is cheap, and the way market capitalism works is that the cheapest options win out. So, Massey is providing a resource to the market. Everyone at Massey is doing exactly what they think they should be doing, just like Google or Proctor & Gamble. As corporate entities, they have identical goals–accumulation of profit–and different means of establishing this. Do I despise Massey for all their environmental and social destruction? Of course. But I don’t see them as intrinsically different from Chevron, Google, Apple, Altria or Xe (née Blackwater). Curtis White, cultural critic and professor, is much better at explaining this than I. He writes in Orion Magazine:

Environmentalism is also reluctant to think that its problem may not be of modern origin but something as old as humanity itself. It is committed to a sort of “presentism” in which the culprits are all of recent vintage: Monsanto, Big Oil, developers of suburban sprawl, the modern corporation, you know, the usual suspects. But bad as these things can be (and that’s very bad), they are not the unique creators of our problems. And they are not evil, or, as we descendants of the Puritans like to say, “greedy.” Simply blaming these entities for traditional moral failings is not adequate to the true situation. At most, by doing so we create an environmentalist melodrama of evildoers opposed by forces of good. (Big Oil versus the Sierra Club.)

This is, unfortunately, a bit more of an abstract critique than the left is accustomed to. Some of the bitter comments I received over my post involved some take on, “Well, what’s-your-solution-then?” In the short-term, I am forced begrudgingly to admit that one more-than-adequate “solution” might be something much more pragmatic and–I hate to use the word–economic.

The fact that the mountaintops of West Virginia are such an attractive and cheap target for megaliths like Massey reflects the fact that all this nasty mountain-stripping is cheap, cheap enough for Massey to invest in doing some things that suck. One progressive, economic way of stopping this would be to advocate for increased taxation. Make it more expensive for Massey to do business. Make it economically unviable. The lingo of taxation and regulation is the only jargon that corporations and politicians speak, and this will continue while capitalism continues.

Propositions and grassroots lobbying could make it harder, or impossible, for them to do business. It’s the core of our democracy, and it’s the only thing that’s every really worked anyway. It’s not sexy, I’ll admit that. But I also concede that perhaps we activists have been asking too much of our movement. It would be satisfying if Massey was dissolved, disbanded, and the corporate CEO found hara-kiri’d in his office, having realized the moral errors of his ways; but that is simply not going to happen.

Many people have realized this and are actively advocating for a democratic and economic response. However, there are a great deal of activists, perhaps, who unrealistically strive for a moral, muddled future in which their dominant worldview, usually an eco-moralist agenda, wins out over all others. This is not progressive. The left needs to come together and admit the failure of capitalism and focus on either dismantling it or working within it. But pushing for a hypocritical, scientifically questionable solution is the most inefficient course the activist mind can take.

Late-Stage Capitalism: Isn’t it Boring?

In a welcome change from CritDisp’s more serious articles, I’d like to begin an open and frank discussion about the nature of late (or late-stage) capitalism. This something I’ve been scratching my head over for a while now, and it relates to my recent readings by Derrick Jensen, one of the more brilliant and upstanding spiritual critics of capitalism.

The term late-stage capitalism is a Marxist term used to describe what Marxists see as the latest stage of capitalist development.  In essence, late capitalism is a state of affairs entailing the rise of the multinational corporation, mass consumption and dominant consumer culture, the decline of the public sphere and the commodification of nearly everything.  This could be confusing, so I’ll try to frame it in more basic terms.  Basically, late capitalism is what happens when capitalism, in its quest to expand infinitely (doing what businesses are supposed to do), runs out of markets and must invent new markets.  This means “opening up” third-world markets and encouraging first-world consumers to give up even more of their lives to consumption.

Critics believe this stage is fundamental to capitalist society once it has already provided all material necessities. Because the nature of the economy is such that it always must grow in search of new profits, new markets are forged eternally and with increasing rapidity.  Speaking with my grandfather about his youth, it’s easy to see how late capitalism has take hold.  He lived in a farm house near Mountain View, California, without electricity, growing much of his own food, without a telephone.  The number of things , broadly, that his parents paid for was very low.  Particularly monthly bills–no phone, no electricity, no internet bill.  I’m not sure about water, but it’s safe to say the aquifer was much cleaner then. (As a side note, his childhood home was destroyed to make way for the 101 freeway).

This idea of monthly billing is especially key: late capitalism has cultural  aftereffects.  The ultimate goal of the late-capitalist corporate entity is to culturally ingrain the spending of money–to make it habitual and necessary to be wired into the consumer system.  Monthly bills for trash, electricity, phones, water, cable and now internet slowly made their ways into our lives.  The utilities are more casual, but with things like internet and telephones it’s easier to see how a technological commodity became a cultural necessity.  Imagine, people once lived without phones or even Facebooks.

A few examples of late capitalism extending its talons into the furthest reaches of society:

-goods marketed directly to children and even toddlers, such as toys, cereal, food and candy–once an off-limits market segment, and poorly regulated in the US but very restricted in Europe.

-guns. Geoffrey Canada has an incredible piece on this episode of This American Life, in which he talks about the marketing of guns:

Ira Glass: “The kinds of fistfights [Canada] grew up with ended in the Bronx in the 1970s. One reason for the increase in handguns in the hands of teenagers is because the gun manufacturers, after saturating the market of white males, started to market guns to women, and to young people.”

Canada: “It was a devastating discovery to find that [m]y young people searching for guns [w]as a marketing campaign that was aimed directly at them. They started to change the names of handguns to make them more attractive to kids… they weren’t finding these manufacturers, the manufacturers were finding the kids.”

-clothing. In “Nation of Rebels: Why Counterculture Became Consumer Culture,” authors Potter and Heath discuss a tame example in the men’s clothing market in the 1950s:

Clark Gable started it early on, appearing in It Happened One Night without an undershirt. Within weeks, this new, more daring look had become the rage with men across North America. It didn’t take long for clothing manufacturers to take notice. Men had worn undershirts in order to reduce the number of times a shirt had to be laundered. This greatly extended its life. Getting rid of the undershirt meant that instead of needing three good shirts and a dozen cheap ones in his closet, today’s man would need a dozen good-quality ones.  (173-4)

-communication. Conversation was once free; phones, and especially cell phones and internet communication, all are now billed to us such that it becomes difficult to converse and stay in contact with our friends without paying money. We are, in one sense, literally paying to communicate with each other.

-planned obsolescence. Vance Packard certainly popularized this term, but Steve Jobs’ picture is right next to it in the dictionary.

-branding. Naomi Klein is the premier scholar on this, but the association of identity and emotion with logos is a new phenomenon. My father always bemoaned how youth “bought shirts with logos on them–while not even getting paid to advertise.”

-transit. In a tale oft-told, private companies like General Motors bought out public transit and streetcar systems around the country after World War II, ripping out tracks and forcing consumers to switch to their own preferred form of private transit, the automobile.

-exercise. The rise of the “gym,” the privatization of exercise and still a foreign concept in many countries. (My Australian housemate informs me that gyms there are looked upon as scornful excesses.)

"B is for "Buy-N-Large," your best friend.

The nightmare scenario regarding late-stage capitalism goes something like this: More and more facets of public life are privatized, culminating in ubiquitous branding and death of the liberal arts. While this may be far-fetched, there is certainly a whole school of dystopian works devoted to this idea: Blade Runner, for one, depicts a future world totally overrun with ads (and even privatization of outer space). Wall-E, which could be interpreted as a weak critique of late-stage capitalism–weak in that it also shills tie-in goods–depicts a true bummer of a late-stage capitalist culture: a “space resort” society, in which all goods are provided by a private corporation (Buy ‘N Large, a thinly veiled Wal-Mart), citizens stare at screens all day, and the day-to-day life is marked by overwhelming mundanity. In a memorable scene, we get a quick glimpse of the inside of the pre-school classroom on the “Axiom” luxury spaceship. The computerized teacher reads monotonically to the tots:

“A is for Axiom, your home sweet home. B is for Buy N Large, your best friend.”

And so on through the alphabet: consumer tie-ins, even in education. We get the picture, Pixar: late-stage capitalism is a stultifying, boring to the core. The tots only tolerate because it’s all they know, presumably; it takes an outsider robot to awaken them to the beauty of the universe.

The New York Times featured an article last week on “Trickle-down bullying:”

Mean-girl behavior, typically referred to by professionals as relational or social aggression and by terrified parents as bullying, has existed for as long as there have been ponytails to pull and notes to pass (today’s insults are texted instead). But while the calculated round of cliquishness and exclusion used to set in over fifth-grade sleepover parties, warfare increasingly permeates the early elementary school years.

“Girls absolutely exclude one another in kindergarten,” said Michelle Anthony, a psychologist and co-author of the new book “Little Girls Can Be Mean.” When her own daughter was manipulated by a “friend” into racing down a slide booby-trapped with mud, making it appear to a group of boys as though she’d soiled her pants, Dr. Anthony was taken aback. “You don’t expect to run into that level of meanness in a 7-year-old.”

The story did not make any grand conclusions, but did repeatedly reference media as a possible culprit.

Nicole Werner, a psychologist[,] said that she hasn’t seen research “to indicate that these forms of hurtful behavior are increasing in younger kids.”

“However,” she continued, “I have to expect that the amount and type of media kids are consuming at younger ages is having an effect.”

Other experts agreed. “The research literature on aggression is very clear that with relational aggression, it’s monkey see, money do,” said Tracy Vaillancourt, who specializes in children’s mental health and violence prevention at the University of Ottawa. “Kids mirror the larger culture, from reality TV to materialism.”

However, what was most intriguing were the comments from readers, almost all of whom painted the story in conservative, “things-ain’t-like-they-were-in-my-day” rhetoric. However, several respondents took the “bigger picture” approach, making direct reference to late-stage capitalism. Anne from New York writes:

There was bullying in the elementary schools I attended in the 70s, but it had nothing to do with who owned what. This is coming from the parents and society. Our society values nothing except money. This started with Ronald Reagan (“family values”!). People wonder why little girls are obsessed with style and trendiness–don’t you realize that corporations are making money by expanding to a new market, which is what they always do? They could only make so much money off of adults and adolescents, so they moved to the elementary school set. When I was in 3rd grade I had a few Danskin pants and shirts and a couple of jumpers and turtlenecks and that was my wardrobe. We didn’t know what a hairstyle was and we shared and traded our crayons. We didn’t listen to popular music because we didn’t have our own radios or tvs and video games and computers hadn’t been invented. This is all about corporate predation and materialism and consumerism, a/k/a late-stage capitalism. Capitalism just doesn’t go along very well with respect for other people’s rights.

The question for Anne, and anyone who doesn’t appreciate this condition, is simply: How much further can things go? Must we always paint everything in terms of consumption? Must all our human interactions be predicated on consumption, buying and selling? It seems natural that some humans, if not a majority, would resist such a dour future.

Consider this “doomsday” scenario: When all the things around us are marketed, all our friends are businessmen or marketers, isn’t there something just really, really boring about this? Isn’t this a bit of an artificial reality, not really conducive to our human nature? Won’t we get tired of the fully commodified, Axiom-luxury-spaceship world?  The phrase “late capitalism” itself is optimistic; for it suggests it is nearing the end of capitalism, and that perhaps something better will arrive after.

On that note, I leave you with an ultimate dystopian vision of late-stage capitalism, a 2-minute film by Keiichi Matsuda, perhaps one of the most disturbing/hilarious short films ever.

Augmented (hyper)Reality: Domestic Robocop from Keiichi Matsuda on Vimeo.

is the beehive collective’s “true cost of coal” poster a bourgeois, capitalist project?: a response to keith spencer

(from my colleague at The Seams and the Story)

My friend and former collegiate peer Keith Spencer put up a piece on his blog, Critical Dispenser, critiquing the Beehive Collective’s True Cost of Coal poster. Unlike myself and a lot of other folks fighting mountaintop removal, Keith isn’t a fan of the work. I suggest you visit his blog and read the post, which he says was written from the perspective of a “Postmodern critic attempting to merge Veblenist and Marxist theory.” (OK, I confess, I don’t know what Veblenist theory is.)

What follows is a brief response to Keith’s article, challenging his interpretation of the poster. I should note that I’m writing from the perspective of an anti-mountaintop removal and Appalachian-solidarity activist with anarchist leanings.

This summer, the Beehive Design Collective finished their “True Cost of Coal” poster. It was the culmination of a 2+ year long project that began with story collection (listening projects, in activist lingo) from folks fighting mountaintop removal in Appalachia. The Bees then channeled these stories with pen and ink in to a somewhat busy but profoundly detailed and beautiful artistic work, with which they’re currently touring the country.