Rudolf Bahro on General Emancipation & The Cultural Revolution (Part 3)

Here are Parts 1 and 2.

The discussion of the League of Communists as the embodiment of the “collective intellectual” continues, after which Bahro treats economic and other aspects of the envisaged Cultural Revolution:

“…[T]he League of will and must be in a position, as the collective intellectual, to resolve already within itself the particular problem of the intelligentsia. And this naturally all the sooner, the more it succeeds in uniting in itself the entire emancipatory potential from all groups and strata of society. In order to be this collective intellectual uniting all energies directed towards general emancipation, and to be able to mediate their confluence in a programme of action that is steadily actualized, the League of Communists must be organized differently from the old kind of party. The organizational structure must be governed by the character of the principal activity that it has to perform. A successful work of knowledge requires the access of all participants to the totality of significant information, the ‘horizontal’ and non-hierarchical coordination of investigations on the basis of the self-activity of those involved, the admission of hypotheses that break through the customary frame of ideas, unreserved discussion of different interpretations without any kind of official evaluation by an agency empowered to ‘confirm’ or otherwise, etc. The point of departure must be that the research of the most diverse individuals and groups, presupposing the basically agreed orientation of those involved, leads from the logic of the actual relationships themselves, on which it is focused, to a common understanding, to approximation to truth, i.e. to the adequate expression of the emancipatory interests in view of the of the conditions that are given and to be changed. [….]

If the League of Communists, while freeing itself from its internal chains, also stands outside the continuity of the state apparatus, then it obtains the possibility of also bringing contradiction into the government apparatus, renovating this in a fundamental way, socially instead of just bureaucratically. If the party revolutionized society in the first phase of actually existing socialism with the aid of the state, the apparatus (and up to a certain point successfully so), then the question now is to reorganize the sate and the apparatus with the aid of society, basing this on the surplus consciousness assembled in it. This is in no way a mere administrative task. The apparatus is the sphere of work of a large number of people whose professional complex of interests develops laws of its own. This complex must be dissolved, to prevent the formation of a political bloc around the special interests of these personnel.

The subjugation of the state apparatus to society is the quintessence of the long proclaimed transition from domination over people to the administration of things. If a bureaucracy uncontrolled from below was the original cause of the party having previously had to play the role of a controlling bureaucracy, a super-state apparatus,, then there is only one…solution: the party itself must place control of the bureaucracy and state machine by social forces at the centre of its policy. It must spur people to this task, and inspire them to it by communists having dealings with everyone and uniting everyone with them who ‘thinks a bit’ about their work and their life. They must organize the social forces in such a way that these confront the apparatus on a massive scale as autonomous powers, and can force it into progressive compromises. This means organizing communism as a mass movement. [….] It will become possible to broach the measures anticipated by Marx and Engels in their writings on the Paris Commune of a democratic selection of the state personnel. Instead of appointment or nomination from above, the occupation of positions will be decided on the basis of the proven ability of the candidates, in a dialogue of cultural-revolutionary practice with the masses, working with the autonomous social forces from whose midst the League of Communists itself operates.

The political structure of the cultural-revolutionary practice is not in itself something novel, what is new is rather the necessity of keeping it going permanently. At all historical moments when communism is the real movement abolishing the existing state of affairs that Marx intended it to be, it does not tend to become a relationship between three distinct instances: party/state machine/people. The communists and the people rather form a together a comprehensive bloc whose internal structure cannot be described in terms of relations of subordination. There have been historical moments which have something to tell us as to the possible form of the transition. We can see those moments in many books of the [Hebrew Bible], in the New Testament, in the chorales of the Reformation and the songs and hymns of the infant workers’ movement. There have always been times in which people pressed beyond existing arrangements without being subordinated to the rule of a priestly caste, times of movement, times of a people led by prophecy. Only in such movements did masses and classes who were inevitably subaltern manage to reach the level of historical consciousness, of immediate communication with the universal. In movements of this kind, fishermen from Galilee and Paris workers suddenly rose to the highest possible human dignity attainable. The essence of the coordination of consciousness that prevailed in such movements consists precisely in the convergence of the ideal substance. It is hope that leads the people, and its prophets are nothing more than interpreters who give their deepest emancipatory needs a concrete, articulated and historical expression, in which the totality of what is promised is not lost. [….]

The new League of Communists will reflect in its composition, in its organization, and its style, the present structures and demands of proto-socialist society, and anticipate its future perspectives. Above all, it will be based on the intellectual participation and practical intervention of communists on all fronts of work and life. It will lead society through the influence of its own plans for the processes of social transformation. It will stand for the fraternity of working people in international as well as domestic life.

This gathering must be prepared by a patient propaganda of cultural revolutionary positions, tasks and goals, spelling out their urgency and significance for individuals as something important to their lives and altering their existence. [….] If communists themselves raise the problems of alienation, of subalternity, of the inequality of opportunities for development, and of the irrefutable claims to happiness of all members of society, then they can unreservedly allow themselves a dialogue of partnership with other tendencies. This holds not least for the traditional strivings of Christianity, which converge on precisely the same problems. In our struggle against the rule of reification, the tradition that appeals to Christ’s Sermon on the Mount is an indispensable ally, in so far as it does not enclose itself within the church. [….]

The Economics of the Cultural Revolution

We have [now to investigate] where the cultural revolutionary, communist movement can apply the lever, at what points in the existing mode of production and life its idea can first become a transforming material force. This is the problem of bringing the masses into the cultural revolution, of the realization of a majority consensus in a growing action which presses ever more deeply into the contradictions of the modern human situation. [….] [T]he entire complex of cultural-revolutionary practice, positively formulated as the struggle
—for a redivision of labour,
—for a unitary form of education for fully socialized individuals,
—for children to be rendered capable of education and motivated for learning,
—for the conditions of a new communal life, and
—for the socialization (democratization) of the general process of knowledge and decision-making, can be conceived as the problem of the economics of the cultural revolution, the radical political-economic alternative that it counterposes to the existing economic system. This alternative must be drafted in the form of a programme by stages, directed towards the dynamization of social relations in the reproduction process, which constructively breaks through the status quo in which the social factors are presently in a stalemate situations vis-à-vis one another in the economic process, and brings the political debate over the new economics into the workplace. [….]

It is not [merely] a question of plan or market, use-value or exchange-value, or even centralization or decentralization. Which is in no way to say that these problems would disappear; simply that their secondary significance would then be apparent. Given an overall social organization of labour, political democracy becomes the decisive constituting moment which determines whether the goals of the economic process, the qualitative contents of the plan, are decided by authentic social interests or rather by the restricted power relations and structures of knowledge within the bureaucracy. [….] And yet political democracy, for its part, does not come into being by the abstract good will of a leadership. It is not in the last instance a question of constitutional law. [….]

If Marxist analysis suggests a special role for the intellectual strata in the present situation, it does this in no way to flatter the traditional pride of the intelligentsia, but rather to determine its tasks in the overall process of general emancipation. It is decisively against any misinterpretation of the concept of freedom in the sense of political liberalism. The working people have gained very little, at least immediately, by the intellectuals winning the freedom to shine unrestrained and eloquent in the mass media. The doctrine of the leading role of the working class is highly problematic…but the political and moral intention behind it, where it expressed the duty of progressive intellectuals to the cause of general emancipation, will only become obsolete when the categorical imperative of the young Marx is fulfilled. Its original significance is active solidarity with the most oppressed, without whose liberation all emancipation must remain half-unfinished and thus false. It is necessary to shake the intelligentsia out of their spontaneous class feeling against those less developed, to make them conscious of the reality and extent of their privilege (which involves understanding the mechanisms of motivation and character formation and their social mediation), and the extent to which their frustrations are precisely bound up with the way that others are also frustrated and seek with similar spontaneity to escape from the unfair conditions of competition in school and factory, for example by lack of pleasure in learning in childhood, later by holding back on productive effort, lack of care for materials and machinery, etc.

Above all, it must be recalled yet again that society does not break down into classes or even strata of individuals with compensatory needs on the one hand and with emancipatory needs on the other. It is precisely the intellectualized strata who react by seeking refuge in a private lifestyle for which very many consumer goods are ‘absolutely necessary,’ to a frustration that is occasioned by the political state of affairs. In our society it is a general rule that arrivistes and the privileged can satisfy their compensatory needs very well, while the masses can do so only relatively poorly. Those who are disadvantaged in this way do not enjoy any kind of advantage of innocence, but are bought off with the less valuable products of material and intellectual culture. In these compensatory needs, too, there is naturally a dialectic of progress. In the means of consumption the two types of need that are different in the abstract are united in the concrete individual. What it boils down to is their arrangement in the individual life process, what enjoyment actually means here and now. There exists a social structure of their use and consumption. We cannot and should not seek to break through the reproductive circle of the production and consumption of needs by a policy of reducing consumption, which would be borne by those strata who are already disadvantaged and would lead to the intensification of social contradictions along the wrong lines. On the contrary, in order to lead society out of this vicious circle, we must bring about a genuine equalization in the distribution of those consumer goods that determine the standard of living. Up till now, an advance for those at the bottom has always been measured against the consumption of those at the top, in other words against their appropriation of material goods, sensual and cultural enjoyments, and not by disposal over the social process, let alone a cultural revolutionary sublimation that can dispense with material wealth. In my opinion, we can conclude that a leveling of society with respect to the quantity of consumption would be the condition for rising above the principle of quantity, above compensatory consumption. A policy of this kind would have the tendency to limit the development of new luxury needs and in the long run put a brake on the growth of material needs in general, which is primarily driven forward by the social inequality of powers of appropriation.

The concept of the cultural revolution thus pursues the goal of draining as great as possible a quantity of motivational energy from the compensatory complex. On top of the positive attraction of surplus consciousness by political activation, something must happen to neutralize certain pressing and massively present compensatory needs, at best, moreover, by their relative satiation. First of all, this would involve the adjustment of the most elementary social injustices in income distribution, and a first approach also to those in powers of decision-making. This equalization would aim above all at unburdening the cultural-revolutionary movement to tackle the profound transformation of the structure of needs, shifting the focus of the struggle of social interests away from the appropriation of material means of subsistence and enjoyment that is characterized principally by consumption, and towards the appropriation of culture (which of course also means a different structure of material consumption). The danger of an ‘explosion’ of material needs is particularly threatening for the transition situation, while equalization of incomes is the most important initial measure, and one which equally offers scope for the relatively undisturbed practice of new habits. [….]

The far-reaching elimination of material incentive provides the basis for clearly establishing for the first time in mass social practice the new driving force of intersubjective emulation, the unequal division of abilities and activities which is to be the central theme of the cultural revolution, and presenting this to the general consciousness as a problem. For important as equality in the sphere of consumption is, it still pertains to the periphery of the cultural revolution, which bears on the content of needs, and inherently remains more of a means than an end. Yet this periphery must be secured, in order to organize the forces for the transformation of civilization, and lead these ideologically so far beyond the old structures that they can be reorganized in a new way. In other words, the question here is to produce freedom of movement for the emancipatory interests, to conquer a terrain on which they can stretch out and expand. The communist strategy therefore consists in bringing about a situation in which people can place their immediate interests in relation to the general possibilities and requirements of the epoch, and can rise above all those appropriations that restrict their cultural development. At the same time, communists will avoid acting in any merely restrictive manner towards these compensations, being well that the decisive equalization of material conditions of existence for all members of society is the precondition for gradually overcoming the compensatory orientation of interests and hence the complete dissolution of the former relations of distribution.

In this way, the starting-point will be won for a breakthrough into the cultural-revolutionary process proper: for doing away with the traditional division of labour, the source of all subalternity and alienation, by way of far-reaching interventions in the distribution of labour, in the conditions of socialization and education of individuals, and in the form of regulation of the reproduction process. This process should not be conceived simply as a mechanical succession. The very project of subordinating or neutralizing the compensatory interests can only get off the ground if the elimination of financial stimuli for the masses is linked with much more far-reaching hopes and perspectives, so as simultaneously to build up the new motivations and avoid the disorganizing effects of that otherwise would be temporarily inevitable.”

[Part 4 of Bahro on ‘General Emancipation and The Cultural Revolution’ to follow.]

Getting Adam Smith Wrong…and Getting Adam Smith Right

Unlike Tea Party aficionados, Libertarians, and recalcitrant neo-classical economists, Adam Smith (1723-1790), the Scottish moral philosopher and pioneering theorist of political economy, did not indulge in the fashionable nonsense that vociferously claims government is the locus of the worst that ails us, economically and otherwise. Smith understood that for markets to realize virtues of efficiency or freedom, the State, by way of its government, has to make and enforce laws regulating the nature and role of property, rules of exchange and contract, in other words, government is rightfully charged with providing the requisite “background” conditions for market exchange and thus, for example, plays an important role in determining whether or not such exchange will be between true “equals” or arise, say, out of desperation, servitude, or any quality that makes for an ethically disturbing disparate standing between parties to an exchange (e.g., a ‘free labor market’ is the product of state regulation!), hence Smith’s concern, for example, with the coercive nature of labor contracts.

And like Ricardo and Marx (and classical political economists generally), Smith had a corresponding appreciation of the social embeddedness of markets, one utterly at odds, for example, with libertarian-like or abstract neo-classical “imperialist” pictures of the marketplace, one reason Smith could have a nuanced appreciation of how social capabilities may depend on a person’s relative income vis-à-vis those of others with whom he or she interacts (hence the concern with ‘relative’ deprivation and the significance of Smithian economic reasoning in coming to understand why poverty is hard to eliminate solely by raising the average level of income without at the same time addressing issues of inequality of incomes).[1] Smith was likewise sensitive to the coerciveness of labor contracts and aware of the asymmetric power of agents bargaining over the distribution of the social surplus.

Smith did not view the economy, descriptively or normatively, as independent of law, convention or power and thus could in no way believe government was an impediment to all that is good, an anachronistic ideological interpretation that fails to comprehend the basic social, economic and moral views of Smith. For instance, as Debra Satz recently reminded us, ‘[Smith] was tolerant of governmental regulation of wages on behalf of laborers: ‘Whenever the regulation…is in favor of the workmen, it is always just and equitable; but it is sometimes otherwise when in favor of the masters.’”[2] Smith understood the role of “justice and equity” as a sufficient rationale for intervention in markets, labor or otherwise (Smith could, and did, countenance government intervention for the reduction of poverty). Again with Satz, it is important to recall that Smith’s “arguments against government intervention in markets are focused on a specific social order: feudalism. Many of the regulations that he vociferously condemned were vestiges of a precapitalist and undemocratic social order: the narrow interests of monopolistic merchants seeking to protect their inflated profits and the rules of the powerful guilds that restricted the free entry of individuals into professions and trades.”[3]

Smith wrote in favor of taxes on luxuries because it was in this way that “the indolence and vanity of the rich is made to contribute in a very easy manner to the relief of the poor.” As Stephen Holmes remarks, “Redistribution by progressive taxation is justified not by a theory that the rich got rich at the expense of the poor, but on the basis of a more general belief that the rich got rich with the implicit or explicit cooperation of the poor.”[4]

Furthermore, Smith’s views are neither economically or morally compatible with those of Ayn Rand, for example, indeed, were he among us today, one can readily imagine Smith concluding that Rand’s philosophy is conspicuous for its economic and moral repugnance.

A handful of oft-cited quotations from Smith’s An Inquiry into the Causes and Causes of the Wealth of Nations (1776) from conservatives or libertarians typically betray a complete lack of acquaintance with his writings, let alone a deep understanding. A contemporary economist and philosopher, Amartya Sen, is an impeccably reliable source for exposition of Smith’s views, particularly when it comes to clearing away commonplace and superficial ideologically motivated shibboleths. As Sen writes in Ethics and Economics (1987),

“It is important to distinguish between two different issues in the problem of self-interested behaviour. There is, first, the question of whether people actually behave in an exclusively self-interested way. There is a second question: If people behaved in an exclusively self-interested way, would they achieve certain specified successes, e.g. efficiency of one kind or another? Both of these propositions have been attributed to Adam Smith. In fact, however, there is little evidence that he believed in either proposition, contrary to the constant references to the ‘Smithian’ view on the ubiquity and efficiency of self-interested behaviour.”

Sometimes it is claimed, for example, that Smith identified “prudence” with “self-interest.” But this is clearly inaccurate: “As Smith explains in The Theory of Moral Sentiments, prudence is ‘the union of’ the two qualities of ‘reason and understanding,’ on the one hand, and ‘self-command’ on the other. The notion of ‘self-command,’ which Smith took from the Stoics, is not in any sense identical with ‘self-interest’ or what Smith called ‘self-love.’

Indeed, the Stoic roots of Smith’s understanding of ‘moral sentiments’ also makes it clear why both sympathy and self-discipline played such an important part in Smith’s conception of good behaviour. As Smith himself puts it, ‘man, according to the Stoics, ought to regard himself, not as something separated and detached, but as a citizen of the world, a member of the vast commonwealth of nature,’ and ‘to the interest of this great community, he ought at all times to be willing that his own little interest should be sacrificed.’ Even though prudence goes well beyond self-interest maximization, Smith saw it in general only as being ‘of all virtues that which is most helpful to the individual,’ whereas ‘humanity, justice, generosity, and public spirit, are the qualities most useful to others.’

It is instructive to examine how it is that Smith’s championing of ‘sympathy,’ in addition to ‘prudence’ (including ‘self-command’), has tended to be so lost in the writings of many economists championing the so-called ‘Smithian’ position on self-interest and its achievements. It is certainly true, that Smith saw, as indeed anybody would, that many of our actions are, in fact, guided by self-interest, and some of them do indeed produce good results. One of the passages of Adam Smith that has been quoted again and again by the latter-day Smithians is the following: ‘It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer or the baker, that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest. We address ourselves, not to their humanity but to their self-love, and never talk to them of our own necessities but of their advantages.’

While many admirers of Smith do not seem to have gone beyond this bit about the butcher and the brewer, a reading of even this passage would indicate that what Smith is doing here is to specify why and how normal transactions in the market are carried out, and why and how division of labour works, which is the subject of the chapter in which the quoted passage occurs. But the fact that Smith noted the mutually advantageous trades are very common does not indicate at all that he thought self-love alone, or indeed prudence broadly construed, could be adequate for a good society. Indeed, he maintained precisely the opposite. He did not rest economic salvation on some unique motivation. In fact, Smith chastised Epicurus for trying to see virtue entirely in terms of prudence, and Smith seized the occasion to rap ‘philosophers on their knuckles’ for trying to reduce everything to one virtue:

‘By running up all the different virtues too to this one species of propriety, Epicurus indulged in a propensity which is natural to all men, but which philosophers are apt to cultivate with a peculiar fondness, as the great means of displaying their ingenuity, the propensity to account for all appearance from as few principles as possible.’

It is a matter of some irony, that this ‘peculiar fondness’ would be attributed to Smith himself but his overenthusiastic admirers in making him the ‘guru’ of self-interest (contrary to what he actually said).

Smith’s attitude to ‘self-love’ has something in common with that of Edgeworth, who thought that ‘economical calculus’ as opposed to ethical evaluation, was particularly relevant to two specific activities, to wit, ‘war and contract.’ The reference to contract is of course precisely similar to Smith’s reference to trade, because trade takes place on the basis of mutually advantageous (explicit or implicit) contracts. But there are many other activities inside economics and outside it in which the simple pursuit of self-interest is not the great redeemer, and Smith did not assign a generally superior role to the pursuit of self-interest in any of his writings. [emphasis added] [….]

The misinterpretation of Smith’s complex attitude to motivation and markets, and the neglect of his ethical analysis of sentiments and behaviour, fits well into the distancing of economics from ethics that has occurred within the development of modern economics. [….] The support that believers in, and advocates of, self-interested behaviour have sought in Adam Smith is, in fact, hard to find on a wider and less biased reading of Smith. The professor of moral philosophy and the pioneer economist did not, in fact, lead a life of spectacular schizophrenia. Indeed, it is precisely the narrowing of the broad Smithian view of human beings, in modern economics, that can be seen as one of the major deficiencies of contemporary economic theory.”[5]

Consider the following from Smith’s The Theory of Moral Sentiments (1759):

“How selfish soever man may be supposed, there are evidently some principles in his nature, which interest him in the fortune of others, and render their happiness necessary to him, though he derives nothing from it, except the pleasure of seeing it. Of this kind is pity or compassion, the emotion which we feel for the misery of others, when either we see it, or are made to conceive of it in a very lively manner. That we often derive sorrow from the sorrow of others, is a matter of fact too obvious to require any instances to prove it; for this sentiment, like all the other original passions of human nature, I by no means confined to the virtuous and humane, though they may perhaps feel it with the most exquisite sensibility. The greatest ruffian, the most hardened violator of the laws of society, is not altogether without it.”

“By the imagination we place ourselves in his situation [that is, of ‘our brother upon the rack’], we conceive ourselves enduring all the same torments, we enter as it were into his body, and become in some measure the same person with him, and thence form some idea of his sensations, and even feel something which, though weaker in degree, is not altogether unlike them. His agonies, when they are thus brought home to ourselves, when we have thus adopted and made them our own, begin at last to affect us, and se then tremble and shudder at the thought of what he feels. [….] That is the source of our fellow-feeling for the misery of others, that it is by changing places in fancy with the sufferer, that we come either to conceive or to be affected by what he feels, may be demonstrated by many obvious observations, if it should not be thought sufficiently evident of itself.” [….] In every passion of which the mind is susceptible, the emotions of the by-stander always correspond to what, by bringing the case home to himself, he imagines should be the sentiments of the sufferer. Pity and compassion are words appropriated to signify our fellow-feeling with the sorrow of others. Sympathy, thought its meaning was, perhaps, originally the same, may now, however, with much impropriety be made use of to denote our fellow-feeling with any passion whatever.” [….]

“But whatever may be the cause of sympathy, or however it may be excited, nothing pleases us more than to observe in other men a fellow-feeling with all the emotions in our own breast; nor are we ever so shocked as by the appearance of the contrary. Those who are fond of deducing all our sentiments from certain refinements of self-love, think themselves at no loss to account, according to their own principles, both for this pleasure and this pain. Man, say they, conscious of his own weakness, and of the need which he has for the assistance of others, rejoices whenever he observes that they adopt his own passions, because he is then assured of that assistance; and grieves whenever he observes the contrary, because he is then assured of their opposition. But both the pleasure and the pain are always felt so instantaneously, and often upon such frivolous occasions, that is seems evident that neither of them can be derived from any such self-interested consideration.” [….]

“And hence it is, that to feel much for others, and little for ourselves, that to restrain our selfish, and indulge our benevolent affections, constitutes the perfection of human nature; and can alone produce among mankind that harmony of sentiments and passions in which consists their whole grace and propriety. As to love our neighbour as ourselves is the great law of Christianity, so it is the great precept of nature to love ourselves only as we love our neighbour, or what comes to the same thing, as our neighbour is capable of loving us.”

“The plaintive voice of misery, when heard at a distance, will not allow us to be indifferent about the person from whom it comes. As soon as it strikes our ear, it interests us in his fortune, and, if continued, forces us almost involuntarily to fly to his assistance.” [….]

“Generosity, humanity, kindness, compassion, mutual friendship, and esteem, all the social and benevolent affections, when expressed in the countenance of behaviour, even towards those who are not peculiarly connected with ourselves, please the indifferent spectator [This is Smith’s name for the model of one who judges with impartiality, a model he derived from the Stoics, and is sometimes used interchangeably with his notion of ‘conscience.’] upon almost every occasion. His sympathy with the person who feels those passions exactly coincides with his concern for the person who is the object of them. The interest, which, as a man, he is obliged to take in the happiness of this last, enlivens his fellow feeling with the sentiments of the other, whose emotions are employed about the same object. We have always, therefore, the strongest disposition to sympathize with the benevolent affections. They appear in every respect agreeable to us. We enter into the satisfaction both of the person who feels them, and of the person who is the object of them.” [….]

“The disposition to admire, and almost to worship, the rich and the powerful, and to despise, or, at least, to neglect, persons of poor and mean condition, though necessary both to establish and to maintain the distinction of ranks and the order of society, is, at the same time, the great and most universal cause of the corruption of our moral sentiments.”

“We desire both to be respectable, and to be respected. We dread both to be contemptible, and to be contemned. But, upon coming into the world, we soon find that wisdom and virtue are by no means the sole objects of respect; nor vice and folly, of contempt. We frequently see the respectful attentions of the world more strongly directed towards the rich and the great, than towards the wise and the virtuous. We see frequently the vices and follies of the powerful much less despised than the poverty and weakness of the innocent. To deserve, to acquire, and to enjoy, the respect and admiration of mankind, are the great objects of ambition and emulation. Two different roads are presented to us, equally leading to the attainment of this so much desired object; the one, by the study of wisdom and the practice of virtue; the other, by the acquisition of wealth and greatness. Two different characters are presented to our emulation; the one, of proud ambition and ostentatious avidity; the other, of humble modesty and equitable justice. Two different models, two different pictures, are held out so us, according to which we may fashion our own character and behaviour; the one more gaudy and glittering in its colouring; the other more correct and more exquisitely beautiful in its outline; the one forcing itself upon the notice of every wandering eye; the other attracting the attention of scarce any body but the most studious and careful observer. They are the wise and virtuous chiefly, a select, though, I am afraid, but a small part, who are the real and steady admirers of wisdom and virtue. The great mob of mankind are the admirers and worshippers, and what may seem more extraordinary, most frequently the disinterested admirers and worshippers, of wealth and greatness. [….] It is scarce agreeable to good morals, or even to good language, perhaps, to say, that mere wealth and greatness, abstracted from merit and virtue, deserve our respect.” [….]

“When we are always so much more deeply affected by whatever concerns other men; what is it which prompts the generous, upon all occasions, and the mean upon many, to sacrifice their own interests to the greater interests of others? It is not the soft power of humanity, it is not that feeble spark of benevolence which nature has lighted up in the human heart, that is thus capable of counteracting the strongest impulses of self-love. It is a stronger power, a more forcible motive, which exerts itself upon such occasions. It is reason, principle, conscience, the inhabitant of the breast, the man within, the great judge and arbiter of our conduct. It is he who, whenever we are about to act so as to affect the happiness of others, calls to us, with a voice capable of astonishing the most presumptuous of our passions, that we are but one of the multitude, in no respect better than any other in it; and that when we prefer ourselves so shamefully and so blindly to others, we become the proper objects of resentment, abhorrence, and exertation. It is from him only that we learn the real littleness of ourselves, and the natural misrepresentations of self-love can be corrected only by the eyes of this impartial spectator. It is he who shews us the propriety of generosity and the deformity of injustice; the propriety of resigning the greatest interests of our own, for the greater interests of others; and the deformity of doing the smallest injury to another, in order to obtain the greatest benefit to ourselves.”[6]

Notes:
[1] On Smith’s appreciation of “relative deprivation,” see Sen’s discussion in his essay, “Conceptualizing and Measuring Poverty,” in David B. Grusky and Ravi Kanbur, eds., Poverty and Inequality. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2006: 35-37.
[2] Debra Satz, Why Some Things Should Not Be for Sale: The Moral Limits of Markets. New York: Oxford University Press, 2010: 43.
[3] Ibid., pp. 43-44.
[4] Stephen Holmes, Passions and Constraint: On the Theory of Liberal Democracy. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1995: 252. Holmes’ discussion of Smith throughout his book is an antidote to much of the nonsense one finds among contemporary invocations of Smith’s putative views.
[5] Amartya Sen, On Ethics and Economics. Cambridge, MA: Blackwell, 1987: 21-28. See too S.M. Amadae’s chapter, “Adam Smith’s System of Natural Liberty,” in her Rationalizing Capitalist Democracy: The Cold War Origins of Rational Choice Liberalism. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 2003: 193-219.
[6] Adam Smith, The Theory of Moral Sentiments. Washington, DC: Regnery Publishing, 1997 (1759 and revised ed., 1790).

Rudolf Bahro on “General Emancipation” (Part 2)

We continue Bahro’s treatment of the general principles and axiomatic values that guide his conceptions of “general emancipation” and “cultural revolution” from his book, The Alternative in Eastern Europe (English ed., 1978). The following biographical material is found on the inside back jacket cover of the book:

“[Rudolf Baho] became a member of the ruling Socialist Unity Party of Germany in 1954, and from 1954 to 1959 studied philosophy at the Humboldt University of East Berlin. His subsequent career has been entirely within the official party and state apparatuses. In 1959 and 1960 he participated in the campaign to collectivise agriculture in the Olderbruch region; he then became editor of a university paper at Griefswald on the Baltic coast, and later an official of the Union of Scientific Employees in Berlin. Between 1965 and 1967 he was deputy editor of the youth and student magazine Forum and he has subsequently been employed in a variety of posts related to the organisation of GDR industry. His doctoral dissertation, on the formation specialists in state enterprises, [began in 1972] and was completed in 1975, but was rejected on the grounds that it lacked the necessary ‘scientific foundations.’ The Alternative was initiated under the impact of the Warsaw Pact invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968. In August 1977, soon after the publication of the book in West Germany, Bahro was arrested and charged with being a West Germany spy. Though a broad international campaign has been launched for his release, it was announced in July 1978 that he had been sentenced, after a closed trial, to eight years of imprisonment for ‘espionage.’”

Bahro was released from prison the following year as part of an amnesty granted in conjunction with the thirty-year celebration of the founding of the German Democratic Republic (GDR). He was allowed to leave the country (along with his former wife and their two children) and settled in West Germany. Bahro immediately became involved with European environmentalist and peace oriented social movements and in particular the nascent political party Die Grünen (‘the Greens’).

Bahro on “general emancipation,“ Part 2 (Part 1 is here):

“All people must obtain the real possibility of access to all essential realms of activity, and moreover right up to the highest functional level. For cultural goods are appropriated only as far as it is possible to share in their creation—either oneself, or by the mediation of other individuals with whom one can communicate on an equal basis. In principle, every one must be able to raise himself to the level of scientific and technical means which our society uses in its relationship with nature, and especially to the level of social regulation and institutional functioning. Social equality also demands in emotional and aesthetic life certain mental structures which allow a graduated reaction both inwardly and outwardly, one which corresponds with the degree of abstraction of the more general connections represented by higher levels in the hierarchy of information processing. The question accordingly arises as to how individuals can acquire and learn effective behavior, the corresponding dispositions of a motivational, cognitive and emotional kind, and how work, education and life, the organization of society, the system and mode of function of its institutions, should accordingly be constructed.

Subalternity, which in varying degrees and characters affects the overwhelming majority of people today, is an effect of the entire mode of production and can therefore only overcome with its transformation. [....] The degree of possible subaltenity grows with the number of steps in the hierarchy. Here there is a profound contradiction in the historical process. The greater and more complex the social association, the more subaltern individuals become. In the gens and the tribe it is impossible to be as subaltern, as impotent and devoid of influence as in the modern national state. We can see from this how great the task of cultural revolution is, in seeking to restructure the objective conditions of development of human subjectivity. The major directions of its intervention against the causes of subalternity and for the realization of genuine equality, directions which mutually presuppose one another, are as follows:

1) a redivision of labour according to the principle that everyone should perform an equal share in activities at the various functional levels, and the establishing of social equality between those carrying out the tasks of necessary labour by making it impossible for any person to be subsumed by a certain restricted or subordinate activity; 2) the opening of unrestricted access for all to a general education embracing natural science and technique, society and art, at the highest (‘university’) level, as the alternative to the differentiation of social strata according to level of education and to socially incompetent bodies of specialists; 3) concern for childhood which fosters and promotes the corresponding capacity of readiness for development for the overwhelming majority of the new generation, instead of inhibiting and destroying this for most of them as does the style of education of a patriarchal society geared to economic performance; 4) the establishment of conditions for a new communal life on the basis of autonomous group activities, around which fulfilling human relationships can be crystallized, so as to put a limit to the isolation and loneliness of individuals in the isolated compartments of the modern world, e.g., work, school, family, and leisure; 5) the socialization (democratization) of the general process of knowledge and decision, its constitution outside of and above the hierarchical apparatus that secures the normal functioning of the reproduction in progress.”

At this juncture, Bahro proposes a model of the “collective intellectual” described in the form of a “League of Communists” he deems suitable to the Soviet Union and the Party-State regimes of “actually existing socialism” in Eastern and Central Europe (the ‘apparatus’ below) in the late 1970s. I think there are features of this model that may be directly or indirectly applicable to current conditions in the hyper-industrialized nation-states so I will quote from his explication here and there, asking the reader not to get caught up in the pejorative connotations invariably associated these days with the adjective “communist” (here we might profit from a distinction between a ‘Communist’ and a ‘communist,’ the latter having little in common with the official Communist parties of the Cold War era). When Bahro proffers the notion of a “League of Communists” we should, therefore, look beyond the specific rhetorical appellation, for what is referred to is intended to counter the suffocating power of the existing Communist party’s bureaucratic hierarchy, a party that had become indistinguishable from and thus identifiable with the oppressive and coercive powers of the State, constitutionally incapable of reforming itself. Bahro’s League of Communists is thus a counter-hegemonic representation of the necessary leadership incarnate in a “collective intellectual” that assumes the form of a “social movement,” not a political party. Bahro continues:

“In order to exert political influence on the historical process, the emancipatory interests must be organized in a connected and serious way at an overall social level. [….] Absorbed consciousness is organized as a seamless web under the aegis of the apparatus. Against it the revolutionary potential needs a powerful base of operations of its own, offering people a solidaristic back-up [to] their emancipatory needs and containing a higher moral-political authority than the apparatus, by making possible and protecting the advance of integral modes of behaviour that foreshadow a new whole. For the future, too, this base must remain unconditionally independent of the relations of subordination in the realm of hierarchical functioning and necessary labour that would otherwise be dominant. If not, then, revolutionary action will remain isolated and dependent on individual accident. People need a firm point outside the existing relations of domination, if they are to overcome these that practical-critical activity, constantly reoriented to the goal, which is indispensable.

To provide this base for revolutionary and transcending action and behaviour is the task of a genuine communist party, a League of Communists united around the idea of general emancipation. It must inspire the system of social forces and organizations in the name of a constructive and but substantially transforming counterforce, which puts the state hierarchy in its proper place. [….] To achieve ideological hegemony means to establish the predominance of an integral behavioural tendency in the perspective of general emancipation, among all groups and strata of society [emphasis added]. What is needed for this is that the party, instead of being organized as a super-state apparatus, must be organized as the collective intellectual, which mediates the reflection of the whole society and its consciousness of all problems of social development, and which anticipates in itself something of the human progress for which it is working. [….]

The concept of a collective intellectual is in no way aimed at representing the special interests of the intelligentsia.[1] Since all people have emancipatory interests, which cannot be realized under the conditions of the traditional division of labour, the attempt to reflect the problems of realizing these interests must in principle be a universal one. The League of Communists must therefore be open to all those who have the need to go beyond pursuit of their immediate interests, having recognized that the barriers to their self-realization bear a social character. By this action they act as intellectuals. This is of course a use of the concept that goes beyond the traditional social structural sense. It assumes [with Noam Chomsky] that all thinking people are at least potential intellectuals, and can acquire the ability to think dialectically beyond the hierarchy of social connections and intervene in these as active experimenters and constructors. [….] In as much as the intellectuals still form a traditional social stratum or group, they must become conscious of their special interests [e.g., professionalism, careerism, desire for peer group esteem and status, cultivated ‘tastes,’ the privileges of intellectual over manual labor, and so on] with the aim of restraining these as far as possible. This asceticism in relation to the satisfaction of their own immediate needs is precisely the condition for belonging to the party of general emancipation, the proof of the ability to think as a communist.[2] [….] Anyone who seeks in the League of Communists simply the most favourable conditions for producing his own individuality will today remain socially unproductive. In traditional China, under the Tang dynasty, [Mahāyāna] Buddhism culminated in a character who can be seen as a sister to Prometheus. In the very process of attaining Buddhahood, [the bodhisattva] Kuan Yin, ‘hearing the cries of the world,’ turns back and vows to renounce her own divinity until, with her aid, all the suffering of the world is extinguished, and all beings have attained the same highest level of spiritual existence. This metaphor may well be appropriate for that type of solidarity which needs to prevail in society when the focus of social inequality is shifted to the division of labor and education.”[3]

Notes:
[1] On these “special interests,” see Sartre’s lectures delivered in Tokyo and Kyoto in 1965 and published as “A Plea for Intellectuals,” in Jean-Paul Sartre (John Mathews, tr.), Between Existentialism and Marxism. New York: Morrow Quill, 1979 (NLB, 1974, and in French, Editions Gallimard, 1972).
[2] Cf. Gandhi’s invocation of the karma yoga ideal found in the Bhagavad Gītā in which there is an indissoluble “connection between the service of suffering humanity and the process of self-purification,” and thus the “enormous importance that [he] attached to what he called the ‘Constructive Programme’ launched by the voluntary servants of the people—dedicated missionaries and conscientious revolutionaries bound by vows, willing to introduce the monastic as well as the heroic ideal into political and social life.” From Raghavan Iyer’s The Moral and Political Thought of Mahatma Gandhi (Santa Barbara, CA: Concord Grove Press, 2nd ed., 1983, 1st ed., Oxford University Press, 1973): 49 and 56.
[3] Cf. Gandhi’s understanding of dharma, that is, spiritual and moral duty or obligation (it might also connote moral or natural law), which, “in his view, has no meaning apart from lokasamgraha, the welfare of the whole world. Self-conquest is not just a means to self-realization as they both must be valued in terms of their contribution to the common good of humanity. The crucial point for Gandhi, as for some traditional Indian schools, was that dharma must not be taken in a formal sense, as laid down by scripture or custom, but rather as the object of discovery, the self-chosen means of self-discipline of every human being who wishes to qualify as a moral agent.” Iyer: 68.

[Part 3 to follow anon.]

David Harvey on the "crises of capitalism"

Please see this YouTube link to a talk by David Harvey for the RSA—the Royal Society for the encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce—on the “crises of capitalism.” Wonderful animation accompanies the lecture.

To widen our perspective yet further, it should go without saying that polemical rhetoric against capitalism, or free trade and globalization, can only be made in the context of a nuanced economic and historical accounting of the virtues and vices of capitalism, one made along the lines, say, by the Marxist economist Meghnad Desai in Marx’s Revenge: The Resurgence of Capitalism and the Death of Statist Socialism (2002):

“Capitalism is not a kind or a benevolent system. It is the most effective mode of production discovered so far in wealth creation [despite its endemic ‘cycles, with their manias, crashes, and panics’]. It has no overarching objective, since it works through the profit-seeking efforts of millions of capitalists. It generates economic growth, prosperity, and employment as side-effects. It also causes much misery and destruction in its tendency towards incessant change. But over the last two hundred years, it has achieved the largest gain in well-being in all previous millennia. For one thing, many more people are alive now than in 1800 (around six times as many), and they live longer on average—between ten to twenty years longer—than they did then. [….] If length of life can be taken as a crude measure of potential well-being, a billion people living, say, forty years on average in 1800 compared to six billion people living sixty year today speaks volumes for the success of capitalism. In 1800, perhaps two thirds of that billion were poor; today, at most a quarter of the six billion are poor. Yet the reduction of poverty is neither automatic, nor to be taken for granted.

Adam Smith was not wrong, however, in saying that the new system of natural liberty imposed the cost of inequality while delivering a universal betterment of living standards. More people have been brought out of poverty in the last two hundred years, especially since 1945, than ever before in history. The very idea that poverty could be eliminated could not have occurred in any precapitalist stage. Capitalism provides the means for eliminating poverty, but these means were not directed immediately, or evenly, in the course of its development.”[1]

China, and to some extent India (e.g., the state of Kerala), provide compelling contemporary evidence that capitalism can make enormous strides in addressing the question of poverty, but as both China and India make plain, this is often purchased at the price of recalcitrant and novel forms of inequality (gender, geographical, urban/rural, income, and otherwise). The creation of new forms of “relative” poverty and inequality, the system’s “manias, crashes, and panics,” and the urgent ecological and environmental problems we face today, are among the more prominent and pressing reasons we have to endeavor, with Marx, to look beyond (in an Hegelian dialectical sense) this economic system (although Marx himself had very little to say about socialism and communism, his analytical prowess being devoted to capitalism). Along with Marxists like Desai and Harvey, and the late Green political theorist Rudolf Bahro, we should ask ourselves:

“Is it possible to have a society that is not merely self-organizing, but consciously so? A society fully self-conscious of its own workings, and able to direct them, where individuals are not alienated from their work, or from themselves, but fully participate in their self-emancipation, and realize the full potential of the species-being that they are—in other words, Socialism beyond Capitalism?”

As Desai makes powerfully pellucid, any economic transcendence of capitalism will have to incorporate a full and honest accounting of its historical accomplishments and economic virtues, or transcendence by way of Hegelian-like negation and sublation. In other words, sloganeering along the lines of “capitalism sucks” or crude anti-globalization polemics is pointless, not unlike (assuming the sloganeering and polemics are sincere) the reasons Marx had for excoriating the socialists of his time and place for “their delusions about the prospects of achieving socialism.”

And yet there is no historical teleology or political necessity or uncontested portrait of human nature that commits us to passive acceptance of capitalism’s periodic if not predictable and increasingly intolerable—at least ethically speaking, as well as from the vistas and vantage points provided by democratic theory and praxis—“manias, crashes, and panics.”

As to the various means to the “transcendent” end of socialism or something very close to same, I hope to address that topic in future posts, so it must suffice for now to state my endorsement of Gandhi’s (and Jacques Maritain’s) rejection of the doctrine of double moral standards, namely, the “common contention that there are two levels or types or standards of morality, one for the individual in his private life and in his immediate surroundings, the other for political life and collective conduct.”[2] And thus with regard to the morally legitimate means employed in the pursuit of socialism, I think we should be ethically bound and thus politically circumscribed by the recognition that the end does not justify the means, indeed, that means and ends are interdependent if not convertible terms,[3] as expressed in the following propositions derived from statements by Gandhi:

(1) It is enough to know the means. Means and ends are convertible terms. (2) We always have control over the means but not over the end. (3) Our progress toward the goal will be in exact proportion to the purity of our means. (4) Instead of saying that means are after all means, we should affirm that means are after all everything. As the means so the end.[4]

Raghavan Iyer explains these four propositions:

“The first statement rejects the notion that in our actual conduct we can make a firm and decisive distinction between means and ends. Any psychology of action requires this rejection of the conventional conceptual habit which makes us ascribe to ourselves greater knowledge and assurance than we actually possess. We can know, at least potentially, the means available in a way we cannot know the elusive end. Recognition of the interdependence of ends and means implies that we have some knowledge of the moral and political quality of the chosen end, whatever the complex consequences turn out to be. The second statement asserts, as a contingent truth about about the extent and limit of our free will, that the individual’s capacity to determine what he can do in any specific situation at any given time is much greater than this powers of anticipation, prediction, or control over the consequences of his action. The third statement expresses the faith in the law of karma, under which there is an exact causal connection between the extent of the moral purity (detachment, disinterestedness, and the degree of moral awareness) of an act and the measure of individual effectiveness in promoting or pursuing and securing a morally worthy end over a period of time. The moral law of karma has its analogues in the Moirae and Nemesis of the ancient Greeks, the Nornor of Scandinavian mythology, the sense of fate in the Icelandic Saga, and in all religious traditions: ‘As ye sow, so shall ye reap.’ This spiritual conviction cannot be conclusively verified or falsified empirically. The fourth statement is a practical recommendation that we must be primarily or even wholly concerned with the immediate adoption of what we regard as a morally worthy or intrinsically justifiable means. This recommendation may be accepted by those who subscribe to the second statement but it is mandatory for those who share the conviction implicit in the third statement.”[5]

As Iyer proceeds to point out, the closest approximation to this formulation of the means-end relationship in political theory and praxis is found in the work of Jacques Maritain. Both Gandhi and Maritain were clear in their repudiation of reliance on “technical rationalizations” and “piecemeal social engineering” in politics and both men were emphatic in their decisive rejection of so-called pragmatist or realist conceptions of politics as well as the correlative dominant moral doctrine of “double standards”cited above.

Notes:

[1] Meghnad Desai, Marx’s Revenge: The Resurgence of Capitalism and the Death of Statist Socialism. London: Verso, 2002: 313-314.

[2] Raghavan N. Iyer, The Moral and Political Thought of Mahatma Gandhi. Santa Barbara, CA: Concord Grove Press, 2nd ed., 1983 (1st ed., 1973, Oxford University Press): 58.

[3] Ethically speaking, this is significantly different from, and certainly more helpful than, practically speaking, Sartre’s admonition to the intellectual: “Since an end is always, in effect, the unity of its means, he must examine the latter in the light of the principle that all means are good if efficacious, provided they do not deform the end pursued.” See his important lectures delivered in Tokyo and Kyoto in 1965 and published as “A Plea for Intellectuals,” in Jean-Paul Sartre (John Mathews, tr.), Between Existentialism and Marxism. New York: Morrow Quill, 1979 (NLB, 1974, and in French, Editions Gallimard, 1972): 263.

[4] Raghavan N. Iyer, Parapolitics: Toward the City of Man. New York: Oxford University Press, 1979: 133.

[5] Ibid., p. 144.

Rudolf Bahro on “General Emancipation” (Part 1)

Marxists have a defensive attitude towards utopias. It was so laborious to escape from them in the past. But today utopian thought has a new necessity.—Rudolf Bahro (1935-1997)

“Today it is general emancipation that is the absolute necessity, since in the blind play of subaltern egoisms, lack of solidarity, the antagonism of atomized and alienated individuals, groups, peoples and conglomerates of all kinds, we are hastening ever more quickly to the point of no return. This is something we must be aware of before we ask how it is possible. [….]

The general emancipation is…the liberation of individuals from all socially determined limitations on their development, which necessarily had to have the outcome of their exclusion from participation in the determination of general affairs, from the conscious bringing about of social changes. [….] General emancipation will promote first and foremost the conditions for the activity of appropriation to become universal. It is accomplished to the extent that men and women are positively placed in a position to appropriate creatively the social totality—or to put it another way, to make subjectively their own the quintessence of the overall cultural achievement that mankind has so far produced or reproduced (i.e., handed down). It is a condition for this that social life in general, and in particular the process of production, including its informational superstructure, is organized in such a way that everyone can acquire all the individual abilities that correspond to the general level of the existing productive forces and the system of social regulation.

Here it already becomes evident that the conditions for general emancipation go far beyond the provision of material means in the narrower sense. The major ‘means of development’ becomes more and more the organization of the social whole as such. It is in this field above all that the objective basis for the ‘development of individuals into complete individuals’ must be created. [….]

Today we have for the first time in history a really massive ‘surplus consciousness,’ i.e. an energetic mental capacity that is no longer absorbed by the immediate necessities and dangers of human existence and can thus orient itself to more distant problems. Previously, the scarceness of the means of satisfaction and development that are necessary for production and reproduction of the highest intellectual faculties always counterposed educated elites and uneducated masses. [….] [Now, however,] technology demands educated masses and at the same time brings about the conditions for liquidating individual underdevelopment and subalternity. The problem is to drive forward the ‘overproduction’ of consciousness, so as to put the whole historical past ‘on its head,’ and to make the idea into the decisive material force, to guide things to a radical transformation that goes still deeper than the customary transition from one formation to another within one and the same civilization. We are now facing, and what has in fact already begun, is a cultural revolution in the truest sense of the term: a transformation of the entire subjective form of life of the masses, something that can only be compared with that other transition which introduced humanity into class society, by way of patriarchy, the vertical division of labor, and the state. In this second cultural revolution man will found his existence on his consciousness, on the ‘highest mode of existence of matter,’ and concentrate on the social organization of this noosphere so as to regulate his natural relationship anew from this point of departure. [….]

We must be clear about the psychological dimension of the problem of individuality in a supercomplex industrial society. The various spheres of life—work, education, domestic living, recreation—are separated to such an extent, and almost all activities so far depersonalized, even private relationships robbed of so many necessities, that alienation of man from man threatens to become the general fate. The misfortune of loneliness, of total loss of communication under the gigantic surface of abstract, spiritually indifferent functional activities, is encroaching ever deeper. We find lack of emotional connection even in the intimate contacts of the small family, this final residue of original communality. A mode of life that spells so much disharmony for the individuals involved may well be progressive according to some arbitrary criterion, but it does not offer any perspective of human emancipation. [….]

Our species can and will continue to improve its material base, but it must break with megalomania for the sake of its own survival and of the meaningfulness of life, it must learn collective respect for the natural order, which up till now it has managed to disturb rather than to improve. It must continue its ascent as a ‘journey inwards.’ [….] The development of the industrially developed countries in the last few decades has proved that the problem of general emancipation does not in any way consist in ensuring a sufficient material foundation in terms of means of subsistence. This certainly remains an indispensable precondition (though the necessary scope of this basis is probably more variable than we usually assume, when we fix our glance too narrowly on the actual present standard of our own society), and ‘when you’ve covered your nakedness, you’ve got dignity’—but not automatically. The quantity and range of goods and enjoyments that intrude for consumption and distort the individual’s deployment of his time, on the one hand by an increase in abstract labor, on the other hand by the passive reception of what has been ‘bought for dear money,’ can even end up blocking the sources of emancipation and producing a parasitic mentality. [….] What stubbornly proves to be the real problem of general emancipation is the alienation of individuals from the sources of the social power that they themselves have produced; their impotence and lack of influence on their overall destiny that is still actually increasing, and the poverty of their relations of real communication…. [….]

[The overcoming of subalternity, the form of existence and mode of thought of ‘little people,’] means the abolition of the traditional vertical division of labor, and the revolution of the entire orientation and structure of needs that is bound up with this. It proceeds by way of a radical change in all our customary institutions and modes of procedure in society and in the economy. The overcoming of subalternity on a mass scale is the only possible alternative to the limitless expansion of material needs. [….] The surplus consciousness which I already referred to, that free mental capacity which is no longer absorbed by the struggle for means of existence, is divide complementarily into two diametrically opposed phenomenal forms of social interest. They are both related to certain fundamental human social needs, which is why they generally compete with one another also in each individual consciousness, so that they divide individuals less than do [the] earlier antithesis into firm social groupings. Their struggle begins when ‘one soul seeks to sever from the other’ [from Goethe’s Faust] in the individual consciousness.

The compensatory interests, first of all, are the unavoidable reaction to the way society restricts and stunts the growth, development, and confirmation of innumerable people at an early age. The corresponding needs are met with substitute satisfactions. People have to be indemnified, by possession and consumption of as many things and services as possible, with the greatest possible (exchange-) value, for the fact that they have an inadequate share in the proper human needs. The striving for power can also be classed with the compensatory interests, as a kind of higher derivative.

The emancipatory interests, on the other hand, are oriented to the growth, differentiation and self-realization of the [individual] in all dimensions of human activity. They demand above all the potentially comprehensive appropriation of the essential human powers objectified in individuals, in objects, modes of behaviour and relationships, their transformation into subjectivity, into a possession not of the juridical person, but rather of the intellectual and ethical individuality, which presses in its turn for more productive transformation.

This is a preliminary and very general definition. The emancipatory interests are as old as class society itself, as the exclusion of the working masses from a growing number of historically given activities, relations and enjoyments—even if these generally could not be broadly developed and socially manifested. There are recognizable barriers from which men have always sought to emancipate themselves, in order to obtain access to something, and appropriate something, that is conceived time and again in the ideas of freedom, joy, happiness, etc., which no cynical irony can expunge. The inexhaustible possibilities of human nature, which themselves increase with cultural progress, are the innermost material of all utopias, and moreover a very real, and in no way immaterial material at that. They inevitably lead to the desire to transform human life.”—From the chapter, “The Present Conditions and Perspectives for General Emancipation,” in Rudolf Bahro, The Alternative in Eastern Europe (David Fernbach, tr.) London: NLB, 1978.

A selection of further reading from Bahro:
· From Red To Green. London: Verso, 1984.
· Building The Green Movement. London: Heretic/GMP, 1986.
· Avoiding Social & Ecological Disaster: The Politics of World Transformation. Bath, England: Gateway Books, 1994.

Slavery: A Basic Bibliography

The latest compilation in our Online Research Bibliographies covers “slavery.”

I want to thank both Alfred A. Brophy and Allen Mendenhall for their suggestions for this list as well as express gratitude once more to Dean Jim Chen for his unstinting support of my work.

Torture: Moral, Legal & Political Dimensions—A Basic Bibliography

Here is my basic bibliography on the “moral, legal, and political dimensions of torture.”

Philosophical and Mystical Facets of the Daoist Worldview

I examine several concepts central to an appreciation of “philosophical and mystical facets of the Daoist worldview” at ReligiousLeftLaw. Here is the preface to the body of the post:

The following is an introduction to some key concepts from the Daoist tradition, in particular, by way of what falls under the rubric of “philosophical Daoism.” As Chad Hansen points out, philosophical Daoism owes more to “philosopher Zhuang” (Zhuangzi) (4th Century BC), than to the Daodejing or the earlier Neyie, but here I’ll be focusing largely on the Daodejing and only infrequently cite the Zhuangzi, the principal reason owing to the length of dicussion the latter would require, even in an introductory examination such as this (as Hansen reminds us, the former is ‘terse and poetic,’ while the latter ‘is prolix, funny, elusive and filled with fantasy dialogues’). I have a clear bias evidenced in the interpretation that follows as a result of my belief that the Daodejing is a “mystical” text of sorts, not in the sense that it provides us with descriptive accounts of mystical experience as such, but insofar as it urges the reader to take up mind-body or heart-mind practices, what are often otherwise called ascetic practices or “spiritual exercises” (John Cottingham), that are a necessary yet not sufficient condition for mystical experience. Thus we might say that instead of first-person stories narrating the states and stages of mystical experience, there are direct and indirect allusions to the nature and salutary (personal and political) effects of mystical experience.

I suspect a clear if not overwhelming majority of philosophers specializing in Chinese philosophy would not find this interpretation congenial or persuasive, perhaps some of them would not even find it plausible. A training in Religious Studies may account in part for my way of looking at things here and, in any case, it’s clear that this text, as well as other Daoist texts, are liable to a variety of plausible readings, including the “mystical” one, if only because of the literary and rhetorical forms they take. As I noted in the earlier treatment of basic Confucian concepts, I’m not an expert in Chinese philosophy and thus I write as an ardent and inspired amateur wholly dependent on the philosophical labors of others, a dependence that, for better and worse, has not gone so far as to render me completely deferential with regard to the interpretations and conclusions of my betters, although a “mystical” reading is not without scholarly support. I trust my academic colleagues in philosophy will forgive my temerity or chutzpah.

The Confucian Worldview and the Odes

I have a basic introduction to the Confucian worldview over at ReligiousLeftLaw* that I wanted to let readers know about because in the near future I plan on posting something at the Literary Table on one of the Five Classics of the “Confucian” canon, namely, the (book of) Odes (also called the Books of Songs or Book of Poetry). Familiarity with my fairly abstract and stylized rational reconstruction of the Confucian worldview can thus serve as a propaedeutic backdrop, if you will, to this forthcoming piece on the Odes for the Table.

My status as an ardent amateur with regard to Chinese worldviews (i.e., my standing as an academic and intellectual parasite) means I depend mightily on the scholarly labors of others, in this case, Michael Nylan’s absolutely brilliant book, The Five “Confucian Classics (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2001). For a taste of things to come, I quote from her introduction:

“For most of the time from 136 BC to 1905, the study of the Five Classics of the ‘Confucian’ canon—the Odes, the Rites, the Changes [Yi Jīng/I Ching], and the Spring and Autumn Annals—formed at least part of the curriculum tested by the government examinations required of nearly all candidates for the Chinese imperial bureaucracy. Thus the more cultured members of society in premodern China, even those who had failed the examinations or had passed but never held office, enjoyed a familiarity with the Classics that afforded them a common story of knowledge. As successive governments throughout East Asia came under the cultural sway of the Chinese system, the Classics came to influence thought and politics in Korea, Japan, and Vietnam, so that the collection as a whole once occupied in East Asia a position roughly analogous to that of the Bible in the West, its compelling arguments couched in elegant formulations, ‘subtle phrasing with profound implications’ (weiyan dayi). These texts associated with the Supreme Sage, Confucius, were thought to set the pattern of what it was to become a fully developed human being, and also the principles that allowed for the complex and interrelated processes of political, social, and cultural reproduction. Thus, generation after generation tied the maintenance of the state and of personal identity to the propagation of this textual tradition. [….]

The modern rubric ‘Five Confucian Classics,’ however, has tended to skew understanding of these texts, as it implies both a direct connection with the historical Confucius (551-479 BC) and a closer connection among them than is warranted by their early histories. Most of the texts were evolving in oral as well as written forms for centuries before they acquired the designation ‘classic’ or ‘Confucian;’ hence vastly differing approaches to social, political, and cosmic issues are discernible among and even within the texts. Beginning in Han (206 BC-AD 220), state-sponsored classical learning—often dubbed ‘Confucian’ when ‘orthodox’ or ‘official’ would be more appropriate—drew freely on the teachings of many non-Confucian thinkers, the better to cope with the complexities (many unforeseen by Confucius) of ruling an empire [I would hasted to add that Confucius was not first and foremost concerned with ‘ruling an empire,’ even as he hoped to persuade ruling elites of the moral and political importance of teachings he believed sanctioned by tian and the sages of old].”

*Please see The Confucian Worldview: A Rational Reconstruction.

Image: Seven Scholars Going through the Pass, Li Tang (Chinese, ca. 1050s-after 1130) Ming dynasty.

Description: “Accompanied by a small group of retainers on foot, seven gentlemen riding mules, horses, and an ox leave behind the gate of a pass and casually proceed along a wintry riverbank. Six of the men are dressed against the cold in identical white robes and wide-brimmed hats worn over dark shoulder-length hoods, while the seventh is clad in gray and wears an official’s black cap. Some of the men turn to talk with each other, gesturing with their whips, but there is no urgency in their manner. The bundles of scrolls, umbrellas, and food utensils carried by the retainers—together with the ubiquitous wrapped qin (zither)—suggest that the group is venturing forth on a daytrip to some nearby scenic location.”

This is just the sort of thing I’ve imagined in my mind’s eye taking place with Confucius and his students: on a daytrip to a scenic location to sing and dance, including recitations from the Odes, in other words, a far cry from the rather staid and stern portraits one often finds of Confucius.

Analogy & Metaphor: An Idiosyncratic Introduction

I’ve just posted my essay, “Analogy & Metaphor: An Idiosyncratic Introduction,” at SSRN. Once again, comments most welcome.

Abstract: This essay is an idiosyncratic introduction to analogy and metaphor. It was previously posted in two parts respectively at the Ratio Juris and The Literary Table blogs by way of an introduction to my online bibliography at Ratio Juris for analogy and metaphor. The notes immediately follow each essay, and a list of “references and further reading” is appended to the end of the paper. The section on analogy is intended in part to provoke the interest of legal theorists, while the second half, on metaphor, is aimed at a broader audience although I hope it too will be of interest to legal theorists and philosophers of law. Both pieces no doubt betray their origins in blog posts, hence they are considerably less than polished, but comments to date were generous enough for me to make the inference that they deserve to be made more widely available.

Natural Law “Externalism” v. Law as “Moral Aspiration”

I have a revised draft of an essay I posted at the beginning of the year here at Ratio Juris available now at SSRN: Natural Law “Externalism” v. Law as “Moral Aspiration.” This is the first time I’ve used SSRN, so I’m curious how they’ll classify my contribution owing to the fact that I’m not affiliated with any law school or any other paper series in the network.

I welcome comments on the essay and want to thank Thom Brooks for provoking me to think aloud about topics broached in his paper, “Natural Law Internalism.”

[The reason for posting the image of Bobonich’s book should become apparent upon reading the paper.]

Narrative Goodness

For an introductory sketch on what it means for “goodness” or morality to be aesthetically mediated, especially through narrative forms, please see the post, “Narrative Goodness,” at The Literary Table. I agree with Linda Zagzebski in Divine Motivation Theory (2004) that the basic moral concepts found in moral theories

“either will be undefined or will refer to something outside the domain [of moral theory proper]. Most moral philosophers have done the latter. The basic evaluative concept in their theories is defined in terms of something allegedly nonevaluative—typically, human nature, rationality, or the will of God. The alternative I am suggesting is to anchor moral concepts in an exemplar. Good persons are persons like that, just as gold is stuff like that. The function of an exemplar is to fix the reference of the term ‘good person’ or ‘practically wise person’ without the use of any concepts, whether descriptive or nondescriptive. An exemplar therefore allows the series of conceptual definitions to get started. The circle of conceptual definitions of the most important concepts in a moral theory—virtue, right act, duty, good outcome, and so on—is broken by an indexical reference to a paradigmatically good person.

Making the exemplar a person has an even more important advantage than its aid to theory. If all the concepts in a formal ethical theory are rooted in a person, then narratives and descriptions of that person are morally significant. It is an open question what it is about the person that makes him or her good. [….] [W]hen we say that a good person is a person like that, and we directly refer to Socrates, or to Saint Francis of Assisi, or to Mahatma Gandhi, we are implicitly leaving open the question of what properties of Socrates, Francis, or Gandhi are essential to their goodness.”

Rankings Mania

I address the rankings mania over at ReligiousLeftLaw.com: “Rankings: ad infinitum…ad nauseam.” [I'm re-posting this after inadvertently deleting it.]