NOSTRADAMUS LITE

I am back from my ninth trip to New York to teach at Columbia.  It is now just seven days until the election, so it is time for me to prognosticate.  I am not talking about how the election will turn out, but about what will happen after the Democrats retake the House.  [I am aware that there is a chance they will fail to do so, but since I plan to kill myself in that eventuality, I need not concern myself with it.]

Herewith my prediction.  Like all pundits, I shall take full credit for it if I am right, and totally forget that I made it if I am wrong.

So:  The day after the results are in, Trump will without the slightest evidence of unease or hesitation pivot to being a non-partisan supporter of DACA guarantees, comprehensive immigration reform, infrastructure spending, guarantees for those with pre-existing conditions, and whatever else Democrats want that does not negatively affect his own financial interests.  Overtly, covertly, or implicitly, but in all events unmistakably, he will communicate it to Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer that he will work cooperatively with them for the next two years so long as they squelch the Democratic lust for investigations of him or his family and allow him to summarily shut down the Mueller probe. 

This will pose a terrible dilemma for the Democrats, and I fear there is a grave danger that they will succumb, in which case they will pave the way for Trump’s re-election and the death of what remains of constitutional democracy in America.

SOCIALISM?

One of the Anonymati [Anonymouses?  Anonymice?] asks that I write a critique of the oh so sober, serious analysis of socialism, complete with charts and graphs, produced by the President’s Council of Economic Advisors.  After more than sixty pages of objective, balanced consideration, the Council comes to the surprising conclusion that socialism is a bad idea, economically.  The Council’s principal point of comparison is Nordic countries [are they confusing socialism with cross-country skiing?]

The big news, of course, is that Trump’s Council of Economic Advisors actually thinks it is worth their time and effort to write the report.  Much has been made, and rightly so, of the fact that the Trump Republican Party has welcomed Nazis, Klansmen, racists, and anti-Semites in from the cold.  Who would have predicted that they would also give a shout out to us socialists?

Why am I writing about this today, after a horrifying week capped by the slaughter of Jews in a synagogue?  Because I am desperately trying to stay sane, that is why, and writing about alternative universes, like one in which socialism is actually possible, is one way to do that.

I have read the Executive Summary of the report and scanned through the report itself, but I do not intend to take issue with it, and my reason for not doing so is the real subject of this post.  Let me begin by reminding you that Karl Marx, who wrote 5000 pages, more or less, on the history, anatomy, laws of motion, and mystified ideology of capitalism, wrote maybe 50 or 60 pages, if that, about socialism.  It was not a lapse in memory on his part.  He had a reason for not writing about how socialism would work, and that reason is the very heart of his economic and historiographical theory.

Marx believed that just as capitalism had developed slowly, organically, within the existing socio-economic system of feudalism, so too the social relationships of production appropriate to socialism would develop within the structure of capitalism until the contradiction, as he called it, between the two would produce a revolutionary transition.  Socialism would not come about as a result of manifestos, or theoretical analyses, or counter-cultural utopian experimental communities.  Rather, the inner development of capitalism itself would create the new social relations of production out of which socialism would emerge.  In effect, capitalists themselves would be the gravediggers of capitalism.  Taking this claim seriously, I tried in my essay, The Future of Socialism, to think through what those inner developments might be.  If you are interested, you will find it archived at box.net, accessible via the link at the top of this page.

Marx did not think that the transition to socialism could be advanced by arguments that socialism would be a good thing, in effect a plank in a political platform.  I am delighted that folks are once again calling themselves socialists and that the president’s Council of Economic Advisors thought it a useful expenditure of their energies to write a 70 page paper explaining why socialism would be a bad thing, not to say Nordic.  But arguing with their critique would be a waste of time.

NINE DAYS

Another day, some more poll work, another home-grown terrorist shooting.  Two generations ago, much of my wife’s family lived in the section of Pittsburgh where the incident took place, and some of them are still there.  Needless to say, she was quite concerned, as was I.

We may take back the House on the 6^th, but the evil that has always been abroad in this land, now raising its head once again, will still be with us.  We have no choice but to fight it relentlessly.

If Nate Silver is to be believed, young Ryan Watts has very little chance of upsetting Mark Walker here in the NC 6^th CD, but he may well reduce Walker’s margin from 18 points to 5 or 6, which should put it genuinely in play in 2020.  I leave it to other candidates better situated actually to flip their districts.

One does what one can.

THE WEBERIAN THEORY OF BUREAUCRACY, AND THE REALITY OF SAME

I have just returned from my eighth weekly trip to New York to teach at Columbia.  I travel Delta, which runs a number of short non-stop flights from Raleigh-Durham Airport to LaGuardia.  I always book the 8:00 p.m. return flight when I do not stay over and the 9:30 a.m. return flight when I do.  But on occasion, I arrive early enough at the airport to make the earlier 6:29 p.m. flight, and this morning, since I stayed across Grand Central from LaGuardia at the Aloft hotel, I actually got to the airport and through security in time to make the 6:30 a.m. flight.  I buy the cheapest possible ticket [no checked luggage, no advance seating, and no changes.]  Four times now I have tried to get on an earlier flight.  Each time, I have presented my ticket to the Delta agent at the gate and requested a change.  The first time, the agent put me on the earlier flight, no problem.  The second time the agent said it would cost me $75 to change flights [I declined.]  The third time, I decided to pay the seventy-five bucks, but was told even if I did my ticket could not be changed.  This morning, the agent made the change and actually pre-boarded me [I chatted her up and was as pleasant as I could manage.]

Meanwhile, in our course, Todd Gitlin has just finished lecturing on Max Weber’s analysis of bureaucracy.

The reality does not always match the theory.

My favorite example of this comes from fifty-five years ago  When I was a young Instructor at Harvard, I lived for two years, from 1959 to 1961 as a Resident Tutor in Winthrop House [free room and board and one is supposed to talk to the undergraduates, thereby enriching their education and relieving senior faculty of the necessity.]  One of my colleagues in the Winthrop House Senior Common Room was Richard Taub, a sociologist doing a doctorate in what Harvard called the Social relations Department.  By 1963, Richard had gone off to India with his wife, Doris, to do his doctoral research.  [He has for many years been a distinguished senior member of the University of Chicago Sociology Department.]  He wrote me several wonderful, long letters about his experiences there.  I hope he will not mind of I quote from one of them.  It is a perfect illustration of the gap between Weber’s formal analysis of bureaucracy and the reality on the ground.  Here is what he wrote:

“Doris and I fit outside of the category system and we have a hell of a time.  Whenever we visit a government office or do business with more than a few rupees, we must convert the relations into personal ones.  Example and absolutely typical.

Me:  I would like a coal permit.

Bureaucrat:  You are coming from England?

Me:  No, I am coming from America.  I would like a coal permit.

Bureaucrat: For how many days you are staying?

Me:  I have been here three months and I plan to stay another year.  Now may I have a coal permit.

Bureaucrat (to peon):  Cha Lao (bring tea).  (To me): You are perhaps working for the government?

Me: No, I have come here to do Sociology.  I would like a coal permit.

                        ETC.

And so it goes.  Until he knows all about me.  We have then had tea and either his cigarettes (and I have given him some in return) or pan (betel leaves stuffed with spices which everyone around here is more or less addicted to) and then he asks, “now what is it that you are wanting.

This used to infuriate me – especially when we were in a hurry, or just wanted to make a purchase.  But now, with the first question, I recite a speech which covers all the questions he will have, we have tea, and then get on with the transaction.  The next time I see him, he will ask me how much money I am making, is my wife here with me, what kind of food I eat etc.  But once the relationship is personal, the guys will do anything for you.”

SESQUICENTENNIAL

William Edward Burghardt Du Bois, America's greatest social scientist, Black or White, was born in Great Barrington, MA one hundred fifty years ago.  Du Bois was a towering figure in the intellectual life of this country, and a seminal figure in the struggle for the full liberation of the descendants of America's slave population.  One of my proudest boasts is that for the last sixteen years of my half century long teaching career, I served in a department that bears his name.  I would like to think that I did not dishonor the name.

In 1935, Du Bois published Black Reconstruction in America, an extraordinary work whose central thesis was finally incorporated into the established White historiographical academic world half a century later.  Du Bois was the first Black scholar to earn a doctorate at Harvard, and as part of his studies, he actually traveled to German to see Max Weber.

Du Bois played a central role in the founding of the NAACP, and late in his almost century long life was an important figure in the post-colonial liberation of African nations.

My UMass colleague, John H. Bracey, tells this story about Du Bois as an illustration of his importance in the Black community.  Back in the day when trains were segregated and the staff of train porters was entirely Black, Du Bois was on a trip, staying in his compartment in the evening because he would have been banned from the dining car.  There was a knock on the compartment door, and a porter appeared, carrying a tray.  He laid out linens and silver and proceeded to serve Du Bois a full dinner.  When Du Bois tried to pay him, the porter demurred, saying, "Never let it be said that Dr. Du Bois rode on my train and was not served dinner."

MAJOR PROGRESS

Last night, in the middle of the night, our cat came up on the bed, purring, and permitted me to pet her and scratch her head for fifteen minutes or more.  I think I know how Jane Goodall felt [well, not really, but still.]  Meanwhile, Nate Silver gives the Democrats a 6 in 7 chance of taking the House [I am afraid the Senate is a very long shot.]  I am doing what I can here in the NC 6th CD, and trying to stay sane.  I keep reminding myself of Paul Newman's cautionary words to Robert Redford in The Sting, which I have quoted here before and shall not repeat.

MEMORIES

I just watched the third in my series of video lectures on Ideological Critique as a refresher for a forthcoming lecture on Mannheim in my Columbia course.  I watched my discourse on Mannheim’s ideological analysis of time consciousness, and then my attempt at an extension of it to the case of  space consciousness.  I wrap that up with an ideological analysis of the revolutionary orientation toward space, which concludes with my story about a Columbia student’s remark in 1968.  I had forgotten that I managed to attach to the very end of the lecture a brief video of Pete Seeger singing “Which Side Are You On?”

I wept for what we have lost.