facilegestures

Joshua Sperber

Originally appeared on Counterpunch

Once in a blue moon, which is still far too often, one encounters the lie that Nazism was a manifestation of the left. A quick way to refute this myth is to note that Nazism’s immediate tasks upon taking power were destroying the German Communist Party, sending communists and socialists to concentration camps, banning unions, and resolving Germany’s business-labor arbitration crisis to the exclusive benefit of business. Nazism protected private property and improved conditions for profit, and the Nazis of course ultimately launched a genocidal crusade against the “JudeoBolshevist” Soviet Union. Purveyors of the Left-Nazism fallacy generally take the term “National Socialism” at face value, overlooking that this oxymoron was intended to lure members of the German left to a political party that saved capitalism through substituting national “racial” consciousness for class consciousness.

Whereas fascism – whose rise, as Karl Polanyi noted, always corresponded to crises in the market system – sought to destroy communism and received ruling class support in its efforts to do so, fascism’s relationship to non-revolutionary leftism, or liberalism, was far more ambiguous. It was, after all, the Social Democrats who crushed the 1919 German revolutionary uprising, deploying the Freikorps to murder Luxemburg and Liebknecht. Indeed, liberals have a long history of allying with counterrevolutionary movements during revolutionary upheavals, and fascism was counterrevolution par excellence. While liberals bristle at fascism’s contempt for the rule of law, when it comes to protecting their investments the bourgeoisie will choose the police state over communist appropriation any day of the week.

And it is this historical relationship between liberalism and fascism that helps elucidate Chris Hedges recent demonization of the Black Bloc, i.e. militant protest tactics. David Graeber and Peter Gelderloos have shown the abject fallaciousness of Hedges’ argument, as Hedges egregiously distorts the Black Bloc, attributing to it a monolithic and sociopathic purity that is belied in reality by activist fluidity and solidarity. And Hedges betrays a deep misunderstanding of his subject when asserting that the “feral” movement (Hedges concedes that he based his analysis not on the Black Bloc itself but on a few hours of John Zerzan’s radio program and some Green Anarchy articles) practices only spontaneous property destruction. The Black Bloc has deliberately targeted banks, multinational corporations, and the INS. More importantly, these protests more often than not begin as and restrict themselves to mere unpermitted marches. That is, the liberal conception of freedom is so narrow that protests that are not sanctioned by the state are seen as violent and criminal – a “cancer” to be eliminated.

Hedges’ denunciation of “violence” – which for him includes “the shouting of insulting messages to the police” – is a reflection of textbook liberal ideology since it diminishes the ubiquitous institutional violence that the (relatively) militant protests he disdains are responding to. Hedges of course asserts that he is concerned that OWS does not alienate the mainstream, but since the mainstream appears to be catatonically blasé about the slaughter of civilians abroad and mass police brutality and incarceration domestically, perhaps it might be more thoughtful to challenge rather than accommodate the mainstream’s presuppositions.

As Gelderloos writes, Hedges’ condemnation of political violence is based on an erroneous conception of the Civil Rights Movement. Whereas Hedges sees the Black Bloc as homogeneous, he isolates elements of the Black protest movement that in fact reinforced one another. Hedges’ assertion that the establishment was more threatened by Martin Luther King than Malcolm X ignores that it was precisely King’s ability to leverage the threat of Black militant violence that forced, for instance, the Birmingham Chamber of Commerce to accept desegregation. Violence – which considering disparate power relations and prevailing conditions is more accurately self-defense – is a historically effective political tactic.

That Hedges blames the failures of OWS on the Black Bloc is at first glance bizarre. Police departments did not need excuses to evacuate and arrest protestors, and what excuses were provided invoked health and other arbitrary regulations. Similarly, hostility to OWS – at least according to thousands of comments on national mainstream online news sources – has been based on ideas that protesters are indolent or filthy; there has not been a national cooling to OWS because of widespread national protester violence, because this violence has not occurred.

But the strangeness of Hedges’ discussion in fact reflects the contradictions of liberalism within capitalist crises. For on one hand, Hedges is interested in reforming a political-economic system that has little reason to respond to anything that cannot threaten its power. But on the other hand, he wants to purge OWS of its militancy because he is unwilling to challenge the system as a whole. But while liberalism here reaches a dead-end, the ongoing crisis in capitalism is unlikely to subside. And as the state removes its gloves and increases its repression of, among others, the small minority willing to put their necks on the line to try to improve the world, Chris Hedges has reminded us whose side liberals are on.

Joshua Sperber

Originally published in Counterpunch

In mere weeks Occupy Wall Street has challenged prevailing perceptions of the U.S. left, the status quo, and the relationship between the two. Overcoming the police suppression and media blackout of its vulnerable beginnings, OWS has absorbed energy and tactics from the Middle East and caromed them across the United States. While many people initially wondered when the NYPD would crush the movement, the discussion now involves, regardless of what happens at Liberty Plaza, what will be occupied next.

In contrast to the union- and party-dominated protests earlier this year in Wisconsin, OWS has achieved dynamism and staying power specifically by excluding itself from the institutional politics of the state and the Democrats. Following the meaningless victory of “hope” and “change,” protestors’ message has perforce been forcible occupation.

It’s then disappointingly ironic that many segments of the movement agree with the liberal establishment that protestors ought to propose specific reforms. For on one hand, people have been holding Liberty Plaza because their hopeless rejection of the system has paradoxically led to the liberating understanding that we can take control of our lives, not because people yearn to regulate financial transactions. On the other hand, Bill Clinton wants to hear the occupiers’ demands not merely because the Democrats would like to appropriate the protests, but because demands are guaranteed to do nothing other than re-legitimize the institutions that are in position to grant them, the same institutions that are responsible for helping to produce the problems being protested in the first place.

Thankfully, protestors’ demands have not congealed, as the form of forcible occupation and consensus-based organization is vastly more radical than the political content presently being articulated in Liberty Plaza. One conspicuous sign in fact demands the reinstatement of the Glass-Steagall Act, and signs requesting “student loan forgiveness” similarly reproduce a dependence on the state that belies the movement’s faith in direct action. If Vietnam War protestors can burn their draft cards, what’s to stop people from collectively walking away from their debts?

Through an apparent combination of sincere beliefs and tactical concerns, the majority of protestors I’ve encountered condemn not capitalism per se but “corporatist-capitalism,” “unregulated-capitalism,” or “corrupt-capitalism.” These qualifiers partly reflect the sizable presence of libertarians in the park, whose hatred of the Federal Reserve reflects their desire for the good old days of capitalism, notwithstanding slavery and the mass industrial and state violence of the late 1800s. Qualified capitalism’s liberal critics, however, merely seek to return to the 1970s or at earliest the 1950s. Of course, Naomi Klein, Michael Moore, and other reformists are unable to explain why the regulations and taxes of Keynesianism were overcome by capitalism’s inexorable need for growth in the first place. Slavoj Žižek’s observation that the real dreamers are the ones who think that the status quo can sustain itself has been countered by “realistic” liberals who amputate history and causality by seeking to fix the present by returning to the past, environmental ruination, labor exploitation, and imperialism be damned.

Demonstrating an even greater incongruence between the radical form of occupation and its conventional politics is the ever-present demand for “jobs” (cogently critiqued here), which obfuscates that our lack of work is not so egregious a problem as our need, in a society of mass abundance, for work in the first place. Work in capitalism, inherently insecure, stultifying, and onerous, is not created to meet people’s needs – as evidenced by workers’ sleep deprivation, anxiety, and the fact that workers cannot even retire after a lifetime of toil without the assistance of Social Security and other subsidies – but to produce profit for work’s creators. If protestors truly want jobs, they can offer to work for lower wages, which is exactly what union leaders have been agreeing to for years. But protestors of course mean that they want well-paying jobs. But if jobs’ ongoing lack of profitability precludes employers from creating more work, then where are these higher wages supposed to come from? Are employers expected to simply give their money to workers and thereby ignore the entire purpose of capitalism? And does the refusal to forfeit their wealth in this manner make employers “greedy,” or does it merely make them rational economic actors in a competitive economic system whose reason for being is profit? Liberals defend capitalism while simultaneously condemning capitalists for being capitalistic.

On a more practical note, reform, if that is what is myopically desired, has not been historically won through mere demand or entreaty, but through bargaining leverage that resulted from the threat of revolution. FDR instituted the New Deal not out of magnanimous caprice but to ward off communism, telling recalcitrant businessmen, ‘“I was convinced we’d have a revolution… and I decided to be its leader and prevent it…. I decided half a loaf was better than none – a half loaf for me and a half loaf for you and no revolution.’” Similarly, Martin Luther King exploited the threat of militant Black Nationalism to force the racist Montgomery Chamber of Commerce to desegregate. Current demands for reform ignore the elementary bargaining tactic of demanding a lot in order to gain a little. In refusing to present their demands as threats and in only asking for a little, advocates of reform are likely to gain even less.

While some worry that without demands OWS will dissipate, the movement might dissipate no matter what. Yet, the logic of the movement’s form, its occupation of physical space and its leaderless, consensus-based rejection of establishment institutions, invests it with great potential power. If this movement migrates to the arenas of our everyday lives – our apartment buildings, workplaces, and schools – it can become transformative.  For it to endure, however, it will have to attain a clearer grasp of the system that it is contesting.

Here we are. Again. The €, has once again been rescued, the crisis once again been resolved. Except for, it has not.

Wednesday night’s comprehensive solution provided brief rocket fuel to every risky asset around with the sole exception of precisely those, which it was designed to support. Italian 10y yields are  14basis points higher now than on Wednesday before the saviors gathered.

At the same time the foggy compromise reached with bank representatives so far lacks any details. It promises to become an operational nightmare. What is becoming clear however, is, that should it be implemented as advertised (which remains doubtful) it may very well end the market for sovereign CDS, with a number of unintended consequences. Imagine you were a prudent hedger, reducing exposure to Greece when the crisis first emerged in late 2009 by purchasing insurance against default via a CDS instead of outright selling the bond, which you likely had on your banking book thus avoiding a writedown.

Now, you paid rather expensive insurance for 3 years, only to see it NOTpay out on a 50% loss, because policy makers call it ‘voluntary’?

IF market participants start to realize that sovereign CDS are not going to provide protection when it is most needed, the consequences could be severe. The only way to reduce your exposure would then be to sell crisis-plagued countries’ bonds in the market, putting further upward pressure on yields which is clearly not what policy makers aim to achieve.

The insurance solution to provide leverage is questionable as well. Look at a country in crisis – 10y bonds trading at 60%, and now they auction off a bunch of new bonds with a 20% first loss protection provided by the EFSF. The hope is that investors would be drawn to the newly issued bonds because of this precious piece of insurance. But would you rather buy at par with a 20% guarantee and risk losing 80, or get the old bond in the secondary market at 65? I expect the required  yield on the new/insured bond might have to be higher than most currently anticipate.

Looking forward to an interesting discussion as the details start to emerge.

By Joshua Sperber

It’s notable that the protorevolutionary OWS campaign has generated part of its dynamism specifically by excluding itself from the institutional politics of the state and the Democratic Party. Voting, bargaining, and otherwise cooperating with the state are irrelevant to a movement whose message is perforce forcible occupation — other avenues have been cut off.

Democrats, unions, and other servants of capital will invariably attempt to co-opt what for them is both a threat and an opportunity for aggrandizement but for the vast majority is a rare opportunity to pursue freedom.

Many of the signs, statements, and sentiments at Liberty Plaza nevertheless reflect much confusion regarding the source of today’s crises, blaming increasing income disparities on “greed,” which of course implies that Wall Street brokers in the old days were simply kinder, and all that’s needed now are better attitudes, historical and political economic context be damned. Just the same, the mere act of collectively confronting the state — its militarized police, its duplicitous politicians, its arbitrary law — ensures that people will attain clearer conceptions of the system they’re trying to throw off.

Events continue today: http://occupywallst.org/article/10-15-call-to-action/

by Emily S. Channell and Kara Newhouse

Last week, I did an interview with my anthropology life partner, Kara Newhouse, on the future of anthropology. I’ve decided to share it here in full, and you can read the original post at Rogue Anthropologist.

Last week an anonymous person using a fake email address left a comment on one of my posts declaring that an undergraduate degree does not make me an anthropologist. In fact, I agree. A degree (bachelor’s or graduate) doesn’t necessarily mean a person will adopt and utilize anthropological perspectives. Rather, it is my ability to employ critical thinking about culture, socialization, power, and human relationships in my life and work that makes me an anthropologist.

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rogue flickr

by Kristofer J Petersen-Overton

I just got back to New York from lovely Seattle where I spent the last few days sitting through panels at the American Political Science Association’s (APSA) annual conference. If spending a holiday weekend locked in a convention center with several thousand (mostly) old white men doesn’t strike you as particularly exciting, then maybe the following incident will.

Before I go into it, I should mention that I sometimes feel incredibly alienated from political science as a formal discipline — and not only because I have absolutely no interest in the quantitative methodological bent of so much work that fills the journals, nor even because I do political theory (the odd stepchild of the field). Rather, attending APSA reminds me just how conservative, disconnected and downright elitist academia can be.

John Yoo is not a political scientist by training but the former legal advisor to the Bush Administration and author of the notorious torture memos was also at APSA this year. He was scheduled to speak on (presumably in favor of) the expansion of executive power under the Lincoln administration for a panel organized by the conservative Claremont Institute.

As Yoo began his talk, a lone protestor stood up and denounced him as a war criminal, appealing to the members of the audience to walk out in opposition to his appearance at the conference (you can view a video of the incident here). Listen closely as the enlightened political scientists in the room howl with laughter and repeatedly tell her to “shut up”, “get out”, or (bizarrely) to “bug out”. One particularly witty guy, referencing Yoo’s instrumental role in sanctioning torture, yells: “you’re torturing us!” More howls of laughter. And no one walked out.

Part of the reason I went into academia was because my intellectual role-models would have walked out. Noam Chomsky, Edward Said, Frances Fox Piven, Howard Zinn — they would have walked out. As an undergraduate, I was in awe of these principled individuals and I remain so today. I wanted so much to demonstrate even a fraction of their intellectual courage. During the crisis at Brooklyn College earlier this year I tried to manage as best I could given the immense power disparity between me and the insidious forces that nearly prevailed. So I was beyond disgusted to see other political scientists ridicule a brave woman for daring to interrupt the polite niceties of their academic panel with her moral outrage. The field has far too many craven hacks bearing PhDs. Political science as a discipline could do with some moral outrage for a change.

by Emily S. Channell

Last week, the world lost yet another incredible scholar far too soon. Fernando Coronil was more than an anthropologist: he married ethnography with Marxism and magical realism in an incomparable way. I was lucky enough to have a history of anthropological theory course with him my first semester of graduate school. Although I didn’t always see it that way at the time, in conversations we had over the next years I realized what a tremendous scholar Fernando was and the passion with which he saw the world. I’m not going to try to write an obituary — you should read Gary Wilder’s beautiful sentiments instead — but I do want to honor Fernando by discussing his last essay here.

It’s a contribution (includes PDF) to a series of books about Possible Futures, and it evokes some inspirational but also disheartening sentiments. Through an assessment of leftward movements in Latin America, Fernando analyzed the meaning of such a shift to the left and what possibilities it opens up for our ideas about the future. In the spirit of Fernando’s love of discussion and critique, I hope by summarizing his main points I will provide a small but vibrant forum for a conversation about the future of the left.

First, it’s important to highlight that the “left” is no more a static, bounded notion than “culture,” “women,” or “activism.” Fernando described it as “a fluid sign to identify actions directed toward universal equality and well-being and thus toward forms of political life without which these goals cannot be achieved, including democracy, diversity, justice, and freedom” (233). The “left” is always situated in and changing with time and space; there can be multiple “lefts” at a time. These “lefts” challenge the dominance of a Western narrative about capitalism and development because they suggest that capitalism isn’t always the best ensurer of justice and equality for all. A thriving democracy, in which all people have an equal say in what is best, will bring about the well-being that we desire.

This conception of the “left” posits what I see as two important points. The first is that the “left,” in whatever form it is realized, is more interested in the well-being of populations than is the “right,” in whatever form it takes. The second is that democracy is not a means to end but is the end in itself. The ideal of democracy is not flawed in itself (much like the ideal of communism, perhaps?) but it has been manifested falsely in the service of capitalism. If the “left” can successfully appropriate democracy from capitalism, then theoretically, “left” and “democracy” may begin to coincide and work as a political system. Democracy would serve as the mechanism of equality in such a world.

If this “left” recognizes the problems capitalism has imposed on democracy — which Fernando claimed leftward movements in Latin America did — then this leftward shift opens up a significant and legitimate space through which to challenge the power of global capitalism. But, as Fernando wrote, this critique of capitalism paradoxically accepts the necessity of capitalism for the time being. The future, while it is imagined as a “better place,” offers no more concrete suggestion than riding the tides of capitalism until things can change. We don’t know what the particularities of the future will look like: “there is a pervasive uncertainty with respect to the specific form of the ideal future. While there is an intense desire to change the nation, it is not clear what to desire — what are realistic aspirations, how to connect desire and reality” (234).

We know that the future won’t be capitalism. But what feasible options do we have for the here and now to get to that point? How can we work toward the future if we aren’t sure what the future looks like? Furthermore, how do we keep our faith in the “left” and democracy and social equality if we don’t know how to put all three together in the name of well-being for all? And how long must we remain in the rut of capitalism until that future arrives?

I want to bring up two final points of contention. The first is in Fernando’s faith in democracy. For a long time I have wondered if there is a way to make democracy work. I still don’t know the answer, but I was surprised that Fernando was so convinced — are you?

Secondly, Fernando seemed to think that the interests and goals of the “left” will triumph someday. This is absolutely not to say that the Left will become the new form of hegemony, as global capitalism is now, but that concern for equality and well-being will win out over amassing wealth in the hands of the few. But nowhere did he make a suggestion about reconciliation between “left” and “right” in the name of equality. I’ve always had the idea that we need to come together in some capacity in order to create a better political system. Does a shift leftward exclude the people who previously excluded the left? Or is a reconciliation between left and right assumed in the recreation of democracy?

I imagine that Fernando left some of these questions unanswered — I think he wrote to provoke debate as much as to make a contribution to scholarship. And there certainly isn’t only one answer. So, in memory of Fernando and from all we learned from him, I end this post with his words:

“Politics will remain a battle of desires waged on an uneven terrain. But as long as people find themselves without a safe and dignified home in the world, utopian dreams will continue to proliferate, energizing struggles to build a world made of many worlds, where people can dream their futures without fear of waking up.” (264)

By Joshua Sperber

This article originally appeared in Counterpunch.

I haven’t seen The Help and, unless someone pays me $13.00 or I develop acute masochism, I don’t intend to. But watching the preview and reading the Association of Black Women Historians’ open statement on the film have brought to mind what’s distinct about cultural politics in the Age of Obama.

The theme of the film is hardly unique, as several “Black Mammies” — a female version of the “magic negro” — help a white protagonist become guilt-free, pure, and transcendent through uplifting Black people. Bell hooks has analyzed this liberal-racist motif in her critique of Madonna’s Like a Prayer video, while Will Smith in The Legend of Bagger Vance and Morgan Freeman in Driving Miss Daisy demonstrate that the selfless, sexless, noble stereotypes of Casablanca and Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner are not static as much as reflections of enduring class stratification in a necessarily racialized society. I wonder what percentage of The Help’s sentimental fans oppose “illegal immigration,” even though both racism and permanent deportability facilitate exploitation by rendering workforces, as Nicholas De Genova has discussed, vulnerable. If their fealty to the “rule of law” is sincere, opponents of undocumented workers today would have opposed resistance to Jim Crow in the 1960s.

The ABWH statement notes that the film reduces racism to mere prejudice, a problem of beliefs and correctable attitudes, not institutions embedded in, say, city design, the criminal justice system, and “last hired, first fired” economics. The statement also critiques the film for ignoring the sexual harassment and violence that’s been a historic hallmark of white male and Black female relations; vilifying the film’s Black male characters (a la What’s Love Got to Do with It); making buffoonish the Black characters’ dialects, and largely dismissing the significance of the Civil Rights Movement. Racism persists in the present environment not merely by denying racism but by relegating it to racist maniacs in a distant time and place which have since been rectified by, who else, white people who are just like you and me. I tell ya, if I lived in 1962 Jackson, I’d bonk one of those racists right on the nose. And if I live 100 years from now, why I’d go back to 2011 and bust into the US’s network of concentration camps and free all of its prisoners.

Just as Hollywood makes money by making us “feel good,” US imperialism and capitalism have maintained their power by selling the same message via Barack Obama. The ecstatic reactions of young, white, liberals upon the election of a Black man celebrated not merely the alleged defeat of racism but the defeat of the recognition that white liberals can be racist. We’re not only guilt-free now, but we’ve also shown how superior we are to our racist elders and European counterparts (and it really is poor form to mention Iraq, Afghanistan, or the racist prison industrial system — one thing at a time, please). And, to top it off, now that we’ve demonstrated our rejection of racism (even neo-Nazis prefer the term “racialist”), we are at last free to be racist! “Ironic” use of the n-word by chumps like Zach Galifianakis is the white liberal’s reward for so heroically placing the financial sector’s candidate into power.

The Obama Presidency and films like The Help suggest the final victory and inherent limitations of anti-racism as political correctness. With the election of Obama, Blacks have no more excuses, as John McCain suggested to enthusiastic applause during his concession speech. Because racism is now merely a thing of the past, African-Americans who find themselves in poverty or in prison rather than in the White House have only their personal failings to blame. In exchange for continuing to reap the benefits of “post-racist” white supremacy, whites are meanwhile encouraged to be polite to hardworking, self-sacrificing, and self-disciplined Blacks and unforgiving to the rest. In other words, racism, superficially criticized by political correctness for being “impolite” rather than for being idiotic, is, as always, a mechanism for disciplining labor.

Liberals, to be sure, prefer to maximize their subordinates’ productivity without resorting to slurs or stereotypes and, needing to be loved by those they oppress, are greatly concerned with politeness and forgiveness. Liberals are horrified by the idea that “the help” is angry with them and invoke the belief in common humanity to reassure themselves, if not their employees, whereas reactionaries acknowledge class society for what it is. But while they disagree on how best to treat its manifestations, liberals and reactionaries are equally committed to preserving a society of masters and servants in the first place. The existence of a Black president has merely accorded the masters greater symbolic tools with which to wield their power.

I don’t want to play fake fancy-pants-public-finance-economist for more than this post, but JW Mason at the slackwire has an interesting read about how governments usually pay down their debts, and I feel like talking about it.

It turns out that there is not really a systematic resolution, aside from the point that it was pretty rare to reduce debt primarily by taxing a lot after World War 2, and it is pretty rare to do so  by primarily growing a lot after the 1980s or so. One of the issues that caught my eye was a concept which I had not considered before – what the IMF calls Stock Flow Adjustments, accounting for the difference between how much debt there should be, and how much debt there is. Mason writes that a recent rise in SFA is probably due to governments taking over bank liabilities:

To the extent this is true — and again, the IMF study supports it — it suggests another reason why concern with balancing the long-term budget by “reforming” Medicare, etc., is misplaced. One financial crisis can cancel out decades of fiscal rectitude; so if you’re concerned about what the debt-GDP ratio will be in 2075, you should spend less time thinking about public spending and taxes, and much more time thinking about effective regulation of the financial sector.

That sounds right to me, but it seems easy to miss the forest for the trees by focusing on the immediate budget effects of taking over banking liabilities. It is expensive to save banks yes, but a cagy financial industry apologist could easily acknowledge that while American banks still pose a threat to financial stability, the US public did not lose that much money on the financial bailout.

And that’s true! You can have a short-term deficit due to bank failure, buy hey, you will probably get a lot of that money back.

The real gut-wrenching impact of the financial crisis was US public losing bucket-loads by becoming increasingly unemployed, increasingly dependent on social services, and increasingly disheartened while watching economic growth swirl down the toilet. All of these increase deficits and make balances less stable as GDP growth slows. A financial crisis is not only a one off increase in the size of debt, but if serious enough, it radically alters the ability of the tax-base to pay the very debt it creates.

Thus the importance of regulation, like leverage ratios and standardizing exotic transactions on markets. These are investments in non-crises and make them cost less when they do happen.

The real risk of banking collapse from the way I see it is not always the immediate debt load, which is certainly a problem, but that confidence and economic activity are so damaged throughout the economy that recovery takes an extended period of time. Having a balanced budget  in the  long-term with a low stock of debt is nice, but it is even better if you are not sitting on a landmine.

The graph above is total construction spending on religious properties. The shaded area is the last recession.

Could it be that giving to religious groups is strategic… or is this just showing that people usually give based on a fixed percentage of income? There must be some fun one could have looking at the elasticity in consumption of religious “goods”. I also have to wonder what prosperity theology has to say about this.