Disqus - Latest Comments for nutmeg_socialist

Re: Eyeless in Gaza

nutmeg_socialist — Tue, 13 Jan 2009 20:21:40 -0000

In other words, I deviated from the party line without being obsequiously apologetic about it. Sad, sport. Sad.

Re: QUIZ TIME

nutmeg_socialist — Mon, 12 Jan 2009 22:25:09 -0000

Why, thank you! I do what I can.

Re: QUIZ TIME

nutmeg_socialist — Sun, 11 Jan 2009 20:04:28 -0000

While Marxism doesn't posit any set of deonotological ethics like the rights crowd, it does hold that man is an "ensemble of social relations", that those relations can be roughly marked on some scale of okayness, and that concepts of individual morality should be constructed along these lines. This is how a historical materialist is able to even say that socialism would be "better" than capitalism or feudalism, rather than falling into a complete relativist position
However, what's the criterion to judge a set of social relations by? Would there not be some deontology lurking in here? And I assume that not very many people are hot on the crude, mechanical materialism of the Second International or Stalin, that holds socialism to be the end of a pseudo-religious teleological process and thus "objectively" better. Similarly, while all of the chronic instabilities of capitalism that Marx pointed out do indeed exist, who is to say that socialism would be any "better", or that capitalism doesn't represent the "best of all possible worlds", despite its flaws?
I think, at bottom, even beneath economics, Marxism relies on a series of non-discrete propositions about human beings which are subject to scientific confirmation of disconfirmation:
1) that the inextricable interdependence between human beings not only applies to the processes of society "as a whole", but also shapes basic conduct in everyday life, as well as the essentials of the "individual" identity
2) following from #1, an individual human being's neural makeup consists less of hard-wired personality traits and capacities than of "software" which is determined in the first instance by said being's social and natural environment (Marx's idea in the German Ideology that sentience develops through the social labor process). Through this, people develop something of a post facto "human nature", in the form of a capacity from "producing their own subsistence" on progressively more developed levels. One may freely cram in all manner of stuff about intellectual curiousity, the pleasure principle, "love", etc at this point, provided it is contextualized.
3) that differences in things like class position, social status, intellectual prowess, the development of an individual's "potential", etc. are due less to "natural" gradations between human beings and more to the given social environment, which is set up so that some arbitrary groups (primarily the owners of the means of production) flourish, and others are marginalized. Note that it is possible for the social environment to stem at some theoretical genesis point from inequalities that were found ready at hand (whether as a result of natural difference, or, more often, the social relations of the system that is being supplanted - see English feudal landlords going capitalist, with displaced peasants as proletarians), but also that the environment will proceed to exacerbate these differences one hundredfold beyond their natural dimensions.
4) Finally, that there is a contradiction between the fundamental interdependence as outlined in #1 and #2, and the atomized inequalities that are generated in #3, and that this contradiction leads to large-scale consequences that will strike a large number of people as undesirable in one way or another. Note that any attempt to overhaul this system will often just lead to the emergence of a new contradiction, in the form of inequality that is slightly less "arbitrary" (i.e. more grounded in the immediate material world than in ossified hegemonic artifacts like ideology - see again the transition from feudalism to capitalism).

Thus, I would say the Marxist concept of morality consists of any conscious action that seeks to reconcile this contradiction, in its historically current form and in whatever small way. Morality can in this way "leap ahead" of the constraints of a given period - the ideology of the Diggers during the English Civil War or the sans-cullottes during the French Revolution could be counted as moral, even though their aspirations were not objectively realizable at the time. It does not even need to be grounded in strictly socioecomic relations - Kant's categorical imperative could be considered moral, even though it is metaphysical up the duff and is scientifically incorrect. The important thing is that these people all got at least an intuitive impression of this contradiction, and sought for its ultimate reconciliation; it is their judgment (stemming often from their class position and the state of general knowledge at the time) that must be questioned, not their motives. Morality also does not entail mushy stuff like "reverence for all sentient beings", "universal love", or a generalized "coming together", since one of the chief means of reconciling this contradiction can be the physical removal of those who perpetuate it. On the other hand, there is arguably a lot of overlap between a Marxist concept of morality and the less wonky aspects of bourgeois rights-talk. I think it's safe to assume, for example, that we all abhor the massacre in Gaza for similar reasons. It's something to be taken case-by-case, IMO. So yes, tactical.

Hope this was coherent.

Re: QUIZ TIME

nutmeg_socialist — Sat, 10 Jan 2009 23:23:28 -0000

Rousseau was useful in his time. He has long been superseded. I agree with the rest that the true/false format is completely wrong when addressing questions such as this. Kind of like distilling a theory and all of its permutations in the world into a series of "Top 10" lists...

Also, the concept of coerced obedience to the "general will" isn't nearly as provocative as you think. It's what nearly every post-feudal state based its ideological hegemony on, whether articulated or no. The same thing prevails today; if migrant workers in Kansas decided to get together and occupy an agribusiness farm, the state would, according to bourgeois logic, by justified in supressing them since that in violating a corporation's property rights, the workers have gone against the "general will" that mandates "free enterprise", "individual initiative", etc. etc. etc. as cardinal virtues. Of course, people in the Popper/Berlin school of thought claim that they don't believe in any over-arching "general will" as opposed to an aggregate of individual wills that need to be balanced out, but this is horse puck. What a wonderful coincidence that this equilibrium of individual wills just happens to comport exactly with the diktats of capital! What Berlin et al are doing is displacing the source of liberal capitalism from human relations themselves into the unspoken realm of "nature" or "objectivity", where all the individuals within a system of equilibrium are happily toiling away in response to "natural" imperatives - get a bunch of people together, have them go about things in a "free" and "piecemeal" fashion, and you will always get a liberal capitalist result. Balance thus becomes a breeze - be capitalist, because nature is capitalist, and everything will be hunky-dory. This is the West's modern
"general will" in a nutshell, and it is some really insipid and banal theology; Rousseau at least deserves credit for leaving the question of a "general will's" content more or less open and immanent within "the people", something that they could figure out for themselves rather than have drilled into them from birth by Oxbridge mandarins. Like I said, decent for his time.

Re: Ten Best and Worst of Marxism for 2008

nutmeg_socialist — Wed, 07 Jan 2009 12:40:36 -0000

Also, putting in your Top 10 the fact that a Communist party has laid down tentative plans for universal health care at some vague point in the future is the equivalent of giving somebody a medal for not showing up drunk to work.

Re: http://paeditorsblog.blogspot.com/2008/12/new-years-resolutions-for-safer-saner.html

nutmeg_socialist — Thu, 01 Jan 2009 17:32:11 -0000

In the hope of having a saner discussion of the Gaza issue here than is possible with hoser, I must disagree with no. 2. Describing Hamas as "clerical reactionaries" implies that they are a group of theocratic gangsters a la al-Qaeda. This is not true - they are more akin to a national liberation movement whose rhetoric is couched in political Islam (emphasis on "political"). It's the same as the difference between Franquista Catholics in Spain and Latin American proponents of "liberation theology". Sure, the latter in both cases are still "wrong", but it's not an entirely destructive form of wrongness. The fact that they kill civilians is a moot point considering the disproportion between the two sides both in terms of military strength and the scale of atrocities.

The proposed solution of a Marshall plan wouldn't work because: 1) Obama has closer ties to AIPAC than even the Bush administration, and is frankly probably to the right of Bush on the question of a Palestinian state; 2) The money would presumably have to go through some Palestinian intermediary. Since your solution excludes the democratically-elected Hamas from the process, the only alternative is the corrupt and utterly discredited Fatah or the PLO, who will be pretty much guaranteed to find new and innovative ways to waste the money; 3) There will never be cultural integration between Israelis and Palestinians at any time in the near future. Dehumanization and oppression of the Palestinians is not just coin of the Israeli right, it is supported across the spectrum in Israel save for a small section of the far left that is politically insignificant. Add the completely justified hatred the average Palestinian has of Israelis for all of this, and it's not a promising recipe for harmony.

Re: Yes what about Gaza?

nutmeg_socialist — Thu, 01 Jan 2009 11:12:14 -0000

First of all, a quick FYI: I don't pay the tax money that goes toward U.S. military support of Israel, because I literally do not make enough wages at my job to fall into the lowest federal income tax bracket. So there. Also, I don't live near any shipyards, so no warship-chaining-to for me. My best hope is to get the word out about Israeli atrocities and help to some infinitesimal degree in turning public opinion against support for this apartheid state. People like you who make no attempt to understand the situation but fall back on media-perpetuated shibboleths and weak-kneed nostrums about "humanism" only help to obscure the issue.
Also, I'm not nasty with anyone who disagrees with me; I have disgreed amicably with countless people on this blog. The only person I am overtly nasty toward is you, because you are a smug twit who needs to be prodded before he says anything of passing substance, as this exchange has just evinced.
Regarding rocket attacks, and Hamas's attacks toward civilians in general, I cannot do better than to quote Lenin's Tomb:

[quote]
One cannot treat the rocket fire in isolation, or as simply a desperate military gesture of lobbing missiles in the hope that someone, somewhere cops it. As Mishal and Sela have pointed out (The Palestinian Hamas, 2000), Hamas' military leadership is entirely instrumental about the use of violence: if its immediate ends can be obtained through peaceful measures, they will opt for those; if Israeli leaders make that impossible, they will use whatever military means are at their disposal. The rockets are expected to create fear in proportion to their number and their pervasive effect. Within a certain radius, they can hit anywhere and anyone. They are one component of a strategy designed to put pressure on Israeli society and undermine the government, showing that it cannot protect its citizens if it chooses to kill Palestinians.

It remains questionable how effective they are, however. The fact that the occasional person might actually get killed by such a weapon is unlikely to result in pressure on Tel Aviv to adopt a more humane policy toward the Palestinians: quite the reverse. Indeed, there can be such popular support for war on Gaza only because it is tacitly acknowledged that the provoked response is unlikely to be very deadly or frightening. If Israelis were really that terrified of the rockets, they would be considerably less gung-ho about blowing the shit out of Ay-rabs. The basic inefficacy of Qassams means that the IDF has always had an array of ultra-violent responses available to them. Back in 2004, before the Gaza pull-out, the doctrine espoused by Major-General Shamni was "stimulus and response": the IDF would try to stimulate attacks and then, with the evil-doers exposed, assassinate them. You don't provoke attacks in that fashion if you think the rockets are truly that menacing. Today, it seems that the doctrine of "stimulus and response" has been elevated to a whole new plateau: having provoked Hamas into renewing rocket fire after months of ceasefire, they created an excuse to launch this vicious operation. The current assault is demonstrating, inadvertently, that the rockets are becoming more effective, with longer reach into Israel. Five Israelis have been killed during the assault, one a soldier. However, this is little compared to Israel's ability to turn dozens of sites to rubble overnight, and kill hundreds in a few days.

The best hope that Gaza has is if the riots and protests still erupting across the West Bank turn into a full-scale Third Intifada, the protests in Egypt become the basis for the final demolition of the Mubarak regime, and the rest of the Middle East explodes in rebellion.
[/quote]

Every resistance movement that has ever existed in the history of human society has killed civilians. The ANC, the FLN, the NLF, the FSLN, the FMLN, the Tupamaros, the Red Army during the Civil War, the Native Americans who resisted white incursion. Them's the breaks, ace. The worst you can say about Hamas's approach is that it's strategically flawed; maybe a major point of concern when advising them on how to win, but hardly one when determing whether to support them or not.

Re: Yes what about Gaza?

nutmeg_socialist — Wed, 31 Dec 2008 19:16:15 -0000

The aggression and national chauvinism of Israel vis-a-vis Palestine is not ten times worse than the other way around, it is closer to 200 times worse; the same thing applies to culpability for the entire 60-year conflict. If you want to reject solidarity with a brave but desperately outgunned resistance movement because they have religious beliefs and they "OMG KILL CIVILIANS", you are worse than misguided; you are morally complicit in Israel's campaign of bloodshed. That is all.

Re: I fell out of my chair when I read this one – laughing

nutmeg_socialist — Wed, 31 Dec 2008 11:11:49 -0000

As I'm sure Comrade Markowitz can confirm at some point, this is nothing new. Back in the '50s the Taft/Goldwater/McCarthy wing of the GOP used to scream that Eisenhower was a socialist for not immediately dismantling every legacy of the New Deal or dropping the bomb on Russia.

Re: Bill Moyers & Religion

nutmeg_socialist — Mon, 29 Dec 2008 02:13:30 -0000

I would venture to say that about 80% of this 95% have never actually thought in detail about what they believe, and just kind of dumbly and reflexively say that they think [insert selected Higher Power] exists. If exposed to serious questioning based on facts, I have a hunch that at least 60% of this 80% would turn apostate in a jiffy. That's still not a majority (45.6% of humanity by my calculator), but it's a start.

Re: Yes what about Gaza?

nutmeg_socialist — Mon, 29 Dec 2008 02:05:40 -0000

Support Hamas, without a doubt. They are a democratically-elected resistance movement with legitimate grievances, a low rate of corruption, and impressive social achievements in health, education, and infrastructure even in the face of Israeli apartheid. Yes, their program contains unpleasant religious elements, and they occasionally kill Israeli civilians - but considering the Israeli/Palestinian situation as a whole, these should not even be minor points of concern.

Re: Rehabilitating Stalin? Don't make me puke

nutmeg_socialist — Wed, 24 Dec 2008 21:34:26 -0000

I agree to some extent; however, I think it should be emphasized that most of the good that was accomplished under Stalin (industrialization; increased education and social mobility; higher life expectancies for those who weren't killed) wasn't really creditable to him, but rather was just a continuation of policies initiated during Lenin's administration, whereas most of the bad (famine and the disaster of forced collectivization; purges and arbitary executions; undemocratic workplace conditions; philosophical and cultural philistinism; the influence of people like Lysenko) was entirely his fault.

Also, if I may mount a limited defense of Putin, it's not entirely fair to say that his government is "building nothing". His government was/is certainly a step up from the desolation of the 1990s and "democratic" Yeltsin, an era that probably had at least as high a human cost as the Stalin's time thanks to the ravagement of "shock therapy" economics. Putin renationalized key industries that had been privatized and asset-stripped by the free-market brigades, putting the economy back on the upswing and improving workers' rights to some extent. He also took more general measures to curb the power of Russia's "oligarchy" so that the country was no longer playground for their form of legal pillage. His client states in the former Soviet ambit like Belarus are run by completely antidemocratic and deplorable thugs, but are also protected from the worst depredations of Eastern Europe's Westernized business classes. Russia sure isn't the USSR of old, as severely flawed as that was, but if it weren't for Putin and crew it would probably be a huge, lawless, and rapidly decaying glorified colony of the West.

Of course, Putin et al are not doing any of this out of the goodness of their hearts. They represent an autocratic stratum of state bureaucrats that seek only to conserve their own power against the private sector, as well as shore up the nation's (and thereby their own) position on the international stage; the benficial side effects of this for the rest of the population are entirely coincidental. Still, it's an error to conflate Putin and his epigones with those who catalyzed Russia's downward spiral in 1992.

Re: A Mad Moment In Iraq

nutmeg_socialist — Mon, 22 Dec 2008 14:37:10 -0000

" pass an economic recovery policy, new pro-labor union laws, universal health care (even if it is limited at this point), and ending the Iraq war."

Except for the first measure, which would be standard under any presidential administration ("Nah, let's just let the economy suffer!")Obama is not going to do any of that, and has all but admitted it at this point. You have nothing in the way of evidence to counter this; your entire analysis of Obama has been either "Oh, he'll come around some time" (i.e. the leap of faith/trust exercise approach) or "Obama stands for HOPE and CHANGE, don't you see? Surely that means he's on our side!", putting all your stock in the supposedly hidden meanings of vague and disingenuous slogans. There is no prudence or pragmatism about this, just stupidity.

I don't have any illusions that my support for Ralph Nader was a revolutionary act. For revolution, you need organization (and not Obama's organization). I'm only one guy. My reasoning went like this:

a) it was edifying to vote my conscience, instead of wasting a vote on somebody whose policies I oppose and who by all rational analysis will not do anything whatsoever for the left in this country.

and

b) it at least might be helpful in raising awareness about issues of concern to the working class, an awareness that can be used for the basis of revolutionary consciousness in the future. Obama did not even use the term "working class" a single time on the campaign trail.

Also, "limited universal health care" is a contradiction in terms. You really are one for the Orwellianisms, aren't you?

Re: A Mad Moment In Iraq

nutmeg_socialist — Mon, 22 Dec 2008 14:00:07 -0000

I just did, in the very post that you responded to. Excellent reading comprehension skills you have there. I am fully aware that Nader is a capitalist who believes in egalitarian, state-enforced "perfect competition", which to me is not so much a bad idea as just an impossible, pie-in-the-sky one predicated on noble but faulty premises. In other words, I don't think Nader is nefarious, I think he's wrong. I think it's fairly obvious that Obama is both. He even admits in his damn book that he thinks the welfare Keynesianism so beloved by the CPUSA has been discredited, and that the neoliberal approach is "right" in the last analysis and must be come to terms with. None of his actions thus far have indicated he is changing his mind about this, even in the face of the crisis. Nader at least shares some concrete policy goals with the socialist left, even if he diverges from them philosophically.

Re: A Mad Moment In Iraq

nutmeg_socialist — Thu, 18 Dec 2008 18:17:19 -0000

Prefacing every article about Obama with a token "we know he's not left, but..." disclaimer which is devoid of actual content is not a critical stance. At best, it is a crude and not particularly effective trick meant to deflect accusations that you are being uncritical - you can point to your vapid, generic, infinitely replicated statement and say "No I'm not! I criticize him all the time!", in spite of the fact that substance-wise the articles in question are as adulatory of Obama as the CPUSA's old-time tracts were of Uncle Joe Stalin. At worst, it's a classic case of doublethink, trying to convince yourself that you really believe two contradictory things at the same time.

And hell, I voted for Ralph Nader - I even personally admire the guy, which is more than I can say for most people. But had I written something on the subject, I wouldn't have ever refrained from criticizing the hell out of his limited and ultimately naive "capitalism with perfect competition" approach, even as I explained how I thought his policies would be good for the country in the short run.

Re: A Mad Moment In Iraq

nutmeg_socialist — Thu, 18 Dec 2008 12:40:39 -0000

I don't disagree with any of that, which is exactly why I find it so perplexing that any left group would give Obama such fervid support, or think that the working class could ever take power by operating within the U.S. political system as it presently exists.

Re: A Mad Moment In Iraq

nutmeg_socialist — Wed, 17 Dec 2008 00:26:35 -0000

Think about it - why would Obama have even retained/appointed Gates and Clinton in the first place if his views didn't more or less dovetail with theirs? It makes me wonder what kind of sunk costs the CPUSA's officialdom have in Obama, that they keep towing this New Messiah line when even most people on the liberal left are starting to get skeptical.

Re: A French Take on "Human Rights"

nutmeg_socialist — Wed, 10 Dec 2008 16:45:29 -0000

Fun fact: key elements of the French government were complicit in the 1994 Rwandan genocide, as part of a plan to counter U.S. and British influence in the region.

http://afp.google.com/artic...

Looks like they practice what they preach!

Re: Undoing Reagan/Bush/Cheney & Gingrich's 1990s Congress

nutmeg_socialist — Sat, 06 Dec 2008 16:21:30 -0000

Setting aside the question whether protest movements like UFPJ or PUSH have any effect on anything whatsoever except maybe the organizers' egos, how do you expect any of these tepid Keynesian measures to "take" in a de-industrialized economy with a net trade deficit and more or less instantly mobile capital?

Meanwhile, workers in Chicago are engaging in the first major sit-down strike the country has seen since the Great Depression. But hey, why waste time with economistic ultra-left measures like that when you can march in glorified parades and wave placards with witty slogans on them?

Re: My 15 Minutes of Fame on the Internet

nutmeg_socialist — Wed, 26 Nov 2008 03:39:57 -0000

Your fame seems to be spreading. One of the papers I was grading last night cited a PA article of yours as a source.

Re: Worst "Marxist" Arugment in the World: The Big Three and the Bailout

nutmeg_socialist — Sun, 16 Nov 2008 23:15:52 -0000

First of all: OMG, I'm famous!
Second of all: The Repubs in Congress oppose the bailout because they see it as using "taxpayer money" (i.e. plutocratic spoils) to prop up an obselete and uncompetitive national industry that will be dead in six years anyway. In other words, they are basically voting to allow the industry's failure. Thus, the whole union-busting angle is moot - the union won't exist if the entire sector of the economy it operates in ceases to exist, now will it? And what's the likelihood that a former autoworker's skills give him easy access to a job in another heavily unionized industry? My guess would be: not high. The problem takes care of itself: capitalists as a whole get to keep more of their money, and aggregate unionization levels still drop.

Re: QUESTION OF THE DAY

nutmeg_socialist — Sat, 15 Nov 2008 21:23:48 -0000

True, but we have to distinguish between party and candidates here. The party system in the U.S. legislature isn't even close to an arrangement like in Britain where you've got a highly centralized leadership and party discipline; individual members have much more leverage to go their own way. And thanks to the majoritarian rules in congress, the NRCC tends to fund candidates based on the "R" next to their name and their perceived electability, rather than on specific positions. For instance, if a you have a situation where a centrist but very popular incumbent is facing a primary challenge from a conservative candidate who can't win in the general election, the NRCC will inevitably fund the former. (See Rhode Island in 2006). The same thing goes for inconvenient positions on corporate welfare.

Also, you have to take into account that the necessity for the bailout was unforeseen on part of much of corporate America as recently as a year ago: GOP members tend to get money from corporate lobbysists with the condition that they'll pursue very broadly defined "business friendly" policies, which most often take the form of regressive taxation , minimal regulatory measures, and fiscal austerity. When you're promoting ideologues of this stripe, there's a risk of them going either way on bailout issues, since bailouts count in many market-dogmatist conservative minds as "entitlement" or "pork barrel spending" or, gasp, "socialism." Corporations didn't really engage in enough long-range planning to throw their weight behind explicitly pro-bailout candidates; they saw this inherent risk in electing conservatives as an acceptable one since at the time it seemed to be outweighed by the fact that everything else conservatives would do would be unequivocally pro-business. It's all just an example of the sticky "human factor" complicating the whole infrastructure-superstructure relationship.

Re: QUESTION OF THE DAY

nutmeg_socialist — Sat, 15 Nov 2008 17:27:52 -0000

Because the GOP contains no small number of "small-government", "libertarian" conservatives who believe that no federal money should go to anything except building a police state, deporting immigrants, and violating the consitution. They regard corporations asking for bailouts as the upper-crust equivalent of welfare mothers and are quick with all manner of generic castigation about "individual initiative" and "prudence", etc.

Re: BERTRAND RUSSELL ON MARX'S THEORY OF VALUE

nutmeg_socialist — Tue, 11 Nov 2008 19:22:13 -0000

It looks like Russell just skimmed an early-20th-century equivalent of "Marxism for Dummies" and made his criticism based on that.

Re: Some Thoughts About A Left in a Rut by Norman Markowitz

nutmeg_socialist — Tue, 11 Nov 2008 10:28:46 -0000

It's funny because I work in a non-unionized public sector job which thanks to state budget cuts now has the wonderful combination of low wages and shaky job security, but since I don't take an appropriately shallow and moralistic view of what's "progressive", I must be all rich and insensitive and stuff. All the while you are in all likelihood placidly pontificating from the CPUSA's million-dollar NYC office building.