I think I deserve some sympathy. It is extremely difficult these days to blog about what is going on in the world. I mean, nobody wants a Marxist analysis of a 72 car wreck on an icy highway or philosophical reflections on a category five hurricane. Searching about for something to comment on that had not already been worked to death in social media, print, and cable news, I hit upon one very curious moment in Trump’s triumphal return to a Covid 19 – hollowed out White House. I am sure all of you have seen the video of him ascending the stairs and posing on the balcony like a two bit dictator while he saluted the departing helicopter. But you may have switched to something else before hearing him deliver a brief address to the nation in which there appeared the following words:
“We have the greatest country in the world. We’re going
back. We’re going back to work. We’re going to be out front. As your leader, I
had to do that. I knew there’s danger to it, but I had to do it. I stood out
front. I led. Nobody that’s a leader would not do what I did. And I know
there’s a risk. There’s a danger. But that’s okay, and now I’m better. Maybe
I’m immune.”
There is a technical term in literary criticism for this
statement: it is bat shit crazy. Trump is saying that there was a terrible
enemy attacking our nation and that as our leader he had to don his armor and
go forth to confront it, knowing that there was danger involved, but
nevertheless standing out front and leading. He had returned from that
epic struggle having conquered the enemy and won immunity from it. Now,
thanks to his courage and fortitude the rest of us were safe.
My first thought was that this was clearly an effect of the
steroids he had received as part of his treatment, that he was in a manic phase
of delirium. But then I recalled something that a young Donald Trump said many
years ago. He described having an active social life in New York during the
AIDS crisis as “my personal Vietnam.” This recollection comforted me. It was
clear that the drugs had not induced in him an artificial craziness. He was the
same old crazy Donald Trump that we have always known.
One final word about recent news. Two national polls taken
after the first debate show Biden with a 14 or 16 point lead over Trump. This
is obviously unsustainable, but it means that as the polls drift back to
normal, that normal will continue to be a 7 to 10 point lead which, I genuinely
believe, is large enough to defeat voter suppression, vote theft, and even the
dreaded Electoral College.
87 comments:
As they say, he is a legend in his own mind – our Sir Lancelot, defeating the Black Knight; Douglas MacArthur, returning to the Philippines, just as he promised.
“It is just a minor cold. Nothing to worry about. I will be back in the saddle in no time. Thank you all for your prayers and good wishes.” William Henry Harrison
MS
I just received an email from a friend advising me about an oral argument that will be conducted tomorrow before the Supreme Court at 11:00 A.M. The case involves the issue whether a party alleging that his/her religious liberty was violated by the government may obtain damages from the government. The lawsuit was brought by three Muslim men who sued FBI agents for incorrectly placing them on the No Fly list. You can read about it here:
https://www.becketlaw.org/case/tanzin-v-tanvir/
The oral argument is apparently going to be streamed to the general public, so those interested can hear how a Supreme Court argument is conducted. It should be interesting, even if you are not an attorney. Go to https://www.c-span.org/video/?469264-1/tanzin-v-tanvir-oral-argument.
This actually demonstrates one of the positive results of the pandemic. Cameras are not allowed in the Supreme Court during live in person arguments. The arguments are not being conducted via Zoom, which thereby allows access to the arguments by the public. This may turn out to be a permanent change in how the Supreme Court operates, which would be a substantial advantage for the American public.
Jerry,
I figured it out.
Errata: "The arguments are being conducted via Zoom ..."
Oy vey.
I just read the article about the case, and it indicates the oral argument was scheduled for today, and therefore is now almost over. I assumed the argument was scheduled for tomorrow, since I only received the email about 30 minutes ago.
My apologies.
I saw a report, don't know whether it's accurate, that Donald Trump Jr. has become concerned, worried or alarmed (not sure what the right verb is) by his father's recent behavior -- which, if accurate, suggests that, notwithstanding the old "personal Vietnam" remark, T's recent unhingedness is being noticed as something "out there" even by T's standards by at least one family member.
Re, your sentence: "Two national polls taken after the first debate show Biden with a 14 or 16 point lead over Trump." It's important to remember that polls are statistical samples with margins of error and so individual polls can vary quite significantly around the "actual" value.
From Nate Silver at 538 "...if Biden is truly ahead by 8 points, it should be fairly routine to get everything from a 15-point Biden lead to a 1-point lead."
538's current polling average puts Biden's lead at 8.8%
https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/biden-has-made-some-modest-gains-after-the-debate/
https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/polls/president-general/national/
Here's the story about Donald Jr. thinking that his father is acting crazy.
https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2020/10/don-jr-thinks-trump-is-acting-crazy-presidents-covid-joyride-has-family-divided
Don Jr has been freaking out for sometime that if his Dad loses, they'll all end up in jail. Let's hope he's right.
I think the best commentary on our current state of affairs is Weird Al's video take on the debate: "We're all doomed!"
At first, Trump descended the elevator with a pose that evidenced how important he thought he was, but just looked like a pale, tacky imitation of Hitler descending from the heights to Nuremberg. He thinks of himself as a great man, the only one who can save us from the carnage now afflicting the nation. Yesterday seemed more of an Ill Duce moment, ascending the stairs, then puffing himself for the campaign ad, rather than the news reels. Of course, using the White House as the stage for a campaign ad is a violation of a norm, but norms can’t constrain a great man.
His speech, if you can call it that, was “bat shit crazy.” He said he knows all the best words, but once again can’t seem to find a way to use them. Trump speaks a psycho-pathologically tortured, delusional language unencumbered by big words, let alone eloquence and oratorical flourishes that he couldn’t muster it his life depended on it. As Marx put it, history repeats itself, the first time as tragedy, the second as farce, and Trump is the farce.
I have to disagree with Dr. Wolff on one point. I suspect Biden can win with a large margin. My reasoning is as follows. Arizona went for Romney by +9 points in 2012 and for Trump by 3.5%. Today, Biden is winning AZ by 3.4 - a 12 point swing. Romney won TX with a 15 point margin, Trump won with a 9 pt margin and currently has a 3.2 lead. Another 12 point swing suggesting TX will become competitive despite some insane gerrymandering. In Georgia, Romney had 7.8% margin, Trump won by 5, and it is currently tied. Republicans are bleeding voters in previously strongly red states so I am a more optimistic than our host. It is unusual for me to be this optimistic, but the polling data supports it.
Professor Wolff --
I have been rereading Max Horkheimer's great book, "Eclipse of Reason" (1947). The following is from pages 118-119:
"The spiteful use of the mimetic urge explains certain traits of modern demagogues. They are often described as ham actors."
"Modern demagogues usually behave like unruly boys, who normally are reprimanded or repressed by their parents, teachers, or some other civilizing agency. Their effect on an audience seems due partly to the fact that by acting out repressed urges they seem to be flying in the face of civilization and sponsoring the revolt of nature. But their protest is by no means genuine or naive. They never forget the purpose of their clowning. Their constant aim is to tempt nature to join the forces of repression by which nature itself is to be crushed."
Thought it seemed apropos to our current reality.
-- Jim
Kathryn Grody and her husband Mandy Patinkin just put out this hilarious video about the election: https://twitter.com/PatinkinMandy/status/1313441423962890242
Jim, a nice quote. Alas, I am not often capable of viewing our present situation from that elevation.
Chris, from yoru mouth to God's ear. I pray for a victory big enough to be clinched on election night.
Professor Wolff,
You say above that "no one wants a Marxist analysis of a 72 car wreck on an icy highway".
That exactly what Horkheimer is doing. And I believe that you have many readers who would be interested in your Marxist analysis of the 72 car wreck. For intellectual stimulation, to be sure, but also because the only way we're going to get out of this mess is through a Marxist analysis or at least an analysis that includes a lot of Marx and you're a good person to set the ball rolling.
Biden is better than Trump, obviously, but he's business as usual, the same business as usual that brought us Trump and will produce future Trumps unless we begin the Marxist analysis of the 72 car wreck. And by "Marxist" I mean an analysis that includes all the intellectual tools that Horkheimer uses as well as all the intellectual tools which have become available in the 70 years since Horkheimer wrote.
I want to echo s. wallerstein: I have been musing all day as to what a Marxist analysis of a 72 car wreck would entail. I imagine the demographics of the drivers and passengers involved would yield very interesting information, as would matching incomes to vehicles. Of course, essential to any such investigation would be answering the question, "how did these people come to be involved in such an accident"? One has to imagine that in a majority of cases the demands imposed upon the workers by capitalism led to an acceptance of elevated risks.
TB
What does Marxism in the broadest sense of the term have to say about a society which elects as president a man who, infected with a deadly contagious disease, does not bother to use a face mask while in the presence of his family, his closest collaborators, his voters, his staff and bodyguards? A man who in spite of not using a face mask and in spite of multiple similar insults to common standards of decency and concern for others still has the enthusiastic support of a sizeable minority of the population.
What does that say about U.S. society? I cannot imagine Obama not using a face mask nor either of the Bushes nor Hillary Clinton (I'm not sure about Bill) nor Carter nor Ford nor even Nixon? Nixon would have used a mask, I believe.
Marx wrote about the society which elected Napoleon III. What would he say about the U.S. today? Or if not Marx, what would Marcuse, who was your friend, say?
'I mean, nobody wants a Marxist analysis of a 72 car wreck on an icy highway..'
Not that you're out of your comfort zone!
'..or philosophical reflections on a category five hurricane.'
Does 'seeking a return to normal' count as a philosophical reflection? I offer a refund for my services.
'Trump is saying that there was a terrible enemy attacking our nation and that as our leader he had to don his armor and go forth to confront it, knowing that there was danger involved, but nevertheless standing out front and leading. He had returned from that epic struggle having conquered the enemy and won immunity from it. Now, thanks to his courage and fortitude the rest of us were safe.'
Well, not in so many words, and also, not in *so many* words. I think Trump was saying 'We're going back. We're going back to work.' Including him. '"As your leader I had to do that. I knew there's danger to it, but I had to do it.'
As for 'donning armor', what, did the masks arrive? But he was speaking without a mask.
'He had returned from that epic struggle having conquered the enemy and won immunity from it.'
Well, that's a fairly abitrary gloss on 'Now I'm better and maybe I'm immune? I don't know. But don't let it dominate your lives.'
If Trump had said 'nothing is going to make me the pandemic seriously', then yeah, that would be batshit crazy. If he had said 'nothing is going to make me express a shred of compassion for the Americans who have died from it on my watch', then yeah. Perhaps 'callous' is actually 'batshit' crazy in your lexicon, in which case “it is what it is” might count. But you react as it Trump put out a video saying 'watch me spit in the faces of the families and loved ones of the dead'. I might, myself, actually think this video is irresponsible, but you are hardly offering a trustworthy line-by-line breakdown of it here. It's only an 85-second video, how hard is it? A remarkably tone-deaf performance? Perhaps. But here is the complete text:
"I just left Walter Reed Medical Center and it's really something very special. The doctors, the nurses, the first responders and I learned so much about coronavirus."
"And one thing that's for certain -- don't let it dominate you."
"Don't be afraid of it. You're gonna beat it."
"We have the best medical equipment, we have the best medicines, all developed recently. And you're gonna beat it."
"I went -- I didn't feel so good. Two days ago -- I could have left two days ago."
"Two days ago I felt great. Like better than I have in a long time. ... I said just recently, better than 20 years ago."
"Don't let it dominate. Don't let it take over your lives. Don't let that happen."
"We're the greatest country in the world. We're going back. We're going back to work. We're gonna be out front."
"As your leader, I had to do that. I knew there's danger to it but I had to do it."
"I stood out front. I led. Nobody that's a leader would not do what I did."
"And I know there's a risk, there's a danger. But that's OK. And now I'm better and maybe I'm immune? I don't know."
"But don't let it dominate your lives. Get out there, be careful."
"We have the best medicines in the world. And it all happened very shortly, and they're all getting approved and the vaccines are coming momentarily."
"Thank you very much and Walter Reed -- what a group of people. Thank you very much."
I don't think it's all so very truthful and responsible, I don't really want to defend Trump here, I just wonder if it matters at all what he actually said.
I am having trouble understanding what those who are calling for a Marxist analysis of a 72-car wreck are asking for. I acknowledge fully my knowledge of Marx is limited to what I have learned by watching Prof. Wolff’s youtube lectures and having read the Communist Manifesto. As has been disclosed on this blog, my expertise is in the practice of law, specifically American law, a lot of which has to do with studying the Constitution. And I assume the “72-car wreck” being referred to is the fact that Il Duce got elected to begin with, the economic and social conditions which contributed to persuading people to vote for him, and how to change those economic and social conditions so it is unlikely to happen again. Passing legislation which raises the minimum wage, provides for universal health care, perhaps eliminating the electoral college via an amendment to the Constitution so presidents are elected by the popular vote, would go a long way to improving the living conditions of a lot of people and prevent another electoral college debacle which elects a tyrant – but none of these equate to the ultimate objectives of Marxism, which is, as I understand it (acknowledging my lack of expertise in this area) having the means of production owned by the many, rather than by a few who use that ownership to hire, and thereby exploit, the many. Sanders describes himself as a democratic socialist, who supports the kind of legislative changes I have referred to above, which is not Marxism.
A Marxist analysis of the 72-car wreck would be far more transformational than the measures even Sanders is proposing. It would require somehow forcing the ownership of the means of production out of the hands of the few and transferring it to the many. But how could that be accomplished given the structure of our Constitution? As Jerry Fresia has argued in his comments and in his book “Toward An American Revolution” (a copy of which I own, and much of which I have read but – forgive me Jerry – have not completed, a failure not attributable to the skills of the author, but to the demands on my time), capitalism is embedded in the Constitution, which, as Jerry points out, was the Founding Fathers’ intention - it’s right there in the 5th Amendment: “No person .shall be ... deprived of life, liberty or property, without due process of law; nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation.” (Emphasis added.) This language in modified form is repeated in the 14th Amendment: “No State ... shall deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law.” (The 5th Amendment applies to the federal government; the 14th Amendment to the states.) In a famous dissent in Lochner v. New York, Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes stated, “The Fourteenth Amendment does not enact Mr. Herbert Spencer’s Social Statics.” He was dissenting from a majority opinion which struck down as unconstitutional a New York statute which limited the work hours of bakers to 10 hrs. per day. He was in effect stating that the Constitution does not prohibit socialism. His dissent led to majority opinions sustaining the constitutionality of President Roosevelt’s New Deal. But again, socialism is a far cry from Marxism. How would one constitutionally transfer the means of production from the many to the few – something the few would no doubt resist? I therefore don’t see a Marxist analysis of the 72-car wreck that could succeed given the terms of the Constitution, which would therefore require upending the Constitution, attended by a lot of bloodshed.
By the way, on a separate note, I notice no one has offered an answer to the hypothetical I posed in a comment to Prof. Wolff’s post on “Religious Reflections.” I suspect some think I am posing a gotcha question, and will savagely attack anyone who offers the wrong answer. Not so. I genuinely would like to know what readers think about the hypothetical – which group has superior rights, the protesters expressing their political views, or the Muslims seeking to worship without being insulted?
MS,
You red bait.
A Marxist analysis merely involves using the intellectual tools of Marxism to understand how "we" got into a 72 car wreck. Professor Wolff, whose opinion you appear to respect, calls Marx "the greatest social scientist" who has ever written. I imagine that the greatest social scientist who has ever written might have a lesson for us about how we got into this 72 car wreck. That's all. Relax: I'm not calling for the Cheka to confiscate your property and send you to the gulag.
Re, MS: "...I assume the “72-car wreck” being referred to is the fact that Il Duce got elected to begin with..."
As I (notwithstanding my old blogger ID) make my living as a software developer/engineer, I have the typical character trait of that profession (defect? vice?) which is taking things completely literally.
While I acknowledge that Prof. Wolff's "72-car pileup" comment was almost certainly no more than rhetorical, I state explicitly that when I am interested in a Marxist analysis of a 72 car wreck, I am literally expressing interest in an analysis of exactly that. From the (very) little I know of Marxism, I have to believe that any Marxist worth their salt likely has a great deal to say about the circumstances of capitalist workers that leads them into risking their lives en masse on icy roads.
TB
s. wallerstein and Philosophical Waiter,
I’m sorry, but I still do not get what you are asking for that you have not already received, if you have read Marx and have been following Prof. Wolff’s posts on this blog analyzing the 2016 election and the Democratic primaries. The 72-car wreck is just a particular example of how the proletariat are taken advantage of by the capitalist forces. It has happened before in numerous other historical contexts, and any analysis of those contexts would be equally applicable to explain why middle and lower class citizens feeling betrayed and forgotten would reach out to a maniac promising them something better, and being unable or unwilling to see through his deception. It’s as if you have a proof in Euclidean geometry about why there can only be one line through a particular point parallel to another line, and you want to know regarding this specific point why there can’t be another line parallel to the line below.
I thought you were asking a more practical question – how can the principles of Marxism be implemented in our society to achieve goals greater than those offered by democratic socialism - a transfer of the means of production from the many to the few, and I was explaining that it cannot be done give the axioms and postulates of our Constitution.
MS
Having dispensed with the literal "72 car wreck," I can now proceed to the metaphorical.
Given the hyperbolically dangerous circumstance of electing a fascist-leaning, reality TV-show host as president of the largest capitalist, militarist state in the world, it does not seem much of a stretch to imagine that any lucid analysis of the causes of this terrifying circumstance, from whatever quarter, would be welcome.
Just so, I assert that a reasonable interpretation of Prof. Wolff's statement is the literal one: that he plainly asserts that nobody (other than literally-minded software engineers, say) would have any interest in his philosophic analysis of acute, massive, physical tragedies. And so, he finds himself in the circumstance of having a rich set of talents that he cannot usefully apply, at least to the more acute events that may beset us.
Post-script:
I used the words “our Constitution” loosely, since I know that s. wallestein lives in Chile, and therefore the U.S. Constitution is not his constitution. And I do not know where Philosophical Waiter hails from, so it may not be his constitution either. But the 72 car wreck did occur in the U.S., so an analysis of the U.S. Constitution would be apropos of an inquiry about the applicability of Marxist theory to avoiding another 72-car wreck.
And no, I was not red baiting. Nor am I concerned that a Marxist effort to confiscate my property might occur. I am perfectly able to defend myself and my property in a U.S. court.
And Philsophical Waiter, now you have changed the question from requesting a Marxist analysis explaining what has happened in this country that could lead to the election of an authoritarian misanthrope, to the general question of how it happened and how can it be avoided. That, obviously, is a far different question and very complicated question that calls for an analysis of the American educational system, the use of social media and its influence on its users, etc., etc.
MS,
There is a long rich tradition of social, economic and cultural analysis beginning obviously with Marx, but enriched by thinkers such as Gramsci, Lukacs, Adorno, Horkheimer (cited above by Jim), Marcuse, Perry Anderson, Eric Hobsbawm, the later Jean Paul Sartre, C.Wright Mills and many others, not to mention feminist marxists such as Nancy Fraser. If you know little about the above tradition, why reduce it to a simplistic explanation about the working class being exploited? It's much more than that.
I'll make a deal with you. I know nothing about U.S. constitutional law or U.S. law in general besides what I learned in high school U.S. history. I promise not to opine about U.S. Constitutional law here and maybe you might in return not opine about the long and rich Marxist tradition. How about that?
MS
Let me belabor the point to make it clear that I am not attempting anything at all profound.
A literal analysis of a 72 car wreck would be to immerse itself first in the large amount of details of the wreck, e.g., the names, ages, genders, professions, etc. of all of those involved, and where they were going that led them to being on an icy road and involved in a massive wreck. The benefit of such, while obviously extraordinarily time-consuming, would be to provide atomically detailed information about the current circumstances of the working class.
I assert this would be a benefit, akin to what Prof. Wolff referenced in his Lecture 6 on Marx, in which he talked about how Marx was informed by his reading of Parliamentary Factory Inspectors Reports.
That said, it would be a fair criticism of my assertion to note that the Parliamentary factory inspectors were not Marxists (of course) and so their reports were not Marxist analyses of those factories.
It would also be a fair criticism of my above assertion to note that a Marxist philosopher is not inherently someone by nature a sociologist field worker who engages in the on the ground collection of the data I describe. However, given the rise of big data, it is likely that such information could be gleaned from existing sources (given sufficient resources to electronically gather it in one collection) such that it could be used to support a Marxist analysis of a 72 car wreck not different in any fundamental way from a Marxist analysis of a factory.
MS
A further clarification:
The immense amount of detail that must be present in a 72 car wreck provides a deep pool into which someone like myself can metaphorically dive such that, while in it, I cannot see beyond it, and so cannot remember any details about the current state of the presidency.
In short, it's a means of intellectual escape, nothing more.
MS
Re, Religious Reflections and the 1st Amendment circumstance that you propose:
As I read your description of protests outside a Mosque, I immediately thought of the protests that occur outside of family planning clinics. This is a "where the rubber meets the road" kind of 1st Amendment challenge.
Having no genuine legal knowledge to speak of (other than a personal interest and a reasonable effort to remain generally informed) there are clear competing 1st Amendment interests here. (In your example) Muslims have the 1st Amendment right to worship as they choose. In practice in the U.S., a large cohort of Americans (whether or not they would express this openly) do not believe that the religious freedoms guaranteed in the constitution extend to any religious other than Christianity (and Judaism, if they are feeling generous).
Let's imagine that large groups of atheists started picketing outside of churches, calling them idiots for believing that God created the world in 6 days, calling them ghouls for drinking blood and eating flesh, corrupting children by destroying their capacity to reason. (Of course this is absurdly unlikely, given the relative number of atheists versus Christians, but you get the point.) This is legally allowable, but I can't imagine that it could possibly persist for long before the extant power structures found ways to prevent it. Not because it was strictly illegal, but because it offended the plurality of those in positions of authority (construing "authority" here to mean anyone in a position to control local politics, independent of who is actually has official office).
Ultimately, as a society, through the judges we appoint, the laws we pass, and the laws we enforce by both formal (i.e., police action) and informal (social pressure) means we collectively decide what forms of protest are acceptable.
I think the ethos of a healthy society would enjoin such protests as you have described and as I have described above, but I think the letter of the law would mostly have to allow them. So from my perspective the real question is how we reverse transmogrify our society into a healthy one that in socially reasonable ways inhibits the worst of such ugly behaviors.
s. wallerstein,
Given your citation of all those Marxist thinkers and their works, is there no explanation in those works regarding how a fairly literate population which has access to all sorts of information, and has the freedom to vote for any one of several candidates running for political office, would choose the one candidate who has a history of numerous bankruptcies, yet claims to be a fantastic business man who knows the art of closing a deal and therefore can get North Korea and Iran to give up their nuclear ambitions; whose credentials for being able to manage an economy is based on a tv show, the highlight of which is his stating in a firm and condemnatory voice, “You’re fired”; whose social skills include admitting that he has sexually assaulted women by grabbing their privates; etc., etc., you mean to say that in all those works there is no sociological and/or and/or psychological and/orphilosophical explanation as to how this could occur in a country that prides itself on its democratic values? Surely there must be some sort of explanation in those books. And didn’t Erich Fromm, who belonged to the same Frankfurt School as Marcuse, Adorno and Horkheimer, provide a plausible explanation in “Escape From Freedom”?
Philosophical Waiter,
Thank you for offering your thoughts regarding my hypothetical. For a non-lawyer, you did a pretty good job at analyzing the competing interests. I would be interested in learning how others view the dynamic, and on which side they would come down. Let me say, the hypothetical is based on real events, involving a different religion and a different house of worship, which is currently in litigation. It is a precedent setting case, the first of its kind in American jurisprudence. I am not at liberty to identify the case at the present time, or which side I am representing, but I am interested in learning how others would respond.
MS,
I left out Fromm's name inadvertently. He certainly should be on any list of thinkers in the Marxist tradition worth reading.
I vaguely recall having this exact same conversation with you a few years and that I recommended Adorno's study (with others), The Authoritarian Personality, which takes up the same subject as Fromm's work which you cite, but unlike Fromm, is based on field studies, on empirical sociological and social psychological research. The explanation is not so different from that of Fromm and as I recall, Fromm appears in the bibliography and/or footnotes, but they use sociological and psychological techniques for gathering data.
Yes, steve, we have had this discussion before, and probably will have it again.
On your recommendation, I did borrow Adorno’s work from the library, but had to return it before I could finish reading it, and have not had the time to re-borrow it.
Best,
MS
Christopher M.
Why did you delete your comment?
I clicked on this site to comment that I agree with all that you said, only to find that you had deleted it.
Anyway, to what you said above, we should add the effect of social media, Facebook, Instagram, etc., which leads people to form self-affirming groups, targeted by political campaigns with fake news and various forms of disinformation.
This blog, while also a self-affirming group, generally has a virtuous role in stimulating dialogue and discussion, although at times it only seems to affirm group identity: we are good and they are bad.
S Wallerstein,
I did delete it because my editing was horrible. We have a new German Shepherd puppy who keeps interrupting me as I was writing and editing (not to mention interrupted sleep!). I’ll post a new and improved (?) version later today.
Great because your comment above was one that people who follow this blog should get a chance to read.
The descent in fascism in the U.S. is certainly a shit show. It can not be adequately explained by Marx alone. I think the general outlines of an explanation of the 72 car pile up starts with a Marxian understanding of capitalism. Massive pile ups on our highways are not an aberration and neither is the descent into fascism by the Republican Party. But Marx isn’t enough.
If I were going to teach a seminar on this, I would start with a Marxian analysis of the period from 1960 to the present. The decline of the FDR coalition, the rise of a new Republican Party based on white supremacy and Protestant fundamentalism, years of stagnant/declining shares of income for the working class and lower middle class, the demise of unions, the defunding of education, the out of control costs of healthcare, etc. Then along comes the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression and an Black president. Republicans refuse to enact jobs programs, i.e., no Keynesian stimulus, and all the stressors you can think of afflict a significant segment of society. It is analogous to the economic collapse of Germany in the inter-war period and the rise of the Nazi Party.
One needs an understanding of Freud to fully grasp what happens to otherwise reasonably functional people when their life falls apart around them during a decade or more of economic hardship brought on by social, economic and political conditions they don’t understand. One needs knowledge of Max Weber on authority, specifically charismatic, which ties back into a Freudian influenced analysis of what happens when the ego can no longer mediate the demands imposed by a reality it can no longer manage. The ego has to manage the dynamic imposed by the demands of a subject’s Id and Super-Ego regardless of the increased strain put on it by a socio-economic crisis. Id and Super-Ego continue to relentlessly impose their demands on the subject.
We also need an understanding of social psychology. One needs to understand how paranoid delusions, usually the realm of individual psychology, become social and political movements.
Then one needs to move on to the political catastrophe that an ensues. The great man comes along to tell us he can fix it all, but only at the expense of a non-white group(s) relentlessly vilified and punished for being the cause of everyone’s problems. The captains of industry think the great man should be installed in office because he will be their puppet who will ensure their profitability while keeping control of the unruly masses by obliterating the foundations of reason. The captains of industry soon find out that they have lost control of their puppet. Justice becomes the domain of the whims of the great one, political opposition is attacked as socialist/communist, and militias are deployed to kill the regime’s opponents.
The analysis of Fascism developed by the Frankfurt School is as appropriate today as it was then, even though the conditions and the actors are very different. In addition to The Eclipse of Reason mentioned in Jim’s comment, we can add The Authoritarian Personality, One Dimensional Man, Eros and Civilization, etc.. There are excellent contemporary works on authoritarianism, fascism, the state in advanced capitalism, and updates of Eric Fromm’s concept of malignant narcissism that strengthen and expand the Frankfurt School’s original analysis.
Trump mimics the past without knowing it. His Ill Duce moment on the balcony as he preened and posed for a new campaign ad is the latest example. His campaign ads have become more delusional. (One can be bat shit crazy and socially functional, especially when you inherit hundreds of million dollars) The barbarism of separating children from their immigrant parents should be inconceivable in a presumptively enlightened society, but Trump has strong sadistic impulses. The effects on these children will be lifelong and these policies are most likely an International crime as the U.S. has signed and ratified the U.N. Convention Against Torture and the Cruel, Inhumane or Degrading Treatment or Punishment. An article in today’s New York Times explains how the Justice Department made this policy happen, and the “I was just following orders” defense was offered up by some DoJ lawyers.
The 100,000 and more that will die because Trump’s psychopathology prevented him from acting in a reasonable and compassionate manner guided by science can be explained in psychoanalytic terms, though I still struggle with how to explain Trump’s decompensation as pressure increases and how he becomes more self destructive. I guess that he can’t distinguish what is instrumentally in his best interest as opposed to what his pathology tells him what to do.
You have to face it, this is a huge and complex mess and it takes a broad knowledge of social theory and political economy to analyze it.
As a supplement or complement to what CJM has written (which I've read rather quickly), I would suggest adding a focus on the breakdown of the so-called golden age of capitalism (or trente glorieuses as the French called it) starting in the late 60s and accelerating into the early and mid 70s. If you have Hobsbawm's _Age of Extremes_ lying around, look at chap. 9 and esp pp.284-286. Brief and telegraphic but it flags and summarizes the main considerations, plus there is some good stuff in his list of references (e.g. Marglin and Schor 1990). No doubt a lot of important work has been done on this period in the 20+ years since Age of Extremes was published, but I don't know it well enough to make specific suggestions offhand.
P.s. that's on the pol. economy side. On fascism, Bertram Gross, if I recall correctly, wrote a book called Friendly Fascism during the Reagan era; didn't read it but it might have anticipated some future trends. On another blog there was a review a few months back of two books by Frederico Finchelstein (possibly I'm misspelling the name a bit) that seemed relevant on fascism and the fascism/populism relation.
LFC,
I just left a comment on the Further Thoughts post responding to your last comment regarding 1st Amendment rights. While you are correct that public employees generally speaking cannot be jailed for expressing their opinions, I give further examples demonstrating that they can most certainly be fired by their public employer, which constitutes state action.
The latest 538 polling average puts Joe Biden's national lead at 9.8% (although they project, as of now, that his lead will narrow before November 3rd), with an 85% chance to win the election. They also put the democrats at about 2-1 to take the senate.
538 Latest National Polls
538 Presidential Forecast
538 Senate Forecast
MS
Thank you for the examples -- I wasn't disagreeing w you, inasmuch as I did not say or mean to imply that public employees couldn't ever be fired for speech. I'm aware there is a whole body of caselaw here that I don't know well and have no particular reason to.
I want to state categorically, on the record, that I know none of the individuals who have just been criminally charged with conspiring to kidnap Michigan Governor Whitmer.
We live in interesting times. Chinese proverb..
I've been thinking about the Professor's conclusion that in order to pass needed legislation in this time of crisis, very broad coalitions are necessary (I hope I'm stating his position correctly). And then I read commentary like the following:
"Normalcy? Normalcy brought us the Iraq War, torture, assassination by drone, 607 billionaires & 600k homeless, the gutting of welfare, warrantless wiretaps, militarized police, the war on drugs, the destruction of the Gulf of Mexico & an atmospheric C02 level of 411.08 ppm."
So we are back to needing legislation that will support progressive change. Two recent eras give us guidance: the early 30's and the mid-60s. Both were similarly periods of crisis and I don't know how broad the coalitions were that push progressive legislation but in both instances there were powerful and militant organized activists that threatened to turn up the heat even more. Might this kind of activism be a necessary condition in obtaining the legislation we are looking for?
Jerry,
The "normalcy" that brought us the Iraq War and all the rest--including Roberts and Alito on the Supreme Court--was not the "normalcy" of Al Gore, but of Bush II, along with, among others, Dick Cheney. We need to thank--also among others--the 95,000+ who voted for Ralph ("The lesser of two evils is still evil") Nader in Florida. If fewer than 1,000 of them had voted for that tool of Wall Street, the neo-liberal Al Gore, the war wouldn't happened and neither would those two S. Court appointments. There's even reason to believe that 9/11 might have been prevented. Gore would have, no doubt, been
something of a clone of Bill Clinton, but we could do worse. For starters, I'll take the two Clinton put on the S.Ct.--Stephen Breyer and Ruth Bader Ginsburg--over Roberts and Alito any day. The lesser of two evils indeed.
Jerry,
No doubt activism on the scale of that which generated the passage of the New Deal reforms in the 1930’s and the passage of the Civil Rights legislation supported by Pres. Johnson in the 1960’s could influence the passage of progressive legislation today. But that activism was itself the result of events that marked those eras – the Great Depression in the 1930’s and the assassination of Pres. Kennedy, the commitment to civil disobedience by Dr. King, and the televised news footage of African-Americans being savagely beaten and set upon by police dogs in the 1960’s. We have had comparable events since 2000 – the economic collapse in 2008 and the Black Lives Matter protests this year, marked in some cases by the excessive use of force by the police. Why, then, have not the similar events sparked comparable activism? Even the Black Lives Matter protests to not compare in numbers to the numbers of people who marched on Washington in 1963 to hear Dr. King give his “I have a dream” speech. Has something changed in the populace which makes them more apathetic, more indifferent, less willing to take risks, etc. Could a person (I use the word loosely) like Il Duce have been elected in the 1930s or 1960s. There certainly were comparable candidates running for office – Father Coughlin, Wallace. Even the Iraq war, with its reports of atrocities, abuse of prisoners, Guantanamo, did not result in the kind of massive protests we saw during the Vietnam War (perhaps explainable because Bush did not institute a military daft).
As I have suggested in comments on other posts, I do believe that addiction to social media, access to instant gratification, the erosion of literacy have created a culture of inactivism and self-centeredness. This is certainly a subject worthy of a political science/sociology dissertation. Perhaps things will change if Il Duce is trounced in the election, run out of town on a rail, then prosecuted and incarcerated. I certainly hope so
For the record, according to the “voter demographics” at
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2000_United_States_presidential_election
13 percent of “liberals” voted for Bush
45 percent of “Moderates” voted for Bush
11 percent of “Democrats” voted for Bush
48 percent of “Independents” voted for Bush
37 percent of “union households” voted for Bush
—but it’s all Nader’s fault—who can possibly argue with that???
This doesn't necessarily discredit some of the previous comments, but the polls done back in the summer showed that anywhere from 15-26 million people have participated in protests, vigils, and other actions related to the racial justice uprising.
According to a NYT analysis, "These figures would make the recent protests the largest movement in the country's history, according to interviews with scholars and crowd-counting experts.”
The anti-Nader arguments always assume that without Nader most of the people who voted for Nader would have voted for Gore, but it may be that without Nader most of them would simply not have bothered to vote.
MS
One explanation has been offered by Jurgen Habermas in his book Legitimation Crisis. He calls it civil privatism, defined as “political abstinence combined with and orientation to career, leisure and consumption.” The state had a role in managing the economic system with the Federal Reserve managing monetary policy and government using Keynesian demand side expenditures. So, if the system works, economic rewards are distributed fairly and reliably, there is no need for high levels of public involvement in politics. One aspect of our current crisis is economic rewards have not been fairly distributed thanks to 40 years of republican hegemony that the Democrats bought into during the Clinton years.
He has a general model that reflects the modern state (post-Keynesian) which is useful, I think, as we think about this stuff. In short, there are three “systems” - Economic, Political-Administrative and Socio -Cultural. The economic system pumps money into the socio-cultural while being managed by the Political-Administrative system. The state also taxes the economic system. The state has the role of mitigating the negative consequences of capitalism such as income supplements to the unemployed and the reserve army of the unemployed, managing environmental pollution, etc. If the state can mange all this, it will generate legitimation from the social system. (Warning: Habermas is not good writer - his prose is turgid.)
I think the culture of in-activism and egoism predates social media, but I suspect social media is a significant addition to the arsenal of things required to keep our minds off of more important matters. I would just note that the level of political involvement jumped significantly in 2018 and this should continue this year. Hopefully one party crashes and burns and the other dramatically reconfigures itself. We can hope.
s. wallerstein
The anti-Nader argument does not assume that “without Nader most of the people who voted for Nader would have voted for Gore.” It assumes only that at least one percent of them would have done so. Since Gore lost by fewer than 600 votes and Nader got more than 95,000, that seems to me a more than reasonable assumption.
Their staying home in the absence of Nader’s being on the ticket changes nothing. Given the binary nature of the process, their righteous self-indulgence either way gave us Bush and all that followed, including my pet examples of war in Iraq, Roberts, and Alito.
David Palmeter,
You and MS look at the world from a different perspective than I here do.
I blame Bush winning on Gore and indirectly on Bill Clinton. They did not appeal to those who voted for Nader. If they wanted to win their votes, they should have appealed to them
You blame Bush winning on the Nader voters. You believe that we on the left (and I know that you consider yourself to be the left, but I see you as being on the center-left) should adapt to the system, while I believe the system should change and adapt to us.
By the way, both Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden voted for the war in Iraq, so don't blame it just on Bush.
Please don't give me the usual sermon about half a loaf being better than none. Nietzsche somewhere says that some people have a way of being right that makes you conceive a stubborn aversion to being right and that describes you well. I won't add how Nietzsche concludes the aphorism, because....
s, wallerstein and the other like-minded political purists,
You are a Nader supporter.
He is running for President, against two other candidates, Al Gore, the Democratic Vice President, and Georg W. Bush, the Republican Governor of Texas, whose claim to fame is that prior to being governor he was the owner of a baseball team. Gore appears to be quite intelligent and has spoken publicly regarding his concerns about climate change and his belief that climate change poses an existential threat to humanity and is due to factors caused by humans, in particular their persistent reliance on fossil fuels.
Nader is very progressive. If he were elected, he would make a great President, from your perspective. You know that generally speaking Democrats are more progressive than Republicans, but not as progressive as Nader.
Reliable polls show that Nader has little chance of winning. As between Gore and Bush, Gore shares more of Nader’s views than does Bush. It is possible that if people vote for Nader rather than Gore, that Bush will win. Possible, but not certain. And if Nader were to lose, Gore would do more to advance Nader’s policies than Bush would. It is also possible that if you vote for Gore, rather than Nader, or not voting at all, your vote will help elect Gore. Again possible, but not certain.
Knowing all this, you insist on voting for Nader and hope for the best.
Bush gets elected, and the rest is history.
And do you show any remorse or regret, or any sense of responsibility for what has transpired? No. Why? Because you believe the system should adapt to you, rather than vice versa. And you believe this is a moral and eminently rational way to behave and to improve the world.
So the system elects Bush, resulting in a failure to pay attention to the intelligence reports Bush is receiving, something Gore would likely not have done, resulting in 9/11, which Bush uses to justify invading Iraq, resulting in the deaths of several hundred thousand men, women and children, and the destabilization of Iraq, which plagues it another 20 years.
And of course you were right to insist that the system should adapt to you, rather than vice versa. Isn’t there a literary metaphor for such thinking, something about tilting at windmills, while Dulcinea gets raped by reality.
And of course the same reasoning applies to the 2020 election, because Biden is also part of the system, and the system should adapt to the political purists, rather than vice versa. And God help us.
The way American "progressives" debate about counterfactuals is funny.
Take David Palmeter: "We need to thank--also among others--the 95,000+ who voted for Ralph ("The lesser of two evils is still evil") Nader in Florida."
So, had Nader not stolen Gore's votes, Gore would have won. That's the counterfactual David Palmeter likes to discuss.
But there's another counterfactual: Had the Democrats had a better candidate than Gore--Wall Street Tool--they would have won.
The thing with progressives like Palmeter is that electoral defeat is in a very real sense preferable to losing control of the party. They can always blame dissent for electoral defeat.
We've seen--well, not you guys, Americans as you are--the same scenario playing out in Britain, with Jeremy Corbyn. The Guardian spent years slandering Corbyn, day in, day out. A number of Labour MPs chose to defect, before supporting Corbyn. Tony Blair went public telling people not to vote Labour, for God's sake!
Okay, Labour lost the election, but Corbyn was kicked out of Labour. And the Blairite can always blame Corbyn. You see, it was Corbyn alone who lost.
That's why I find those discussions amusing. American dissenters apparently cannot see that.
--Cockney Jack
s. wallerstein,
The Nietzsche quote you were referring to is:
“You have your way I have my way as for the right way the correct way and the only way it does not exist"?
This just means that there is no singular right way to view a given situation. It does not mean that with respect to two different perspectives, neither of which is absolutely correct, that it cannot be the case that one perspective, while imperfect, is not better, more prudent than the alternative perspective.
Cockney Jack,
“So, had Nader not stolen Gore's votes, Gore would have won. That's the counterfactual David Palmeter likes to discuss.
But there's another counterfactual: Had the Democrats had a better candidate than Gore--Wall Street Tool--they would have won.”
No, that is not the counter-factual David is offering, which is a straw man you have concocted. The counterfactual is, “Had Nader not stolen Gore’s votes, Gore would have had a better chance of winning.”
And what the hell use is the counterfactual you offer for the here and now that if the Democrats had a better candidate than Gore, they would have won. That was now what happened in the real world, in which elections have consequences. The Democrats nominated the person they did; the Republicans nominated the person they did. Those were the choices. And because America has foolish political purists like you, we - and the rest of the world, including your country - got stuck with Bush.
There was a major and widely recognized change in the organization of capitalism circa 1970 (meaning the years just before and after) and accelerating in the succeeding decades. You can call it the end of Fordism (as David Harvey for ex did in The Condition of Postmodernity [1990]), you can call it neoliberal globalization, but whatever you call it the change was significant, and the rise in ec. inequality *within* countries, w the US being a prime but not the only example, has to be seen against that backdrop. (I don't think Piketty, from what I know second hand of his account, wound contradict this, though he might tell the story somewhat differently.)
I suspect that a perusal of e.g. O'Connor _Fiscal Crisis of the State_ or maybe, though I'm not sure, Habermas' Legitimation Crisis or some other works of that era wd show these trends beginning to be recognized before they had fully taken hold.
The politically relevant pt of all this in the current context is that the ec phenomena of just-in-time supply chains, deindustrialization, offshoring of production etc created the conditions of possibility for a populist style revolt against a pol establishment that presided over this. That is why, in 2016, Trump's attacks on NAFTA, the TPP, and other "bad" trade deals resonated w some voters, partly why Trump and his adviser Peter Navarro launched a tariff war w China, and why one of the Trump/Pence attack pts vs Biden is that the latter spent 47 years in Wash D.C. abetting the relative decline of the US manufacturing sector (to which Biden replies that he saved the auto industry after 2008 but that's a reply that doesn't speak to the gist of the attack, which has to do w changes over decades). Now of course individual politicians have v. limited power to affect global ec trends rooted in underlying changes in the org of production, but that doesn't or didn't deprjve Trump's criticism of "bad" trade deals etc. of its effectiveness with some slices of the electorate. Even if something like NAFTA was bound to occur in the early 9Os, its specific provisions were not inevitable, and ditto for the WTO for that matter.
Trump's chaotic approach to governing, his mishandling of the pandemic, his flirting w white supremacists, and his sucking up to right wing "culture warriors" (on abortion, judicial appts etc), and the 2017 tax cuts among other things, have pushed the ec populist and trade part of his agenda out of probably the majority of voters' consciousness. But if the pandemic hadn't occurred and if Trump had had a less Twitter-oriented and more disciplined and consistent approach to his job, he might be a stronger candidate for re-election than he appears to be right now.
This all has little or nothing to do w whether the Frankfurt School sheds light on current politics, a question I am not really competent to opine on, but it does suggest that you cannot understand US politics by looking at the U.S. in a vacuum or only by focusing on changes in the Repub party, money in politics, polarization etc. All of that is important, but without the changes in global capitalism over the last 50 or 60 years, fueling among other things changes in the domestic economy (more inequality, more contingent work, decline of unions etc), the conditions for a faux populist quasi-demagogue like Trump would have been less ripe than they were in 2016. I don't think Pence is v well placed to do this, but if someone can replicate Trump's faux populism without Trump's extreme narcissism and general craziness, he or she might be a quite strong Repub candidate next time around. But that is just speculation...
Oi!
Judging by the way m'lord reacted, I'd say I struck a nerve, uh? :-)
Judge by yourselves, American dissenters.
And although I ain't no practicing lawyer, like gov'nah is, I will rest my case.
--Cockney Jack
Cockney Jack,
I certainly hope you get to the church on time.
And give my best to Liza.
What about 'the righteous self-indulgence" of those who never tire of beating up on those to their left for ruining their attempts to become our masters? You can go on as much as you like about the nature of the system reducing the supposedly meaningful choices to two, but that doesn't take into account those who are trying to play a longer game, trying to change the sort of choice that the system throws up. It's good to see Cockney Jack making the case from the British evidence, that those who regard themselves as the only legitimate alternative to the completely unacceptable other will throw any other opponent of the other under the bus because their primary concern is to preserve their own status as the only legitimate alternative. And just to make it clear, as was pointed out by anonymous at 4:50 PM, there were lots of self-described liberals, moderates and Democrats who failed to vote for Gore.
Lordy, Habermas? I amuse myself by tossing off something about 'Marxian analysis', which is in reference to Wolff's op post. Can it ever be irrevelevant around here?
You can't get away from the importance of Karl Marx to culture, history and politics. Although, of course, professional economics as it exists today reflects no indication that Karl Marx ever existed. The Marxian contribution to economics can be readily summarized as virtually zero.
What about habermas? Well, I guess that he currently ranks as one of the most influential philosophers in the world. I'm not being sarcastic, but maybe I am when I add something about him commenting on controversial issues of the day in German newspapers such as Die Zeit. Or take it as you will. I note, that Habermas is *still alive*! ;)
Scotland Bob,
The fact that “self-described liberals, moderates and Democrats who failed to vote for Gore” and either voted for Nader or Bush, does not detract from the historical fact that if they had shown better judgment and voted for Gore, the world would be a far, far better place than it is, the U.S. Supreme Court would have a liberal majority – all factors which would have improved the lot of the middle and lower socio-economic classed that you and your fellow political purists purport to advocate for.
And regarding playing the game for the long term – that is called being short-sighted, because what happens in the short term, while you have your idealistic eyes fixed on the future and thereby play a role in people like Bush and Trump getting elected because you regard the alternatives as too imperfect for the utopian long-term you pine for, things happen in the short term – like launching an ill-advised invasion of Iraq based on erroneous intelligence information that Iraq has WMD, and failing to monitor the economy while a new-fangled investment device called derivatives is creating a massive bubble that is about to collapse – which ruin your prospects for the long term, and make it recede further and further away. And so you hopeful, idealistic vision for the long-term has been ruined by a myopic view of the short term.
A few years ago I decided I didn't need the two substantial pb vols of The Theory of Communicative Action and I donated them to a high school's used book sale. And on that note, I'm out of here for a while.
It is becoming increasing apparent that there will not be a peaceful transition of power, should Biden win. Shouldn't the Dems be lining up Republicans to pledge to same. Why doesn't the clever Pelosi introduce a resolution in the House to get Republicans on record....NOW!
s.wallerstein,
You argue that "They did not appeal to those who voted for Nader. If they wanted to win their votes, they should have appealed to them."
This ignores the fact that political victories in a country of some 300 million necessarily involve building coalitions. A platform that appealed only to the Nader voters was not a winner--he came in, at best, a distant third. Coalitions mean that few if any get all they want. They do,however, get more from one of the major parties than the other, and that's the only real choice they have.
Biden and Clinton voted for the Iraq war because (a) they knew it was going to pass and (b) the Democrats took a big hit after voting for the first Iraq war and did not want to make that "mistake" again. They did not show profiles in courage, true, but sometimes survival in politics involves ducking certain issues. Just ask Bernie Sanders about some of his votes on gun control.
Jerry Fresia, re: "not a peaceful transition of power"
While I would agree that the likelihood of a peaceful transition of power seems remote at this stage, I think we should all admit that nobody really knows what's going to happen. It is imaginable that the election sets off a violent civil war and the election is never properly certified. It seems possible that the legislatures in some GOP controlled states the vote for Biden will attempt to elect their own slate of electors and that there will be a no-holds barred battle over what votes will be counted.
And it's imaginable that, along with the inevitable attempts for the GOP to suppress the vote and corrupt the election, that the election substantially is processed as it has for all previous elections and that, notwithstanding the toddler-in-chief's objections, Biden is declared the winner in a largely free and fair election and is properly installed as President in January of 2021.
It will be difficult (but likely not impossible) for the GOP to steal the election if there is a large majority against Trump, which seems to be building. (e.g. Latest 538 poll average has Biden at +10.1% and 538 is arguably the most cautious polling aggregator.) So the current trend against Trump, with even Mitch McConnell admitting that he is staying away from the White House, is hopeful.
Politicians, by necessity, are good at judging the way the wind blows, and if the wind is blowing strongly against Trump we may find that relatively few of them try to stand up against it.
MS,
You're wrong about the Nietzsche quote. I've read everything Nietzsche ever published, selections from his letters and from his notebooks, so you're going to have a long search to find it.
s. wallerstein,
What??? You’re the one who wrote in a comment above: “Please don't give me the usual sermon about half a loaf being better than none. Nietzsche somewhere says that some people have a way of being right that makes you conceive a stubborn aversion to being right and that describes you well. I won't add how Nietzsche concludes the aphorism, because....” And now you claim the quote I produced which is attributed to Nietzsche does not exist??
s. wallerstein,
“Blessed are the forgetful, for they get the better even of their blunders.”
S Wallerstein,
You wrote "Nietzsche somewhere says that some people have a way of being right that makes [them] conceive a stubborn aversion to being right..."
If the MS quote is not the correct one, what is?
The quote “You have your way I have my way as for the right way the correct way and the only way it does not exist" is apparently the last paragraph of "On the Spirit of Gravity" from Thus Spoke Zarathustra .
Certainly it can only help your argument if you can provide the exact quote and reference.
You didn't produce the correct quote. I'm curious enough to search for it, too, but no luck, despite a lot of CTRL+F'ing on Gutenburg.org. Can we have a hint, wallerstein?
Sorry, "you" = MS. I didn't see PhilosophicalWaiter's post.
Half a loaf may be better than none, but I also want to have a say in the sort and size of loaf that is going to be baked.
The perfect may be the enemy of the good, but the good enough is the enemy of the better
There must be many more trite pieces of wisdom that deserve emendation.
Correction
In my post above, I referred to the Democrats voting "for" the first Iraq War. I meant to say "against."
Further on my point that our political parties are coalitions: The wrong way to try to change a party's orientation is to challenge it as a third party--as Nader did in 2000 and Ross Perot did in 1992. It is highly likely that had Perot not been in the race, Bush the 1st would have been re-elected. At best, a third party candidate is a spoiler.
The right way, in the system as it's presently constructed, is to fight within the party--as Bernie Sanders did in 2016 and 2020. True, he didn't win either contest, but he succeeded in moving the party to the left. By running for the nomination, Bernie had the chance to debate his positions before the Democratic voters, and he was strong enough, even without winning, to get them to pay attention and to move somewhat to the left. It's a foregone conclusion today that if the Democrats get control of the Senate as well as the White House (and keep the House) a public option will be added to Obamacare. Obama couldn't get that even when he had 60 Democrats in the Senate.
MS
Re, The quote “You have your way I have my way as for the right way the correct way and the only way it does not exist".
I don't disagree with your statement about Nietzsche's perspectivism, but something else comes to mind.
It may be an artifact of the translations (or something I am projecting on to Nietzsche's words) but to me, this quote seems to echo the Tao Te Ching, crudely "the way that can be spoken is not the true way."
Before I go on, even with this crude rendering there seems to be a difference between [this reading of] the Tao and Nietzschean perspectivism: Nietzsche is saying that there is no right way, and the statement from the Tao seems to be saying that there is a true way, but one we cannot put into words.
Since Nietzsche was not unfamiliar with eastern philosophy, does it seem possible to you that Nietzsche is echoing the Tao here, at lest rhetorically?
But is it a fight that the left will ever win, David? As Cockney Jack, I think it was, noted, when the left of the British Labour Party legally and overwhelmingly won the leadership the establishment wing of the Party went to war and proved willing even to throw an election to the Tories in order to regain control of the party they believe properly belongs to them. And in this country, though it's now somewhat ancient history, didn't the establishment Democrats do the same to McGovern?
Anyway, my prediction, for what it's worth, is that, should Biden win this November, his Democratic Party will spend almost as much time marginalising the Sanders-Warren-AOC elements in the Party as they will spend attacking the Republicans: "reaching across the aisle" will be more prominent than will be internal debates designed to modernise the Democrats to meet the needs of a new socio-economic era.
PS. Take a look at the new issue of Monthly Review and its extended discussion of the growing Sino-US conflict, where it is suggested that the Democrats and the Republicans are pretty much at one in doing what they can to preserve US supremacy.
David Palmeter
Well said. Bernie Sanders has helped shift the terms of the debate. One of the distressingly effective strategies of conservatives and the GOP has been in dominating the terms of political discussion, e.g., "death taxes", "death panels", "tax relief", "right to life". Injecting the phrase "Medicaid for all" into the debate as a starting point for discussions is a huge shift.
That said, the phrase "pre-existing conditions" has had the Republicans on the defensive for the last 4 years, since they have had to profess support for it even as they have worked to eliminate it.
That said, I don't completely agree with your confidence that "It's a foregone conclusion today that if the Democrats get control of the Senate as well as the White House (and keep the House) a public option will be added to Obamacare."
I'm not a golfer, but I have to say that there's a lot of green between here and there: I agree that the democrats are going to want to do that, but doing so would mean either peeling off some GOP senators (presumably terrified after massive GOP losses) or ending the filibuster, neither of which is a certainty.
@ R McD
That large pts of the Dem establishment were lukewarm or absent wrt McGovern is true, but it's an overstatement to say that the Dem establishment "threw" the election to Nixon, the word "thrown" suggesting a very active stance and possibly criminal or crooked behavior. Anyway they didn't have to throw the election since circumstances came together in such a way as to make McGovern's defeat v likely. The British system is of course somewhat different and I am not in a good position to comment on possible analogies re Corbyn. McGovern was not as left wing as Corbyn is, wd be my impression, but again that reflects differences in the British and Am systems etc.
You said:
The Nietzsche quote you were referring to is:
“You have your way I have my way as for the right way the correct way and the only way it does not exist"?
I merely added that that is not the quote I was referring to. I believe that what I said above is clear.
There are debates where there is a synthesis and an anti-thesis and the result is a synthesis. In conversing with you I sense that there will never be any synthesis, that is, any productive result, any mutual learning. I'm not even going to claim that it's your fault. This started out as pure arm wrestling, but it's degenerating into something worse. So I'm going to opt out of further conversation with you. If that means that I avoid commenting in this blog at times, well, you won. By the way, I will not continue this conversation by private email either.
The Democratic Party did not throw McGovern under the bus. Nixon was very popular after his first term among Republicans and Southern Democrats, before the Watergate revelations. McGovrn was pretty much doomed from the start; and then the withdrawal of Sen. Eagleton as his running mate in the middle of the campaign (due to the revelation that he had once undergone electro-shock therapy for depression) made his loss inevitable.
@ R McD (October 9, 2020 at 1:23 PM)
The establishment wing of centre-left parties--any centre-left party--understand the reality of the situation, namely that it's preferable to be an Opposition frontbencher than to be a Government backbencher. The former is the face and voice of the Opposition, the latter is just a certain vote for the Government.
Especifities US versus UK aside, that's as true in one country as it is in the other.
That understanding allows the establishment wing of these parties to play hard ball, while wailing in fake outrage any time the left wing tires of playing the battered wife.
Think about it. We lost the elections? Well, too bad, but there are always elections and while we wait, we remain in control; electoral losses are always someone else's fault.
Wanna see the proof? Here, from MS(9:37 PM):
"And because America has foolish political purists like you, we - and the rest of the world, including your country - got stuck with Bush."
Blair asks people not to vote Labour and it's all foolish political purists's fault!!!??? Really!!!???
Either the left bite the bullet and play hard ball, or they quit the pretense of being left. Can you see another way around?
--Cockney Jack
PhilosphicalWaiter,
My apologies for this tardy response to your question.
I interpret Nietzsche’s comment and the Tao Te Ching adage differently, and that they are not saying the same thing.
I believe Nietzsche is asserting that there is no one true perspective regarding anything. There are only differences of opinion, and one opinion is as good as another.
The Tao Te Ching adage (and I do not purport to know much about the philosophy) just judging by its terms, is saying that there is a single, true perspective regarding reality, but it cannot be expressed verbally – it can only be intuited.
That is just my unsophisticated explanation.
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