John Gray, David Hawkes and the Myth of Progress by Thomas Riggins

John Gray is a British social philosopher who, in the words of David Hawkes, puts forward an "uncompromising challenge to the myth of progress." Hawkes (an English professor at Arizona State) has recently published an essay, "Backwards into the future" in the TLS (8-30-2013) which is a sympathetic presentation of Gray's views and a review of his latest book, "The Silence of Animals: On progress and other modern myths." What is Gray's challenge all about.

Gray's new book is an attack on "meliorism"-- which Hawkes explains as the view "that the moral and material condition of humanity will improve over time" and that its improvement is, in the long run, inevitable. Defined this way "meliorism" will be easy to attack. Conjoining "moral" and "material" conditions with "and" rather than "and/or" and adding "inevitability" suggests that meliorism is some form of utopian dream and indeed a myth.

But not all philosophers use this straw man definition of meliorism. Much more useful is the definition given, for example, in the Cambridge Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Meliorism "is the view that the world is neither completely good nor completely bad, and that incremental progress or regress depend on human actions." This view holds that "By creative intelligence and education we can improve the environment and social conditions."

Meliorism is the possibility that humans can make some progress towards improving the world but regress is also possible at times, and there is no guarantee of success since human actions cannot be predicted with inevitability. Under capitalism, for example, human actions are guided by competition and the profit motive and lead to socially destructive behaviors with respect to the environment and other people who are seen as objects to be manipulated for economic gain. Meliorism in such a system would not seem to have much chance of success in the long run, although in some parts of the world progress in scientific understanding and disease control can be discerned.

The Wikipedia article on "Meliorism" points out that this view is the basis on which the values of liberal democracy, human rights, and liberalism as a political philosophy are founded. I should also add that Marxism and other forms of socialism are likewise indebted to Meliorism but do not think the meliorist project can really get underway, or can get underway only with great difficulty, under capitalism or in under developed parts of the world where meliorist social projects, including socialism, are attempted in the face of capitalist hegemony.

Hawkes praises Gray for his "bold effort" to "exorcize" the "spectre of progress." This "spectre" presents itself in "the guises of Enlightenment rationalism, Romantic individualism, liberal humanism, nationalism, Marxism, and neo-liberal capitalism." Only the kitchen sink seems to be missing.

But I think Hawkes indulges in over kill. He attacks the uses to which science has been put in the last century and gives as negative examples the two world wars, the Holocaust and Hiroshima (all done under the aegis of capitalism). He says science is misused,perhaps, due to a defect in its methods and thinks "we may well ask whether such uses are not in some way inherent in the scientific method that enables them."

I don't know how many science courses English professors are required to take, but Gray's target is not progress in science but the claim that there has been moral progress. In a talk he gave at an RSA conference in Britain he stated that there has been progress in scientific understanding of the world from the time of Copernicus and he is not arguing against that, but he rejects claims of ethical and moral progress-- the United States, for example, has reverted to the use of torture a practice we had thought was extinct in advanced democracies and outlawed by all sorts of international agreements and conventions.

There is nothing "inherent" in scientific method, anymore than in mathematics, that leads to the Holocaust. The failure of morality that led to the Holocaust, or Hiroshima, or the Invasion of Iraq was not a failure of science. Science, as is mathematics, is neutral on moral questions and only seeks to describe how the world works in terms of natural processes. It is similar to the rules of chess: this is how the pieces move, etc. If you play chess poorly it is not the the fault of the rules.

Hawkes admits that Gray "never renounces belief in scientific truth" but still there are serious consequences resulting from an abandonment in belief in moral or ethical progress. The consequences Hawkes reports that Gray thinks follow from his rejection of moral progress are not "profoundly disturbing" as Hawkes maintains because they don't really follow at all. Gray thinks it is worse to lose "faith" in progress than to lose it with respect to "God, reason or even science," Hawkes writes.

We are told without the idea of progress we cannot see "meaning in life." But this is just not true. Humanity makes itself by its choices and gives meaning to life by the commitments it undertakes. Sartre pointed this out before Gray was even born when he said "Whenever a man chooses his purpose and his commitment in all clearness and in all sincerity, whatever that purpose may be, it is impossible for him to prefer another. It is true in the sense that we do not believe in progress. Progress implies amelioration; but man is always the same, facing a situation which is always changing, and choice remains always a choice in the situation. The moral problem has not changed since the time when it was a choice between slavery and anti-slavery." That there is no transcendental meaning to life does not mean there is no meaning tout court.

We also have to abandon the idea that "empirical appearances conceal substantial essences." This is nonsense. Discussions of empirical and substantial essences, or real and nominal essences, of Aristotle's views or Locke's for that matter are quite independent of one's theory about "progress" one way or another.

Nor is it responsible for our having to give up the belief of a "soul" within the body. Materialism is responsible for this view-- it goes back to Epicurus at least and is not dependent on Gray's views about the myth of progress. Ryle's The Concept of Mind, written when Gray was a toddler, deals with "the ghost in the machine" quite apart from notions of progress.

One can also reject the idea of progress independently of being either a neo-pragmatist or a postmodernist-- it does not commit one to rejecting the view that signs refer to external reality.

Finally we are informed, incorrectly, that not having faith in progress means we "view the world as a depthless simulacrum with no underlying significance." Wrong again. Not all cultures have produced philosophies based on the idea of progress. The Ancient Egyptians for one had no concept of progress in our Western sense yet they did not believe the world was a depthless simulacrum without significance.

Again, Sartre would maintain that we are responsible for creating our own significance in terms of the values we choose to live by. The world presented by science is the backdrop for our experiences and choices -- it up to us to provide the significance. None of the above five so called "profoundly disturbing"consequences of rejecting the idea of moral progress are logical consequences of such a rejection.

This very conclusion that I have articulated is the one Hawkes indicates is shared by Gray himself. Hawkes writes that one of the conclusions of The Silence of Animals is: "The world can only have meaning conferred on it, or be deprived of it, by human beings." But this conclusion does NOT logically follow from Gray's thinking. He thinks we have arrived at this conclusion not because the world has changed but because the mind-- i.e., "the twenty-first century mind" has changed. But this conclusion would be consistent with the views of mid twentieth century thinkers such as Sartre, among others so no new and startling "development in human history" is responsible.

Marxists would say that the dominant ideas in a culture are a reflection in the ideological super structure of the social reality that the culture has created around its basic interaction with the natural world it finds itself in and especially with respect to its mode of extracting food and sustenance in order to sustain the living human beings that comprise it.

And while the scientific world view would question the idea of "eternal verities" with respect to the development of ethical and moral systems, if Gray's views are correct about the world's meaning, or lack of it, being dependent on human beings then-- the very idea he rejects-- that it is "not the discovery of an eternal verity about the world" (as Hawkes puts it) is incorrect. The only way it could be true that the "meaning of the world" is put there by the human mind is the fact that the world in and of itself has no transcendent meaning of its own-- it never did and presumably never will-- it is just atoms and the void-- and this is certainly an eternal verity about the world and a necessary condition for Gray's views to even make whatever sense they do make.

Hawkes questions whether Gray is correct in apparently thinking that life, even for people who think it has meaning, is still meaningless. Gray writes, "symbols are useful tools; but humans have an inveterate tendency to think and act as if the world they have made from those symbols actually exists."

Hawkes, however, asks if this is really an "inveterate tendency" rather than [as Marxism suggests] the result of historical conditioning. We might think the word "fire" is a symbol for the speedy exothermic oxidation of combustive substances resulting in heat and light and we would not, I think, be wrong to hold that what the symbol represents "actually exists." However, we might not have the same opinion as the ancient Greeks about "Zeus." It is the job of science, and philosophy, to try and hook up the proper symbolism with the actually existing world.

We can pass over the next section of Hawkes essay where he discusses the problems of symbolism and signs as elaborated by Gray in an earlier work-- FALSE DAWN ( 1998; 2nd edition, 2009). Here the discussion revolves around Gray's use of economic examples to illustrate his theories and Hawkes seems to take Gray seriously when he does so. The problem is that Gray's economic views (and Hawkes remarks about them) appear nonsensical. I base this not only trying to parse this discussion but also on Paul Krugman's review of the second edition of FALSE DAWN. Krugman, who has a Nobel in economics, thinks that Gray's writings on the subject are the "garbled" views of an "ignoramus." Krugman, however, writes that Gray didn't need to show himself "to be an economic ignoramus, when his core argument does not really depend on economics anyway." [ False Dawn : The Delusions of Global Capitalism (book review, New Statesman)] Let us return to the "myth" of progress and the "core argument" and leave the dismal science to Krugman and his confrères.

Hawkes next deals with a contradiction in Gray's position (not necessarily a bad thing.) Progress may be a myth, but "modernization inexorably occurs" [the spectre of progress under another name] Hawkes writes. We may claim not to find any meaning in history but history and change still go on. If the myth of progress is overcome and our understanding of the world is no longer perverted by it-- is this not progress? Hawkes, I fear, may be a victim of dispirited English department post modernism when he writes, "If the Western intelligentsia no longer acknowledges any significance to life, that does not mean that we have discovered a timeless truth that had been hidden from Aristotle, Plato and the prophets of monotheism. It means that we can no longer see meaning where others once did."

Well, I don't think Hawkes speaks for the whole "Western intelligentsia." As far as finding significance in history is concerned the "Western intelligentsia" would do well to ponder the following admonition from Hegel with regard to any scientific study and that is the categories we use to find significance or meaning in the world are the ones we ourselves bring with us and a thinker "sees the phenomena presented to his mental vision exclusively through these media." From which he concludes that to a person "who looks upon the world rationally, the world in its turn , presents a rational aspect."

And what do we find when we look at the world rationally-- i.e., scientifically. We don't find the world according to Plato or Aristotle or the prophets of monotheism. We find a universe about 13.788±037 billion years old, we know life on one planet (so far), Earth, which is about 4.6 billion years old and it seems has had life for the last 3.6 billion years and for the last 200,000 years, anatomically modern humans. Our species resulted non-providentially by a process of evolution by natural selection. So here we are and we have to make the most of it.

Do we see any significance or meaning in the history of our species. Hawkes seems to agree with Gray that it is irrational to believe in (moral and ethical) progress-- he is very unimpressed by the twentieth century-- but, he says, that doesn't mean there is no meaning in history.

Hawkes proposes that the meaning of history is not progress but anti-progress-- i.e., not ascent but decline. "History is not progress but regress, not advance but decline,and it leads to destruction rather than to utopia." Gray would think this just as ridiculous as progress because for him the basic reality is that the animal man is an unchanging essence. In his book Straw Dogs he writes "Humanism can mean many things, but for us it means belief in progress. To believe in progress is to believe that, by using the new powers given us by growing scientific knowledge, humans can free themselves from the limits that frame the lives of other animals. This is the hope of nearly everybody nowadays, but it is groundless. For though human knowledge will very likely continue to grow and with it human power, the human animal will stay the same: a highly inventive species that is also one of the most predatory and destructive."

Hawkes writes that "Belief in historical regression is a far more challenging proposition than Gray's assertion of insignificance." It is challenging because it is ridiculous. What is history regressing from-- Atlantis? Ancient Egypt? the Stone Age? At least Gray's warmed over Schopenhauerian pessimism makes some sense where regress doesn't.

Hawkes also seems to miss the point about the difference between moral progress and scientific progress. A world without polio or smallpox is a great scientific advancement and shows that we can make progress in disease control and understanding nature. If there are areas where polio still breaks out, mostly in the underdeveloped world, it is a moral crisis not a scientific one. If capitalists demand money and profit for medicines it is a moral crisis not a scientific one.

When Hawkes writes, "It is relatively easy to admit that what we have seen as scientific advancement and economic enrichment are meaningless" he is missing the whole point of what science is all about. It is not meaningless to to fight against malaria, yellow fever and other infectious diseases. Pasteur was not engaged in a meaningless exercise when he discovered how to prevent rabies, nor was Koch when he discovered the cause of tuberculosis.

Hawkes ends his essay by remarking that we may soon have to consider the fact that scientific advance and economic enrichment (two inherently different activities indiscriminately lumped together) are "actively evil and destructive." This is like calling cooking evil because some people over eat and get sick. Did cooking make them sick?

I will give the last word to Bertrand Russell who sums up all that anyone will get out Hawkes' essay or Gray's books as far as positive knowledge is concerned. "Change is one thing, progress is another. 'Change' is scientific, 'progress' is ethical; change is indubitable, where as progress is a matter of controversy" (Unpopular Essays, 1951).

New York Post Endorsement of Joe Lhota More Harmful Than Helpful

Thomas Riggins Reading the New York Post's endorsement of Joe Lhota in the Republican Primary for New York City Mayor (8-26-2013) one can see that if he wins the Post will be backing him for mayor in the general election as well. The trouble is that the endorsement is so outlandish and ridiculous that no one with any sense would want to vote for someone the Post would endorse. You would have to think if the writers at the Post are as crazy as they seem to be in the claims they make about the up coming election who would trust their judgment as to whom to vote for. The Post likes Lhota because he is different from "many" of the other candidates who "say we can strip the police of their powers, give giant raises to the municipal unions, and tax our way to utopia." Really? Who are these other candidates? Not one of the major candidates, Democratic or Republican, advocates "stripping" the police of their power. Some have supported measures that allow for more civilian review of police conduct to prevent abuses by some police of their powers (especially as regards "stop and frisk" which has been found to violate the constitutional rights of New Yorkers. None of the suggested reforms strip the police of any legal powers granted to them or would in any way hamper legitimate policing. For the post to suggest otherwise is to pervert the truth and to try and mislead those who read the paper. The same is true about the claim regarding "giant raises" for city workers, many of whom have been working without new contracts for years. That the workers demand realistic cost of living adjustments and wages that reflect increases in their levels of productivity as well is perfectly natural and is what collective bargaining is all about. Again the Post perverts the truth in an effort to mislead and misinform its readers. Again, with respect to taxing "our way to utopia"-- what claim could be more absurd. None of the candidates believes that New York City can be turned into "utopia" but some of them, mostly if not exclusively the Democrats, think that closing tax loopholes or modest increases on the super rich, or on Wall Street, could go a long way to easing the strains on the city's ability to provide the best possible municipal services to the people without at the same time seriously causing distress to those whose taxes are raised. This is simply prudent governing, which the Post very well knows but would rather distort for its own political reasons. As is well known the Post has never had a profitable year since it was taken over by reactionary billionaire Rupert Murdoch and survives on life support by monetary transfusions from his other sources of wealth. He keeps it alive to have a political presence in New York City and its editorial stances function to further his business investments, as does its news reporting. The Wikipedia article on the Post, in fact, reports that, " According to a survey conducted by Pace University in 2004, the Post was rated the least-credible major news outlet in New York." This endorsement of Lhota is one of the reasons why this is still true.

MARX and the Muslim Brothers

Marx and the Muslim Brothers
Thomas Riggins

How should one respond to the claim, made by Sheri Berman a political science professor at Barnard College, that Islamists such as the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt are "Marx's contemporary successors"? [Oped- New York Times 8-10-13: "Marx's Lesson for the Muslim Brothers"]

This seems like an outrageous assertion and I doubt that there are many Islamist madrases where hadiths from the life of Karl Marx are discussed. Lets take a closer look at professor Berman's article to see the reasoning behind this statement.

She begins her article with the well known remark, allegedly adapted from Hegel by Marx about history repeating itself first as tragedy and again as farce. Marx puts it this way: "Hegel remarks somewhere that all great world-historic facts and personages appear, so to speak, twice. He forgot to add: the first time as tragedy, the second time as farce." Berman says this remark (it is from The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte) was made in response to the revolution of 1848 and the overthrow of Louis Phillip the last French king (King of the French). The title of Marx's work refers to the month of Brumaire in the French Revolutionary calendar adopted to celebrate  the new era of liberty (and to get rid of the Christian calendar). Napoleon Bonaparte seized power in a coup d'etat on the 18th of Brumaire Year VIII of the Republic (November 10, 1799).

This 1848 revolt ushered in a Republic (the Second Republic, 1848-1852) the French are on their Fifth now) but this republic, which the French masses had hoped would be a radical democratic and progressive government, was actually a conservative and even reactionary compromise that liberals made with the conservative forces because they feared the demands being made by the workers. The Communist Manifesto was written at this time.

The first president of the Second Republic  was Louis Napoleon Bonaparte (1808-1873: the undistinguished nephew of  L'Empeuror)-- he was the son of Louis Bonaparte, Napoleon's brother). In 1851 he staged a coup against the republic and later became the Emperor of the French as Napoleon III (Napoleon II, the son of Napoleon I died  from consumption in exile in Austria  at the age of 21 in 1832).

The "tragedy" in Marx's remark is the reign of Napoleon I (his downfall) and the "farce" is the coming to power of Napoleon III. Berman sees a pattern in the coup staged by Louis Bonaparte -- the dictatorship of Napoleon III came to be because "Conservatives were able to co-op fearful liberals and install new forms of dictatorship"-- i.e., the Second Empire. Basically that is what happened.

Berman goes to say that these "same patterns are playing out in Egypt today." Three groups seem to be at work according to Berman-- LIBERALS ( not otherwise specified but must include the progressive petty bourgeoisie, secularists of almost- all types, the working class and  independent unions, progressive Christians (Copts), progressive Muslims, etc.,)-- AUTHORITARIANS (the compradore bourgeoisie, the armed forces, the supporters of Mubarak-- both secular and religious, conservative Christians, and some Islamists, etc) and ISLAMISTS (in this context this group must be the Muslim Brotherhood and its supporters). We are told that the "Islamists" are "playing the role of socialists" -- i.e., the role the socialists played in 1848.  Zut alors!

She thinks 2013 Egypt is analogous to 1848 France because 1.)  the masses have overreached "after gaining power" [but the masses never gained power in 1848-- nor have they in Egypt in 2013];  2. the Egyptian "liberals" were put off by the the enactments of  their former allies the Islamists [ but the French liberals were afraid of the PROGRESSIVE demands of their former allies-- the working class while the Egyptian masses-- not just the "liberals"-- were afraid of the REACTIONARY demands and enactments of the Muslim Brotherhood]; 3. The liberals "have come crawling back" to the "authoritarians" to get protection [ this may be true of France, but in Egypt the "liberals" did not "crawl"-- they demanded, with the largest demonstrations and mass movement in the history of Egypt, that the army take action and remove the Islamists, who were elected under false pretenses, from power]; 4. The "authoritarians" have taken back the "reins of power" [while this seems to be what is going on in Egypt today, in France the liberals compromised with the "authoritarians" and both shared the reigns of power.]

So it does not seem to be the case that there is any merit to Berman's comparison of the French (actually it was was a broader movement ) Revolution of 1848 with the on going revolution in Egypt. Most glaringly it should be noticed that in 1848 the "socialists" never gained power so any comparison with the Egyptian "islamists" of today is off the wall (in more ways than one).

But wait! Berman's analysis gets even more Baroque. She says that if the Egyptian masses ("liberals") continue to support the crackdown by the army they will be playing into the hands of the Islamists (which may be the case) and that the Islamists are "Marx's contemporary successors." I am sure the Egyptian Communist Party, the independent labor federation and unionists in Egypt, as well as the Communist and worker's movements around the world  will be surprised to discover that it is not they but the Muslim Brotherhood and other Islamists who are the "successors" to the teachings of Karl Marx.  Even as an analogy this is unhelpful.

Berman says the Islamists would be right if they adopted the slogan: "Islamists of the world unite! You have nothing to lose but your chains." Well, the Islamists should not be in chains, but unfortunately one of the things they try to do, as soon as they lose their chains, is to put them on non Islamists-- this is what they started to do in Egypt.

Berman says the "liberals" implored the military to end "the country's first experiment in democracy." What seems to have happened is that the vast majority of the Egyptian people rose up against the betrayal of their democratic aspirations which the Muslim Brotherhood began to engineer once they were in power. The military was asked to intervene so that the experiment in democracy could start up again. Plans for a new constitution and elections are in the works.

One of the most advanced politically of the opposition groups, the Egyptian Communist Party, has characterized the Muslim Brotherhood as the leading force of the "fascist religious right" in Egypt and the representative of the "most parasitic, tyrannical, corrupt, fascist, racist and reactionary segment of large capital" dominating the country. [The Egyptian Communist Party:  The June 30 (2013) Revolution… Its Nature, Duties and Prospects].

 So the current struggle being carried out in the streets of Cairo and other Egyptian cities is a struggle to the death between the forces representing secular democratic people's power  and fascist reaction. The army, whose leadership is not Islamist, has, for now, sided with the people. The fact that major elements of the Western mass media seek to portray this epic battle as simply an anti-democratic military  coup merely indicates the sympathy of the imperialist powers with fascism when confronted with a people's uprising.

Trying to force the events in Egypt into the Procrustean bed of 1848, Berman writes that during the 1848 uprising the "liberals" feared that "workers and socialists might win" so they joined with the conservatives thinking "the restoration of authoritarianism as the lesser of two evils."

"This," she tells us, "is almost exactly what is playing out in Egypt now." The only difference is that the Egyptian situation is exactly the opposite of what happened in 1848. In Egypt the "liberals" were not reacting to a socialist threat. An authoritarian reactionary Islamic movement came to power by running on a fraudulent democratic platform-- the "liberals", the Egyptian left, the working class, and the vast majority of the people coalesced together to fight this usurpation of the 2011 Egyptian Democratic Revolution. The armed forces supported the masses as the "lesser of two evils." How the armed forces will react in the future, once the Islamist threat is contained and eliminated, will depend on how unified the masses are and how determined they are to push through a really democratic and inclusive constitution.

What is Dr. Berman's analysis of why "liberals" act the way they do? Does she discuss what material interests they represent, what classes they represent and the relations of their interests and ideas to those of others they may be able to ally with or must needs come into conflict with? The answer is no. "Liberals" act the way they do because they "like order and moderation and dislike radical social experiments." They also "fear"  those who engage in "extremist rhetoric, mass protests and violence." Which is just what the "liberals" did to get rid of Mubarak!

She compares the coming of "democracy" to Eastern and Southern Europe after the implosion of the Soviet Union to the middle east.  In Europe "extremism and religion weren't major factors" (forget the genocidal  wars in the Balkans) and anyway the European Union "was there to help." The poor Egyptians don't have a European big brother to guide them (and won't do what the Americans tell them)--"there is no strong democratic neighbor to guide them." Maybe Bibi over in  Jerusalem could help out?

This "liberal" fear and or dislike of "radical social experiments" is as true today, we are told, as it was for "liberals" in 1789 and 1848 "and it's true of Egyptian liberals today." Oh my! It was the French "liberals" that brought about 1789 and there are not many people who have read up on the great French Revolution that would not call it a "radical social experiment." The whole point of a "tragedy" vs "farce" comparison is the contrast between the courageous, radical and revolutionary liberal bourgeoisie of the French Revolution of 1789 and the pusillanimous, conservative and counter-revolutionary liberal bourgeoisie of 1848.

After a few more irrelevant paragraphs concerning Marx's analysis of 1848 and the development of socialism in Europe and the errors the "liberals" made because they did not understand how to handle contradictions among the people-- she decides the Egyptian liberals should realize that just as all European socialists were not "proto-Stalinists" and that many were total sell outs ("socialists" who "wanted  social and economic reforms, but not ones that were mortal threats to capitalism or democracy'') so not all Islamists "want to implement a theocratic regime. " Liberals should work with these moderates or " Egypt’s political future will be troubled."

The problem is she nowhere discusses what "Islamism" means. Islamism is a political and religious tendency, made up of moderate elements and also forces of extremism (restoration of the Calafate!), which seeks to create political states based on religion: "The Islamic Republic of -------." No state is meaningfully "democratic" if it favors one religion over others and thus treats some citizens as "more equal than others." The Muslim Brotherhood claimed to be moderate yet once in power brought about its own downfall by trying to impose its Islamic doctrinaire positions on the population at large which led to a massive revolutionary upheaval joined by the armed forces.

The imperialist powers and their press call this the imposition of an undemocratic military dictatorship but the Egyptian masses have yet to make this determination. How the masses and the military relate to one another in the coming months will determine the next stage of the Egyptian Revolution that commenced in 2011. Marx, by the way, has nothing to do with the Muslim Brotherhood.

For Whom the Cock Crows

Thomas Riggins

This article aims to reprise Marx's 1844 article on Hegel's philosophy of law which ends with the memorable prediction that the Germans will only become conscious of their revolutionary destiny when they respond to the "the ringing call of the Gallic cock." Well, the last time the Gallic cock was heard from was in 1968 and it was rather subdued compared to is noisy past (1789, 1830, 1848, 1871).

Fortunately for those who read this pre-Communist Manifesto work of the young Marx (he was 25 when he wrote it) it has many useful ideas packed into its 13 pages that are still of interest today even though no one is expecting the Gallic cock
to make any ringing calls in the foreseeable future. Its greatest call remains that of 1789 which inspired the Russian, Chinese, Korean and Vietnamese Revolutions as well as the Cuban and  which is echoed today in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

Now for Marx's ideas and how they relate to today's struggles. There are revolutionary movements at work in the contemporary world and some of the ideas expressed by Marx in relation to the French and German movements of the early nineteenth century can be applied to them. There are three areas where revolutionary ferment is currently occurring--  the MIddle East  and Africa where we see revolutions and counter revolutions breaking out in several different countries, Latin America where several countries are now led by pro socialist and/or progressive governments inspired by the Cuban revolution and threatened by US imperialism, and in south east Asia where both India and Nepal have active revolutionary movements based on exploited peasants and indigenous peoples.

Unfortunately in some of these areas, especially in the Middle East and Africa, there are armed groups and political organizations whose ideological roots are allegedly   based in religion and a fanatical commitment to creeds which do not reflect objective reality (this is also true in Europe and especially the U.S. where dogmatically fundamentalist  ideas fuel many in the Tea Party and the core of the anti-choice movement which rejects Roe vs. Wade and treats women as objects to be manipulated for political gain.)

This essay by Marx  ("Contribution to the Critique of Hegel's Philosophy of Law: Introduction") maintains that the fight to improve the world involves a fight to criticize religion since we will not be able to focus on the real world and its problems if we spend our time engaged with a false world such as the one conjured up by religion. This essay is admittedly dated but still of some interest today.

This work is justly famous as the source of the quote that "religion is the opium of the people." While opium may be able to supply some relief from an intolerable reality we can't expect people doped up on opium, spiritual or otherwise, to be involved in schemes for rationally based world improvement. We will get to the full quote in a minute. First, I want to note that in 1844 Marx thinks the basis of all criticism of the basic world order is the criticism of religion and that in his day this criticism has basically been completed-- at least in western Europe (Germany in particular). "Man makes religion, religion does not make man."

Marx is right of course for the Western world in general and large parts of Asia (China, Vietnam) religion is no longer a major factor in people's lives (except in a pro forma sense or within fringe groups or in backward areas). Unfortunately this battle has not yet been won, or even joined, in large areas of the Third World. Religion thrives on oppression and only by simultaneously fighting oppression, and furthering progressive education, will religion wither and the people flourish. The following is Marx's full quote on this issue:

Religion "is the fantastic realization of the human essence because the human essence has no true reality. The struggle against religion is therefore indirectly a fight against the world of which religion is the spiritual aroma."

He continues: "Religious distress is at the same time the expression of real distress and also the protest against real distress. Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, just as it is the spirit of spiritless conditions. It is the opium of the people."

Finally, he says: "To abolish religion as the illusory happiness of the people is to demand their real happiness. The demand to give up illusions about the existing state of affairs is the demand to give up a state of affairs which needs illusions. The criticism of religion is therefore in embryo the criticism of the vale of tears, the halo of which is religion."

These three quotes form the basis of the materialist outlook on religion. But what is the difference between illusory happiness and real happiness? If a person is experiencing "happiness" what more is there to say? If we take an example from current history and say that the members of the Moslem Brotherhood in Egypt, being at heart members of  a religious organization, are living in an illusory world and the Egyptian people demanding their removal from power was an example of the demand to abandon illusions about the nature of the problems facing Egypt and the existing state of affairs  then, it would seem, the only justification for this action would be to revolutionize the state of affairs (i.e., the social, economic, and political status quo) to such an extent that religious illusions would no longer have any traction in that society.

But who is to decide who is delusional? In the first place, rather than speaking of illusory versus real happiness, it would be better to speak of a feeling of happiness based on a false belief about the nature of reality and one based of a true belief about the nature of reality. You may feel (temporarily) happy taking your laetrile for that lump but you would be better off having it removed.

As for who decides, Marx was very specific (in 1844) as to whom this responsibility devolves. It is the role of philosophy in service to history. We will have to allow Marx to use this Hegelian way of expressing himself: while critical of Hegel he had not yet completely liberated himself from Hegelian ways of expressing his ideas. He says: "The task of history, therefore, once the world beyond the truth has disappeared, is to establish the truth of this world. The immediate task of philosophy, which is at the service of history, once the holy form of human self-estrangement has been unmasked, is to unmask self-estrangement in its unholy forms. Thus the criticism of heaven turns into the criticism of the earth, the criticism of religion into the criticism of law and the criticism of theology into the criticism of politics."

Marx may have thought this battle was over in the Germany of his day, but it is still raging here in the USA: one only has to read the the statements made by right-wing US politicians on the issues of a woman's right to choice, or on the food stamp program, or on sex education or on social welfare and "entitlement" programs to see how retrograde religious references are put forth to justify reactionary and even quasi-fascist social policies. And it is not just in the United States. Every day you can read in the papers how all over the planet religion is used to crush the human spirit, attack enlightenment,  retard scientific understanding and further the goals of fascism, militarism, and imperialism. Although they are an important influence, all the religious progressives and pacifists in the world will not stem this backward tide of religious fanaticism without robust secular movements and political parties that are able to rally millions of oppressed people to fight against it.

Behind the religious facade stands a more this worldly enemy. Marx writes that once the other worldly illusion has been mastered we must focus on the reality of this world and the real roots of oppression and human self-estrangement. "The relation of industry, of the world of wealth generally, to the political world is one of the major problems of modern times." A 170 years isn't so long after all as our world today faces exactly this problem-- from the Koch brothers to the Occupy movement, to big oil and pollution, to the European economic crisis and the war against working people, to the world wide faltering of capitalism based on domination by banks and financial institutions, and third world exploitation-- it is all based on struggle over which countries and which classes are going to control industry and the world of wealth.

As this struggle intensifies we can expect the world to become a more and more violent place. The past century may have been only a prelude of things to come. We read in the papers that Japan plans to rebuild its military, the US is building up its forces in the Pacific (aimed at China) and moving into Africa, NATO is carrying on wars of aggression far from its home bases and preparing for interventions any where that may threaten Western dominance. Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia, Honduras, Haiti, Libya, Egypt, Syria (to name just a few of the most recent examples) no country is safe from Western intrigue, drones, outside interventions, or externally manipulated civil wars  whenever the economic interests of the US and its allies and puppets are seen to be at risk.

Marx realized that journalism alone, philosophy and criticism alone, would never be able to change this situation or be able to overthrow the world system of human exploitation. "The weapon of criticism cannot, of course," he wrote, "replace criticism by weapons, material force must be overthrown by material force; but theory also becomes a material force as soon as it has gripped the masses."  This is why Wiki-Leaks and people like Julian Assange, Bradley Manning and  Edward Snowden  along with other whistle blowers and investigative reporters must be silenced, for governments and their toadies know that once the people are informed, once they realize that the theories of their own governments are that information and democracy must be restricted (fascist policies introduced) in order for them to carry out their repressive domestic and international polices, they will fight back (or so they think) to ensure their rights and lively hoods.

A revolution in thought must precede a revolution in deed.  Marx thinks there must be a material basis for any revolution. "Theory can be realized in a people only insofar as it is the realization of the needs of that people." People around the world are becoming more and more aware of their real needs which are the exact opposite of those they are told about by capitalist governments and their hand kissing mainstream media. They need jobs, peace, education, housing and clean air and political parties and movements that truly represent working people and their allies, not bombs, drones, military interventions, no fly zones, fossil fuels, austerity and bank bailouts, and capitalist and fake socialist and labor parties that betray them.

A political revolution, such as we see in Egypt, or the "Arab Spring" in general, is only a partial revolution. Marx's thinking here is conditioned by the experiences of 1789 and 1830 in France. What are these partial revolutions based upon Marx asks [a complete revolution would change the social relations and economic base of a country-- 1789 rather than 1830-- or even 1776.] His answer is that a "part of civil society emancipates itself and attains general domination; on the fact that a definite class , proceeding from its particular situation, undertakes the general emancipation of society."

In Egypt in 2011, for example, it was the middle class in alliance with the workers and peasants and some elements of the big national capitalists against  the military dictatorship headed by Mubarak and representing compradore capitalists in alliance with US imperialism and its puppets (e.g., the EU).

"No class of civil society can play this role," Marx says, "without arousing a moment of enthusiasm in itself and in the masses, a moment in which it fraternizes and merges with society in general, becomes confused with it and is perceived and acknowledged as its general representative; a moment in which its demands and rights are truly the rights and demands of society itself; a moment in which it is truly the social head and social heart."

It was Mohammed Morsi and the political party affiliated with the Muslim Brotherhood that emerged in 2012 as the general representative of the forces that brought down Mubarak-- it claimed to represent the incarnation of the most general (and contentless as it turned out) demand of the revolution: "Democracy" as incarnated in free and fair elections. Unfortunately for the Brotherhood its anti-democratic  and dogmatic nature soon came to the fore as it tried to impose its sectarian doctrines on the rest of the revolutionary movement, of which it was only one component, while relying on the military to maintain it in power.

This is why a merely political revolution is only partial. In Egypt one "tyrant" was removed from power, and a would be tyrant was also expelled from office-- both by the Egyptian military reacting to millions of people in the streets demanding rights and freedoms which are the norm in stable bourgeois democracies. The real rulers in Egypt remain the military-- the same military that installed Nasser-- and the economic and social relations remain the same. To what extent they will allow bourgeois democracy to take hold in Egypt remains to be seen. One thing we can count on is that all the forces of US imperialism will be marshaled against the Egyptian masses and their democratic aspirations.

Marx, in this essay, thought a complete revolution would have to be led by a class whose emancipation would free both itself and all other classes-- by abolishing class differences. Of course, he is talking about 1844 Germany and the working class was very small and just beginning to develop so any coming revolutions would be bourgeois democratic in nature and not socialist. Yet Marx thought that only a full fledged socialist revolution, one demanding the abolition of private property, would actually be able to free human beings from exploitation and oppression. That day has not yet dawned but, if Marx was right about the role of criticism in the development of human self consciousness and the struggle for freedom, we can conclude that the role of religion and the religious consciousness will play an insignificant part-- indeed will be a negative rather than a positive ingredient in the self liberation of humanity from its self imposed fetishes and idols.

What then does Marx think will replace religion as the moving force in advancing historical progress.  He said it would be philosophy.  In his day what we call science was more or less considered a part of philosophy-- natural philosophy. So if we think of Marx as thinking that the road to liberation will be guided by a materialist  philosophy based on scientific understanding we will not be misguided. The section of humanity that will traverse this road is that of the working people, including agricultural workers, and especially industrial workers who will finally be able to put the economic resources of the planet, the common property of all not the few, to work  for the common good.

This day will come, following Marx, when scientific philosophy finds its material weapons in the working people and they find their spiritual weapons in scientific philosophy.  But whether it will be the Gallic cock or some other whose ringing call proclaims this day remains to be seen.

Marxism, the Taliban and Plato

Marxism, the Taliban and Plato
Thomas Riggins

Recently Simon Blackburn, the well known British philosopher, reviewed "Knowing Right from Wrong," the new book by Kieran Setiya, in the TLS ["Taliban and Plato" TLS July 19, 2013]. The essay deals with Setiya's attempt to defend ethical realism (objective moral knowledge is possible) which Blackburn rejects in favor of ethical pragmatism (useful moral knowledge is possible). I think neither of these positions are tenable and the best way to approach ethics is from a Marxist perspective.

Blackburn begins with Plato's position in the Republic: the Good can only be understood by those intellectually elite philosophers who rule Plato's ideal state in the interests of the people. After their basic studies and military training the elite undergo ten years of mathematical training followed by five years of philosophy and begin to take part in ruling at the age of 55. This puts ethical knowledge out of the way of most people who must take on faith that their rulers have actually attained such knowledge.

We need something a little more accessible, Blackburn thinks, and the virtue ethics of Aristotle based on common sense, empiricism and "scientific" method provided a practical alternative to Plato's views in the Republic (the Republic does not exhaust Plato's views on this subject.)

 Setiya"s book deals with, and Blackburn quotes him, "a tension between two things: the need to explain our reliability so that the truth of our beliefs can be no accident, and the need to leave room for communities that are not at all reliable."

Blackburn tells us that for Plato knowledge was different from true belief-- you might have a true belief that you picked up by accident, or a  guess, but this does not qualify as knowledge. Plato demands a "logos" for knowledge claims, "meaning," Blackburn says, "something like reason, justification or some kind of method -- and reliability seems a good yardstick for soundness."  But how do we test for "reliability?"

Here is the problem. Blackburn, for example, believes (1) in equal educational opportunities for men and women and (2) this is a reliable belief (i.e., true) based on  "cultural and historical forces" operant on Blackburn. Using the Afghan Taliban as a foil, Blackburn says they deny (1) and therefore (2) as well. "We need," he says, "a view from outside: an independent stamp of the reliability of our progress."

Where to find it? An appeal to Reason won't work. Just to claim we are "reasonable" and the Taliban are not is not  an independent outside view. What move does Setiya make that could uphold Blackburn's belief as reliable? He makes an appeal to "human nature." Setiya says "how human beings by nature live is not the measure of how they should." He uses the term "life form" for "human nature" and thinks, according to Blackburn, "in a proper environment, free from neglect or hunger or abuse" their true life form will emerge "and then they naturally gravitate towards the moral truth." This implies an objective moral truth out there (or in us) waiting for the proper environment.

Blackburn seems to contradict himself by saying this view is not meant to be "universally true" but more like natural history statements such as "dogs bark" or "finches lay eggs in the spring" which certainly seem to be, in the proper environment, "universally true."  Blackburn says: "So, the idea is that as a species, in the kind of circumstance in which we naturally live, we tend to believe what is morally and ethically true."  But this is just asserting the. conclusion, there is no argument here. The Taliban could say "Fine, where we naturally live women should not have equal educational opportunities as they have different roles to play in society and this is morally and ethically true."  Blackburn's belief is not upheld. But, I think the Taliban would reject the relativism implied here and think their attitude toward education is universally true.

Blackburn sees problems with Setiya's position. When we look at history and other societies we see all sorts of, to us, strange and wicked goings on. Bertrand Russell put it this way: "When we study in the works of anthropologists the moral precepts  which men have considered binding in different times and places we find the most bewildering variety" [Styles in Ethics, 1924].

 Blackburn says this leads to "a contemporary form of moral skepticism, which argues that a capacity for ethical truth would have given no selective advantage to anybody, so that it would be a miracle if it came to predominate  as a trait of our species." But this is nonsense as it assumes that the skeptic knows what ethical truth is and that nobody ever got a selective advantage from this knowledge-- neither of which the skeptic is in a reliable position to claim to know.

Setiya seeks to avoid moral skepticism, according to Blackburn, by adopting a position he calls NATURAL CONSTRUCTIVISM and defines as follows: "for a trait to be a virtue is for creatures of one's life form to believe that it is a virtue." This will not do at all. The Taliban, creature's of our life form, believe  it to be a virtue to deny equal educational opportunities to females (they may even feel it a virtue to throw acid in young girl's faces or shoot them for going to school) but really, should we think it is a virtue just because they have these beliefs. Mind you, Setiya wants to avoid both skepticism and RELATIVISM.

Well, we don't think it a virtue because our values differ from those of the Taliban and we share the same life form ( we are the same species with the same nature). But this begs the question. Blackburn has accepted female education due to the operant conditions of his culture and the Taliban reject it due to theirs. How do we escape relativism?

Setiya seems to be aware that you can't just define virtue the way he has done but he does so because he has "a certain faith in human nature." This implies the Taliban are wrong because they don't live the way our species (life form) is naturally programmed to live so, unlike us, they have not arrived at the proper ethical and moral conclusions. If you didn't already agree with the conclusion, you would never accept this argument-- if argument it be rather than just assertion.

Setiya warns us, says Blackwell, that his argument is the only way to defend moral knowledge or to have justified moral beliefs. It is "natural constructivism" based on reason and a universal human nature or, as Blackwell puts it, we may end up with "a soggy relativism" with one "truth" for the Taliban and another for those of us sharing Blackburn's operant conditioning.

Blackburn doesn't like this outcome, it "seems intolerable." He wants some justification for female educational equality, and it seems, for also thinking ill of the Taliban. If Setiya's moral realism won't work (i.e., no objective rules) he recommends a form of moral pragmatism. Blackburn's morals are more suited to our culture and useful and we (readers of the TLS and members of the culture that produced it) would shudder to live under the Taliban system-- so we definitely are going to favor female educational equality and, in fact, maintain it is the morally right thing.

Blackburn is modest, though, and admits there is a slight possibility he is wrong about this-- but this is only a theoretical possibility.  He even admits he doesn't have "the dialectical weaponry with which to topple the Taliban" and that he remains under the morality that the operant conditioning of his culture has created. He has hopes that the Taliban will change because their culture is "not hermetically sealed from ours" (the expected change appears to be one way), there will be "dissident voices"  and "stirrings of modernity" and half the population "has the burning desire to change." Cultural conditioning doesn't seem to take place among Taliban females. Can it be possible that Pashtun women are completely alienated from their men folk and none of them accept the traditional culture of their people?

Blackburn tells us the difference between realism ad pragmatism is that realism is interested in metaphysical problems regarding the nature of the "truths" of morality and seeks reliable claims as to this nature, while pragmatism does not believe this to be possible and there is no "foundation outside our ethics for our ethics to stand on."

What would a Marxist position be on these issues. I would propose a synthesis of ethical realism (there are objective ethical principals that should be followed if you want to create a particular type of society just as there are mathematical and physical laws you must follow if you want to fly to the Moon) and these laws also have a pragmatic dimension. Marxists do not believe in abstract metaphysical entities not rooted in the material world. They do not look for universal ethical principles applicable to all times and places.

The main motivating force of Marxism is to empower the working class, abolish capitalist exploitation of working people by the appropriation of the surplus value they create, and establish socialism and a world without one class or group of humans living off the exploitation of another. So there is a foundation to our ethics outside of our ethics which it can stand on. Whatever actions objectively further the interests of working people, which are determined by an objective scientific analysis of the social, political and economic forces in a given society, are morally and ethically correct. This is a materialist ethics based on forces objectively at work in a given historical period and has nothing to do with an idea such as "to be a virtue it is only necessary for members of your life form to believe it is a virtue" or a virtue is what readers of the TLS would think useful.

The class struggle is an objective fact of life and the sociological and economic laws that produce it are independent of the subjective desires or will of the people involved. Understanding these laws, such as the law of value, is possible and actions can be initiated in the real world to overcome this struggle and end it and the ethics and morals involved in this struggle rest on an objective materialist foundation independent of the human subject. This view point I think is much more realistic than that of either Setiya or Blackburn.

Stop and Frisk: Mayor Boomberg vs Minority Youth

Stop and Frisk: What Mayor Bloomberg Really Thinks About Minority Youth

Thomas Riggins

New York City Mayor Bloomberg, speaking before last Sunday's gay rights parade, tried to defend his position supporting the NYPD's massive stop and frisk program directed against minority (mostly Black and Hispanic) youth. His remarks were so out of line that the New York Times wrote an editorial (7-2-13) criticizing his "loopy logic" and U.S. Representative Hakeem Jeffries (Dem. N.Y.) was moved to say his comments "were sad, disrespectful, hurtful, and quite unfortunate."

The mayor dismissed the concerns of the minority community that they were being disproportionately stopped by the police and were, in fact, being harassed by the department. The fact that only 9% of the stops in 2012 involved whites was not seen by the mayor as in any way evidence that the minority rate was overly disproportionate. In fact he thought too many white people were being stopped and they were the ones who should be complaining about disproportionate treatment. His reason was that only 7% of the 2012 murder rate was due to white people (this was the only crime statistic he gave).

It may come as a surprise to many New Yorkers that the problem with the NYPD is that it is harassing white people not minorities, but that is Bloomberg's position. He is reported as maintaining (Wall Street Journal, 7-1-13) that "The numbers are the numbers, and the numbers clearly show that the stops are generally proportionate with suspects' descriptions and for years now critics have been trying to argue that minorities are stopped disproportionately." The numbers show not enough minority youth are being stopped and too many white folks are. "The numbers don't lie," the mayor said.

Well, if that is the problem in New York-- harassment of white youth by the police, I don't understand what the mayor has against a federally appointed monitor to make sure the NYPD is not violating people's constitutional rights. The federal monitor would at least clear the mayor and his police commissioner Ray Kelly of discriminating against minority youth and thus undermine the charges of racism in high places.

But the mayor also thinks a disproportionate amount of crime is due to minority youth so if they were disproportionately stopped they would really be proportionally stopped because they would be being stopped proportionally to the percentage of crimes they were responsible for and not in proportion to their population with respect to the disproportionately stopped white people. I hope this is clear. It means whatever the mayor does will turn out to be ok, except for being unfair to white folk.

Here is the mayor's view on minority youth. He said the politicians running for mayor would rather try and get votes  "than help us get out of this terrible situation where a disproportionate percentage of the crime is committed by a group of young kids that just don't have any future."

And why don't minority youth have any future? Is it because of the mismanaged educational system where the mayor would rather fight with the teachers than work with them to improve educational opportunities? Is it the lack of adequate after school programs and summer jobs, and employment training opportunities? Is due to slum housing and rent gouging of the poor? Could the NYPD and the mayor by targeting millions of minority youth as potential criminals because they "have no future" except crime be sending that very message to them-- no future for you!

I think it pretty clear that the mayor and his police commissioner have written off the majority of Black and Hispanic youth and are subjecting them to an unjustified program of stop and frisk harassment. The city council has just passed a bill creating an independent inspector general to check on abuse of power by the police. The mayor says he will veto it. The mayor should ask himself-- if the NYPD isn't doing anything wrong, what's the worry?

Who Turned the Lights Off? Jonathan Israel's Take on Pagden's "The Enlightenment"

Thomas Riggins

The world today is in the grips of the irrational and anarchic system of global capitalism dominated by the United States and characterized by international economic and political disorders, wars, poverty and environmental destruction.
In order to arrive at solutions to the problems facing humanity we will have to devise methods to overcome the capitalist system of irrationality and replace it by a rational international order based on the principles of democratic control rooted in a rational approach to solving the problems of war, economic inequality and environmental degradation by means of reason (logic and science).

It is important that those concerned with trying to bring about a transition from the unworkable present to a better future, which is not dominated by predatory capitalist super powers and their hanger ons, have a clear understanding of the most important historical movement before Marxism that attempted to bring about a better world and the lessons it has for us today.

This movement is known to history as the Enlightenment  which dates, more or less, from the middle of the 17th Century (one could almost say from the writings of Spinoza and his heirs) until the mid-19th century when nationalism and class warfare turned the ruling elites against the Enlightenment's values of  social justice, equality, and human rights and turned off the lights, or tied to, which had illuminated and revealed the problems facing humanity and their solutions. Lights that were reignited by the world socialist movement initiated by the works of Marx and Engels.

Today these values are again on the agenda, at least as far as lip service is concerned. This article will review the analysis of Anthony Pagden's new book, "The Enlightenment And why it still matters," by Jonathan Israel published in the TLS of June 21, 2013 ("How the light came in").

Israel has some initial good things to say about this book but then he mounts some very strong objections to its view of the Enlightenment-- so strong that I don't think this book would be a good introduction to the importance of this historical period.

Israel begins by telling us the Enlightenment is much more significant in the creation of "modernity" than the Renaissance or the Reformation (as important as these other movements were).  Pagden's book is, he says,  "one of the better surveys of the Enlightenment." From what follows the others must really be bad! Israel gives the following negative evaluations.

First, he finds the book's views on the beginnings of the Enlightenment and its "overall interpretation" to be "unsatisfactory." Who would begin to study a 436 page history book based on this evaluation? What is the reason for this negative view? The book is too anglo-centric with respect to the origins of the early Enlightenment (late 17th to mid 18th centuries.) The stress is on Hobbes, Locke, Shaftesbury, Hutcheson "and other British and Irish thinkers." In reality these figures were of minor importance compared to the Continental writers such as Leibniz, Wolff, Bayle, Thomasius and Spinoza and were rarely cited by them.

In fact, the really important early writings were in French (or Latin) but from a Dutch "milieu." It was Holland, not England that in 1700 or so "counted internationally as the world's foremost model of a tolerant, prosperous republican ethnic  and religious melting pot." Locke, for all his British acclaim, "was of practically no significance" to such major radical Enlightenment figures as Pierre Bayle  and Denis Diderot. In fact, as Israel points out elsewhere, the most important thinker for the entire Enlightenment period, was Spinoza. One might also conclude that in the whole era between Descartes and Marx the two most outstanding philosophical giants were Spinoza and Hegel.

Israel considers it a "serious omission" that Pagden practically ignores the major role of the Dutch Republic in favor of Britain as the inspiration to Enlightenment thinkers favoring political reform and a republican form of government. The first big struggle for democracy in the modern world was not the American Revolution of 1776-83 (it was "not fully democratic") but the Patriottenbeweging (Patriot movement) of 1780-87 in Holland which was referred to at least as often by the Enlighteners leading the French Revolution as were the English revolutions of the previous century.

The book's greatest flaw is the failure to identify properly those Enlightenment figures responsible for the creation of "democratic modernity" which Pagden thinks was a principal achievement of the Enlightenment. Instead it concentrates on the traditional standbys of Anglo-American scholarship-- Locke, Montesquieu, Hume, Voltaire and Adam Smith-- all of whom were "moderates" [Hume was an outright racist]  "who made no particular contributions to furthering racial and gender equality, anti-colonialism, full freedom of thought and religion, press freedom, universal secular education or general emancipation."  They were the least revolutionary with respect to changing the status quo in a radical manner and so have become the most well known and taught in anglophone countries.

Besides a greatest flaw (Israel says "principal weakness") there is a "key vulnerability" as well. This reveals itself in the last chapter on the role of the Enlightenment in the French Revolution. Pagden sees only two major phases in the Revolution: the first Enlightenment phase that reined in the monarchy in June 1789 and under the rule of the National Assembly created the constitution of 1791 and the second the Terror under Robespierre which, as Israel agrees, "denied the Enlightenment's core values" [a libel I think against Robespierre and the Jacobins.]

There were, however, not two-- but three revolutions according to Israel-- there was a middle period between 1791 (the date of the "monarchist constitution" put forth by moderates led by the marquis de Lafayette and other liberal monarchists, and the Terror. Pagden ignores this "tragic middle phase" led by the kind of radical philosophes favored by Israel and better known as the Girondins as opposed to Robespierre's Jacobins.

Israel says the Girondins were radical democrats who wanted universal male suffrage, were opposed to slavery, and favored the rights of women, as well as universal toleration and an unrestricted free press. Israel also says Robespierre was completely opposed to these radical democrats  and that after the Jacobins seized power in 1793 they instituted the Terror and went "all out to suppress the Enlightenment in government, social theory and education…."

This may be a bit unfair to Robespierre and the Jacobins who thought the Revolution itself was on the verge being overthrown by reactionary counter-revolutionary forces and that Girondin polices were not forceful enough to prevent this. The Jacobins seized power not because they rejected Enlightenment ideas but because they thought a temporary people's democratic dictatorship was required to save the Revolution and that the Girondins, by opposing them, had placed themselves on the side of counter-revolution whatever their subjective attitudes toward the Revolution might  have been.

The Girondins did not trust the revolutionary masses and were against direct democracy and in favor of indirect representative democracy whereby the people's elected representatives (educated and cultured folks such as the Girondins) would represent the real interests of the people who were too ignorant and uneducated to properly represent themselves. The Jacobins came to power by means of a direct democratic appeal to the revolutionary masses to save the Revolution and whatever the ultimate evaluation of the Terror may turn out to be, many, if not most, historians credit the Jacobins and Robespierre with reversing the counter-revolution and preventing the collapse of the Republic.

Under the Jacobins Feudalism was abolished in France and a new democratic constitution was enacted in 1793. This Jacobin constitution was ratified by a vote which was undertaken with universal male suffrage and it was based on the 1789 "Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen" and it supported popular sovereignty and instituted rights for the French people such as the right of association, the right to work, to public welfare, to public education, the right to rebel against any government violation of the people's rights. The Jacobins  also abolished slavery throughout the territories governed by France.

This constitution shows that the values of the Enlightenment were not foreign to Robespierre and the Jacobins. However, despite coming up with this great progressive constitution supported by the revolutionary masses, the Jacobins also decided to postpone implementing it until the counter- revolutionary threat was over and the Terror was no longer necessary. The Jacobins were overthrown in 1794 by a milder counter-revolution than the one they had saved the country from so their constitution was never really implemented and was replaced by a less revolutionary one in 1795 which was nevertheless influenced by it.

Israel only half agrees with Pagden's assertion that the Enlightenment was a reform movement not a revolutionary one that, in his words, it 'had , in fact, always been identified with reform rather than revolution." Pagden misses the point that there were really TWO Enlightenments-- a moderate conservative and/or reformist one [e.g., Locke, Hume, Adam Smith, Burke, Ferguson, Gibbon-- just to mention anglophones], and a radical one [Bentham, John Jebb, Price, Thomas Paine, Priestley, Mary Wollenstonecraft, Helen Maria Williams, Godwin, Barlow, Jefferson, Elihu Palmer]. This same split could also be found on the Continent where such "super" radicals as Diderot, d'Holbach, Helvétius, Lessing for example, faced off against moderates such as Voltaire, Leibniz, Wolff, and later Kant and their followers. The counter Enlightenment attacked both these Enlightenments sometimes confusing them as just one movement-- which many counter Enlightenment intellectuals continue to do in our own day.

The "fundamental idea" of the radical Enlightenment was, according to Israel, "that the true human moral order is based not on divine revelation or intervention but exclusively on social utility, especially equality and secularism." Moderate figures fudge these distinctions and reactionary counter Enlightenment thinkers (if thinkers they be) deny them completely.

The great rift created by the radical Enlightenment between those who appeal basically to reason (logic and science) to solve our problems and those who want to "balance" reason "with religion, existing institutions, the prevailing social order and tradition" still exists today  and is at the heart of the political and social struggles that will shape the 21st century.

European Social Contract Betrayed

European Social Democracy sells out its electorate.

By Thomas Riggins

By supporting austerity measures the mainstream center left parties have abandoned the very people, working and middle class supporters, they are supposed to represent.

Keywords:

European Social Contract Betrayed
Thomas Riggins

The austerity regimes being imposed on the European working class and some elements of the middle classes by the the IMF and the central banks of several large European countries, especially Germany have resulted in millions of working people rejecting the traditional mainstream capitalist parties and voting for parties labeled by the mainstream media as "fringe." Some of these "fringe" parties are so large that they determine the outcome of national elections (the Five Star Movement in Italy for example) and pose a serious threat to "business as usual" in the social democratic movement.

It should be noted that after World War II and the collapse of German and Italian fascism, there was panic in the West European and American business circles that Communist Parties would be swept into power either by uprisings or elections. To fight this threat concessions were made to the working people in the form of social welfare programs based on socialist principles but trimmed down so as not to threaten the power and control of the international banking system led by the United States.

The United States basically financed the reconstruction of Western Europe and European capitalism and both the traditional conservative and right wing elements as well as the social democratic and center-left elements teamed up to back social programs designed to lessen the appeal of the demands of the Communist and Workers movements. This system worked fairly well until the breakdown of the capitalist system starting with the 2007 housing bubble and subsequent banking crisis. What has happened to the working people in Europe since the outbreak of the crisis is described by David C. Unger in his recent New York Times article ("Europe's Social Contract Lying in Pieces"-NYT online 6-9-13).

Unger in his article laments that this "social contract" has been abandoned by the European center left parties and as a result "democracy's best advertisement to the Communist East" had been "undermined … in pursuit of a perverse economic dogma." The point of course is that all the social gains granted by the capitalists to the West European working people were begrudgingly conceded out of fear of the appeal of the Soviet Union and the world communist movement.

With the undermining and collapse of the Soviet Union and East European socialism, big capital no longer saw the need to coddle the working class and has reverted true to form to reimpose a regime of extreme economic exploitation in order to maximize its profits. Austerity is simply the redirection of social wealth from programs, such as health care, housing, unemployment, pensions, etc.,) into the coffers of the bankers and financial speculators where it rightfully belongs under the capitalist system ("a perverse economic dogma" which I take, unlike Unger, to be capitalism itself.)

What have the social democrats done-- especially the Democrats in Italy the Socialist Party in France, the Spanish socialists, Pasok (the Greek socialist party) and others? They have abandoned the very people they are supposed to represent--the working people and have backed and voted for policies that will bring about "many more years of cuts in social spending" and they are "increasingly out of touch with the desperate situation of young people." This is why millions of voters have deserted these parties for so-called "fringe" groups.

What are the consequences of this social democratic betrayal? This is how Unger
describes the scene in Mediterranean Europe: "You see shuttered groceries and clothing shops, abandoned restaurants, idled factories and half-built housing developments overgrown with weeds. Newspapers carry heartbreaking stories of families evicted from modest apartments, people losing their jobs and then their health benefits, young and not-so-young women turning to prostitution to make ends meet, even suicides by self-immolation." This is the modern day equivalent of the heartless inhumane capitalism described by Marx in Das Kapital.

Unger points out that the economic power of Germany is so great it probably could have dictated the present regime of austerity without the cooperation and even against the hostility of social democracy. Today's Germany has attained what it failed to achieve in two world wars, economic (and hence political) dominance of Europe. The tragedy of social democracy is that it collaborated in the destruction of its own electorate instead of fighting, even if a losing battle, to protect it. That betrayal did not go unnoticed.

As the European workers begin to fight back, as the communist and workers parties begin to gain in strength other social forces are also rapidly growing. Forces from the Dark Side are also beginning to proliferate such as the neo-Nazi Golden Dawn in Greece ("Greece for the Greeks"), the United Kingdom Independence Party (right-wing Eurosceptic libertarians), the National Front (a "whites only" party in the UK). The Union pour un Mouvement Populaire (UMP) and the UK Conservative Party should also take notice as they too are losing members to the "fringe." Unger says Germany too should not be too confident. Their present economic dominance may evaporate if the rest of Europe dissolves into political and social chaos due to the on going capitalist crisis. An ultra-right movement in Germany may become ascendent. We wouldn't want that to happen again. 

Democratic Sex

By Gary Tedman

If, in fact, it is possible for there to be homosexual men, a sexual male who is attracted to a male, which it obviously is, then the possibility must also be accepted that a male can be gendered as a female, yet still be attracted to a female. If gender is constructed, then there can be no exclusions to the construction (considered ideally). This means that the female gendered as a man who loves women may also be gendered as a man but loves men, so in a sense we have a parallel to the male lesbian, but we have no name for it, perhaps tom-boy is the old label. The tom-boy is not necessarily a woman who does not 'like' men, and likewise the 'camp' man is not necessarily the gay man who is attracted to men. Yet the male lesbian is a character which is usually ruled out by even radical accounts of sexuality. This may indicate the justified suspicion of the 'reformed' male, but it appears to go further than this and be a kind of prohibition or taboo, amongst 'men' and 'women' and 'gays' and 'lesbians'. This fourfold structure in fact appears to make a neat package that tends not to admit other entries, for example bisexuality. Why?

It is perhaps the way in which these interact as false dialectics to shore each other up as differences, in some senses the notion of an original structure 'man and woman' is reconfirmed and recuperated by the alternative gay and lesbian, and the loop is closed. It is closed doubly if it is inverted and the alternative is seen to be the 'straight', as happens sometimes in inverted gender snobbery (that the 'alternative' lifestyle is a massive industry hardly needs proving these days). The feminine male or the male lesbian must be gay, says the male-male, or he is in some senses even more of a pervert in the standard narrative of sex, if he shows those positive/negative virtues/drawbacks of 'femininity'. The male lesbian, let us conjecture, might be no good for war, for he is a coward, obviously, and has no excuse for this, since he 'is a male'. The gay male may go to war proudly, since he may love the 'masculine attributes', likewise the lesbian.

It has famously been said that sex between two people is really an activity between four persons (Freud), but here we seem to have grown eight, two of which are the same, bisexual, the rest: the pair of straights, lesbian and gay, male-lesbian and tom-boy (for want of better names). There are two for bisexual because really one can never be completely balanced, we are always sided, and there is chirality at work in sexual practice, but theoretically they stand for zero. This structure renders sexuality democratic, because every approach to gender performance is taken into account, and so is freed from the illusion which polices subjects within the strict boundaries of the either/or false dialectics of sex: i.e. the notion that the sexes are dialectical opposites with an essential nature, one which may be, then subverted, but only in a prescribed manner that acts to reconfirm the authenticity of the false dialectic, in other words: either side of the two dualities may be the nice or nasty policeman.

Of course, in saying all this, I am aware that in practice the dominating side of the sexuality/gender problem is the 'straight' side, and that still in many ways homosexuality is oppressed as 'deviating' away from the authentic.

In the article Is Monogamy Essential to Democracy? (Salon interview, 24 May 2012) staff writer Tracy Clark Flory sets out the argument against polygamy developed by the psychologist Joseph Henrich, whose expertise was called for during a Canadian Supreme Court's reconsideration of the state ban on plural marriage. In a 64-page affidavit, the professor (from the University of British Columbia) used his areas of expertise — psychology, anthropology and economics — to make obvious the social harm associated with men taking multiple wives. Implicit in his argument was, apart from that it would be wives in this position of multiplicity, an endorsement of monogamy, which, he wrote: "seems to redirect male motivations in ways that generate lower crime rates, greater GDP per capita, and better outcomes for children." His interest, she explained, was not in the individual, emotional experience of sexual and romantic exclusivity, so much as the evolution of cultural norms and how they impact society. The connection is established between monogamy and democracy in the following manner: that it has been argued by historians that monogamy precedes and then goes along with, the emergence of democratic ideals, so that in the named 'Western tradition', the earliest we can trace laws about monogamy is to Athens, when democracy began to be instituted. His argument is that monogamy here is set-up to create equality among citizens so that, essentially, there will be wives available to all Athenian men, rather than having all the rich men take many wives, although (!) men were still allowed to have slave concubines, as long as they were non-Athenian women; he says therefore, that we may think of this as a first effort to try to level the playing field by saying that both the king and the peasant can only have one wife each: the first step toward saying that all men were created equal.

He does discuss, nevertheless possible exceptions to this case: in many small-scale societies, he discloses that there is an institution that appears similar to Western marriage, where people 'pair bond', but, he says, there is unfortunately 'philandering on the side' by both men and women, saying that they will often just cycle to another 'pair bond', it not being uncommon for hunter gatherers to have three, four or five pair bonds in the course of their life while having children from each union. This seems to be put in a negative light for no apparent rational reason, but still: there are these groups in South America where Henrich explains that people believe that the fetus is formed by ejaculations from multiple males, so the kids can have multiple fathers and you improve the survival of your child by getting him or her a second father, so when women first get pregnant, they will seek sexual liaisons with other men because then those men believe they have a fatherly responsibility to the child. What he describes as social norms in this case decide that the husband, the primary father, is not to be upset about this, that it is perfectly allright for the woman to go out and seek these other mates—but, and this is telling, he notes that the 'ethnography suggests' that these 'guys are really grumpy about it' as if they secretly share our more 'natural' Western ideals and taboos, that you have an innate jealous reaction that is stamped down by local social norms.

His democratic argument in favor of outlawing polygamy runs as a result: that polygamy (when men marry multiple wives, here) takes up all the women and creates an underclass of men that have no access to partners, and these men cause trouble: i.e. they commit crimes and 'engage in substance abuse'. And what is more there is also seen to be less equality for women and more strife in the home because women are in short supply, which 'increases male competition', and so 'men use violence against women to control the household'. Also, he goes on (in this, what is becoming an astonishing excuse for what is) if you have one male with lots of wives, there are "all sorts of stepmothers and unrelated adults in the same household as children, and that increases the likelihood of violence". The biggest risk factor, he says, for spouses killing each other is a large age difference, and in polygamous households you inevitably end up with a large age difference between at least some of the spouses.

The one-child policy in China is referred to: which is seen to create the same kind of surplus of men because of the preference for sons and the use of sex-selective abortion, he says: "You can see 18 years after you implement the one-child policy, you get extra men and that predicts extra crime." The same thing is posited as happening in India too. All this is against the rule of economics because "…There is a Stanford economist who argues that when men can't invest in getting another wife, they then invest more in their own production." The theory is that rather than basically saving up in order to get a second wife or a third wife, they invest more in the children of the one wife they have, and in other types of economic production, so marriage here is seen as functioning as a form of social control. This is even figured as a medical fact concerned with hormonal mechanisms: Henrich refers to research that studies men before and after they get married and before and after they have children; the early evidence, he says, suggests that males have two testosterone reductions during those periods, and it is high testosterone levels that lead to a high level of mate-seeking and so 'risk-taking'. He refers to one study that was performed

"…in a polygynous society that found males don’t suffer the same testosterone drop. That makes good sense because if you get married in a polygynous society, you’re still on the mating market. Think of testosterone as a mating hormone: It doesn’t go down because you’re still looking around—or you’re looking less than you would be otherwise, if for no other reason than people are watching and expecting you to not be looking."

This takes us back to the element of social control: one of the apparent keys to understanding marriage is third parties; marriage is not only a contract between two people, because there are all these outside parties with 'expectations' ('rational expectations'?) about how two married people are supposed to 'behave'; failure to live up to that has reputational consequences, and, it seems that there are comparisons to be made here between, on the one hand, human marriage and infidelity and, on the other hand, socially monogamous, pair-bonding animals that sexually stray: the crucial difference being there is no evidence that he knows of, of animals policing each other; i.e. in voles, he says, the uninvolved third parties do not get upset at the vole who strays; well, he is not a vole so how would he know, but anyway... We now move onto the steamy topic of mistresses: there seems to be for him 'at least' anecdotal evidence that wealthy, high-status males not only marry serially but also have mistresses that they divert large funds to, which he says would be an interesting question to investigate but he does not actually know of empirical data on the subject. But, nevertheless he asserts that, clearly, our system of monogamous marriage is supported by particular romantic ideals, and therefore asks how such concepts of romantic love differ in polygamous societies.

The best he says that anthropology can tell us is that there is romantic love all over the place and that it is not some strange Western cultural notion, it is the idea that it should be linked to marriage which is the more unusual part. Marriage, according to Henrich is about 'building households', and this involves linking up kinship groups, so by the process he defines as 'cultural evolution' lots of societies have simply decided to take away the responsibility from the young couple in deciding who should mate because there are bigger things at play, while in the smaller scale human societies, it still seems to him that 'pair bonds' are created by romantic love, but these pair bonds are in his view 'not that durable'. It is social norms that are actually what makes the 'pair bond' more durable.

What appears very plainly in this anthropological ideology is that the family is an aesthetic state apparatus and as such has a history related to economic history and that in this paean to the state apparatus of modern monogamous marriage certain kinds of pair bonding are to be ruled out and others ruled in, and indeed we quickly lose sight of the democratic component that is supposed to be intrinsic to this family structure, which becomes subordinate to its utility as an economically functioning unit, the 'household'. The underlying lack of democracy in the basic assumption of female inferiority here needs no comment, it is obvious, so what appears as a constant is the necessity, within the 'law of the family' to subordinate a particular sex, and that this will and must be the female, though the reasons remain unstated and taken for granted. There is no understanding of the role that the family plays in reproducing the subject in society, which would inevitably lead us to question the production value of the female as the one who labors to reproduce the human subject.

But we also see in this account the general taboo over polygamy, and concomitant with this, the restriction of available gender types that we may perform by the policing (we may credit this understanding that there is indeed policing going on here though). It is as if the eight performances of gender that we have seen as underpinning all sexual performances need to be first restricted (to the four, two prescribed and two proscribed), before any sexism may operate 'properly'. And this is key because if we were to realize that the conditions of our sexuality were democratic (in our sense), then it is the opening of Pandora's Box, and not to a sea of 'anything goes' 'free sex' etc (which always worked out to extra freedom for the men anyway), but a wider and more subtle grasp of our sensual possibilities as true democratic sex. 

Extract from research for a book roughly entitled "Lenin and Democracy"

Marx Reloaded, A Film by Jason Barker: Review and Commentary

Thomas Riggins

Jason Barker's film, Marx Reloaded, was released in 2011. It is 52 minutes long and is now available for viewing on the internet. It was interesting to watch but it did not have a lot to do with Marx except superficially. If Marx was reloaded it was with blanks.

The film presents a series of talking heads many of whom have no grasp of what Marx and Marxism are all about and who engage in flights of "postmodern'' speculation as to the meaning of Marxism today. There are a few exceptions that I will note. There are also a few non-Marxist supporters of capitalism who don't see any future for Marx. There are no representatives from contemporary labor movements or political parties which are part of the ongoing Marxist tradition.

The question addressed is if Marx's critique of capitalism is valid for our time. If the critique is valid then what comes next? Is Communism going to make a return? Is it coming back to replace the capitalist system?

The film opens with an animation of Marx meeting Trotsky and Trotsky undertaking to enlighten Marx as to the significance of Marxism today. Trotsky will attempt to guide Marx to an understanding of how ideology works in society. Quite the tail wagging the dog.

The film then begins by asking how economists today explain the greatest capitalist crisis since the great depression of the 1930s. The answers we get are not very telling. Now the talking heads take over.

First up is the late former chief economist of the Deutsche Bank, Norbert Walter (1944-1912) who says that we [bankers] made mistakes. E.g., in the USA people could get mortgages at 110% of the value of their houses. The banks made money cheaply available, people borrowed too much and they couldn't pay back what they owed. Later in the film he tells us that Marx's ideas about getting rid of capitalism by abolishing a society based on commodity production for profit would create a world that people would not want to live in as that would lead to the abolishment of "the universal medium of money" which "turns everything around us into commodities" and "money is an essential medium for civilization, for peaceful coexistence and the organization of complex societies." This begs the question as communism is a complex society based on production for human needs not commodities for profit. Mr. Walter must have forgotten about the two world wars that almost destroyed European civilization in the last century when he opined that "peaceful coexistence" is one of the benefits of a money economy.

Next up is Eamonn Butler of the Adam Smith Institute, and author of "Taming The Trade Unions", who tells us the crisis was caused by inflation due to governments printing too much money. That is all we hear from him.

On a more general level of the problems of capitalism and the meaning of Marx's writing the film interviews several people identified as philosophers, political philosophers, theorists, critics, etc. Some are well known to the academic community although their grasp of Marxism may be questionable. We now hear from Antonio Negri, co-author of "Empire", an expert on Spinoza, and a founder of Italian Autonomism, and "Worker's Power" (Potere Operaio) an ultra-left formation in Italy with a secret armed wing. Negri tells us that the capitalists [neo-liberals] cannot pay the workers the price of their labor [which doesn't even make sense in Marxist terms-- a wage is the price paid for labor-- he should at least be talking about the value of their labor-power not the price] and that they remain in power and are able to wage wars around the world only as long as the working class remains quiescent  due to high wages. But as we see the capitalists can't do that so Marx is still relevant.

This line of thought is taken up by the film which now asks does Marx's theory of exploitation hold today or is the way capitalists make their profits changing? The answers are sought from more talking heads without any clear explanation having been given as to what Marx's theory of exploitation is. What is clear is that with a few exceptions, which I will note, none of the answers given in this part of film are dealing with Marx's theory.

The philosopher Slavoj Zizek is now up to bat (what film on "Marxism" would be complete without this latter day Eugen Dühring). He is described as the "leader" of a new movement to revive Marxist and Communist thinking. He revives Marx by proclaiming that the classical notion of exploitation [left unexplained] no longer works due to the knowledge explosion-- he does not tell us why this is so. However, it has something to do with computers because we need them to communicate with each other and so we have pay "rent" to Bill gates because he owns part of our mental substance. I am tempted to think that in professor Zizek's case Mr. Gates  is a slumlord. Finally we are told that we need a redefinition of the "proletariat" because the "proletariat" is larger than the working class. Zizek also notes that the unemployed today demonstrate because they want jobs-- "please exploit us in the normal way" they are saying to the capitalists. I think he strikes out as the "leader" of a new "Marxist" movement. He will appear again later.

Antonio Negri now reappears. Capitalism, he says, has evolved in ways Marx could not have predicted. Exploitation is not only of factory workers but of workers throughout society. You can't start a revolution with the factory workers-- you need them but also all the other workers too [I think Marx could have predicted this, in fact he already knew it.] You need the other workers, Negri says, because they are the "most" exploited. What can that mean? The examples he gives is of research and cinema workers and the like because they produce more value. None of this makes sense because the Marxist concept of "value," "surplus value," "labor power" and "exploitation" are never brought up in the film. If they were none of the things these talking heads and intellectual will o the wisps are saying would make sense anyway only the viewers would at least understand why.

Herfried Munkler now makes his appearance. Dr. Munkler, co-editor of the Complete Works of Marx and Engels and a professor at Humbolt University, in contrast to those who have appeared before, actually knows a thing or two about Marxism although in its Social Democratic deformation. His concern is not limited to discussing the plight of working people in the West but focuses on the exploitation of working people in the so-called Third World where working conditions are subhuman and wages are ridiculously low in comparison to the advanced capitalist countries. Here it is obvious that Marxist ideas are relevant and that capitalism is being abusive.

Michael Hardt, Antonio Negri's collaborator on the book "Empire" (not worth the read) now appears to bring us back from the Third World to the the First to tell us the economy is now centered on "immaterial" and "immeasurable" products-- that is, on "ideas" not on "objects" like old fashioned commodities such as cars, refrigerators, toasters-- the products of industrial manufacturing. Economics is about relationships and intangible assets [not, coal, oil or natural gas]. He is listed as a literary critic and political philosopher, at least he talks about political philosophy like a literary critic.

Now is the time for Jacques Ranciere, the co-author with Louis Althusser of "Reading Capital" (although his part was left out of the English version). He is noted for an educational theory which says a person can be a teacher without knowing anything about the subject he is going to teach; a view welcomed by not a few teachers. Ranciere makes three appearances in the film and manages to say nothing of importance in any of them.  Here he tells us many societies have had exploitation without "explosions" so we can't draw from exploitation the logic of an end to exploitation. Economic exploitation is not the dominant factor in all social struggle. Ranciere seems oblivious to the Marxist view that, as Engels says, in the last analysis all major social struggles in class based societies have economic exploitation at their root. Each society and its economic formation needs to be individually studied. There have certainly been "explosions" over exploitation in all societies that have distinct social classes despite Ranciere's contrary assertions.

The film now takes up a new subject. We are told that to understand capitalism we must delve into the the "mystic realm" of the COMMODITY.  It is certainly true that without an understanding of the origin and role of commodities we will not understand our economic system which is based on the production and exchange of commodities. Marx devotes the first chapter of "Das Kapital" to the commodity. It is a difficult chapter but once grasped the rest of the volumes of Das Kapital will be easily understood.

The film however does not deal with Marx's scientific analysis of commodities but skips to the last section of the chapter which is entitled "The Fetishism of Commodities." Without an understanding of the preceding sections it is easy to misunderstand this last section and, true to form, both the film's narrator and all of the talking heads in this part of the film completely miss the point and fail to grasp Marx's ideas concerning commodity fetishism.

To make a long story short, Marx's point is that the laws of the capitalist system are not  products of  nature as, say, are the laws of gravity or of aerodynamics but they are the result of human activity. Commodities and their relations are created by human beings and human beings can abolish them. Yet, because we are ignorant of the laws of economics we think of commodities as natural, as things which , although created by us, assume an existence independent of us and go to a market whose laws we are subject to and must conform to. This is similar to the creation of religions or "primitive" belief systems where a person creates a fetish and then bows down to it and thinks it has power over him and he must subject himself to its demands and will. The capitalist market appears as the natural form of economic exchange and there is no alternative to it.  It is not true that there is no alternative and humans can abolish capitalism and rid themselves of subjection to the laws of commodity production and create an economic world which serves human needs and one where human needs do not take second place to the need to exchange commodities at a profit. None of this is addressed in this part of the film. Instead we get baloney. This is because the talking heads are in the grips of the very fetishism Marx warns us about.

Norman Bolz (media theorist): "The theory of commodity fetishism is Marx's most important discovery." It isn't. Marx's most important discovery is the distinction between the value of labor and that of labor-power which is the basis of the labor theory of value and of his analysis of capitalism. It is, however, one of the most important consequences of that discovery.

Bolz continues by saying Marx's theory reveals a secret as to why capitalism today "functions so well" [!!!]. The secret is "that goods in the capitalist market place satisfy more than simple needs  they also convey a spiritual surplus value and this value is the real reason for the purchase." This is complete and utter nonsense.

Peter Sloterdijk (philosopher [but not a very good one]) is not so definite. He says the theory is probably "the important part of Marxist doctrine." This is because "Marx is among those who discovered the fact that things live."  He goes on to say, Walter Benjamin "discovered the structural similarity between human commodities [?] and commodities as objects." He thus "universalized the category of prostitution." While there may be a relationship between fetishism and prostitution on some level, I don't think this is what Marx was getting it. "Prositution is always present when a beautiful thing feigns life and tries to seduce passersby with an offer."  I think professor Sloterdijk should reread Marx's chapter on commodities.

Finally, here is Famonn Butler"s (policy analyst) take: he says it's human psychology to want things-- the economy is neutral-- it just produces what people want.  Well then, that's it. Capitalism just produces what people want. Then why are there so many adverts all over the place? Do we need to be constantly reminded about what we want?

The film now turns to Marxism and Ecology-- only by now Marxism has been unloaded rather than  reloaded. Zizek is now taking about  "Communism" in the sense what we have in "common"-- the Earth as our "common substance" and we have to manage it together. He makes no proposal about how to do that. Michael Hart is also back talking about the "common" in "Communism" and how different that is from both the "Communism" found in the Soviet Union (derived from Marx incidentally) and also the "Communism"  of American Anti-Communism [evidently he doesn't approve of either kind of "Communism"].

Herfried Munkler points out that Marx "applies exploitation not only to human labor but to the limited resources of nature. He says that if the exploitation of nature continues nature will be destroyed." Munkler thinks that we can reduce the exploitation of nature under capitalism and have common ownership of the Earth without  a Marxist society. But this is just social democratic optimism as befits anyone affiliated with the SPD in Germany. He gives no program. But at least he brings up an all important issue; the destruction of the environment under capitalism today.

John Gray weighs in with the observation that international capitalism develops in ways impossible to predict and impossible to control (revealing that he is completely under the sway of the fetishism of commodities). He says the "New Leninists" [we have not met any "Leninists" in this film-- nor will we] and "Greens" are correct about the fact that "human action" has destabilized the environment but they are "deluded" in thinking human action can restabilize it. It doesn't occur to him that it is not humans qua humans that are destructive but only humans under the sway of particular sorts of economic and social relations. Even if humans could get together as a global collective, which he says will never happen, they could not restabilize the environment. Doom and gloom is all we can expect.

The film now asks if the current economic crisis was caused by an under regulated banking system. Is the only solution now and in the future to have state regulated economic systems? The film suggests we look back into history for solutions. I should note here that people who look  to the past for solutions to present day problems are usually seen to be reactionaries.

Be that as it may, we return to Norbert Bolz who likes the fact that in the 19th century banks issued their own scripts which functioned as money. You could take it to another bank and redeem it in coin of the realm-- if the other bank trusted it! This system would make all the banks very aware of the true value of the scripts and bad banks would be exposed. He thinks this is a really good idea and I suppose there were no banking crises in the 19th century, except there were.

John Gray rightly thinks this idea is nuts because state monopoly capital [not his term] has become so evolved and complicated since the 19th century and this has happened as a result of the close interconnection between capitalism and state power-- there is no going back. But is there going forward?

Why is it that the state rushes in to save capitalism all the time? Is it possible, the film now asks, that these crises, like the one we are in right now, which broke out in 2007, are not side effects of capitalism but essential to its very existence?

Herfried Munkler tells us that Marx thought that crises would lead to the downfall of capitalism but since his day capitalism has gone through many crises and has "rejuvenated itself." He mentions Joseph Schumpeter's theory of crises as periods of "creative destruction." "Capitalism," Munkler concludes, "doesn't age. Instead crisis is its Fountain of Youth."  This from the co-editor of the Collected Works is rather strange. Marx thought the internal contradictions would eventually bring about capitalism's collapse (or the mutual destruction of the contending classes within the system) but there was no time table and he argued that capitalism had at its disposal many tools to stave off immediate collapse but it would eventually prove dysfunctional as had the economic forms (slavery, feudalism,) that preceded it. Schumpeters "creative destruction" (destruction of the lives of workers and the majority of the population and creative of wealth for the so-called 1%-- the capitalists) is no refutation of Marx's theories.

The "theorist" Alberto Toscano, one of the very few interviewed who seems to have his head in the right place, points out that capitalism, whatever its ultimate fate, is responsible for creating a gigantic surplus population that it does not know what to do with. He mentions the book "The Planet of Slums" by Mike Davis and talks about  the "surplus humanity" that capitalism has on its hands because its technological advances have made the number of workers it needs redundant. This is the "reserve army of labor" that Marx wrote about-- but now it is no longer a "reserve" it is just a surplus of human beings that are socially unneeded piling up in the slums of the world with nowhere to go. The "creative destruction" they may eventually bring about capitalism may have a hard time dealing with. Only the Chinese, with a non-capitalist economic system, seem to have been able to cope with the massive poverty in the rural areas  of their country (and of course Cuba and Vietnam and a few others with non-capitalist economies, and now Venezuela, are beginning to follow suit).

Finally, the film asks what sense is there in believing another world, other than capitalism, is possible. TINA-- There is No Alternative was Ms. Thatcher's motto-- was she correct? Can a Communist alternative emerge after the experiences of the past century?

  Antonio Negri says there is only capitalism so we must fight the bosses as the bosses fight us. This seems to be an eternal struggle-- there is only the movement Bernstein thought and so it seems  does Negri-- at least in this film-- it is difficult to get just what he means so I may be incorrect here. He tells us what we all know-- Russia didn't have "Communism" it had "socialism." What is socialism? It is a way to manage capitalism, just like liberalism is. How would Communism come about? It "comes into being through a relation between transformations of reality and the will or decision to do it or to build it." After this bit of balderdash  he leaves us with the admonition to junk the old Communist Manifesto  and to write a new one-- he is not , however, the man to do it.

Nina Power, feminist philosopher, has more regard for the Communist Manifesto, and says it has continuing power to influence people. She is surely correct.

Zizek writes off the 20th century "communist" states, Social Democracy, the idea of local councils, collectives, Soviets (which first popped up in the 1905 Russian Revolution) and their latter day reincarnations. What's left? He tells us he likes the idea that "A communist society is one in which each person could dwell in his own stupidity." Zizek is already doing that so he should be happy. He says he got that idea from reading Frederick Jameson. He thinks it would be great if Communism turned out to be like a Bruegel painting. Whenever I hear Zizek expostulating it brings to mind what Karl Marx said about Jeremy Bentham i.e., "in no time and in no country has the most homespun common-place ever strutted about in so self-satisfied a way." At least Bentham did not resort to pseudo-Hegelian verbiage.

Micha Brumlik (professor of education at the Goethe University of Frankfurt am Main) maintains that after the 20th century we have the right to know what Communism is going to be like-- it has to be democratic to be supported. There will be a big fight over that, I fear, as different concepts of "democracy" will be put forth. But he is right to demand a politically active civil society not divorced from a democratic political system. He thinks that Hardt and Negri's  unclear views on the "the multitude" will never get that concept up and running or have any practical outcome.

Jacques Ranciere leaves us with the view that while Marx wanted a "classless society" what we really need is what he calls an "emancipatory society." This is one "in which each has an equal share." This has a vague utopian sound to it-- a throwback to pre-Marxist French socialist thinking. Marxist logic, he tells us, is to prepare for the future, but he believes "instead that the idea of emancipation is really tied to a sort of appearance in the here and now of those we call the 'have-nots' and of those who make their presence felt through their capacity to think, to intervene politically  and to prove themselves capable of organizing economic production." Ayn Rand would like this-- the have-nots and their masters-- only for Ranciere they would be good masters. This is a latter day reincarnation of Plato's Republic.

Ranciere goes on to criticize Negri. "Negri thinks capitalism produces communism [in the film Negri appears to think capitalism is here for the long run and must always be struggled against-- or if communism comes about it will be through the triumph of the will-- few of the people in this film are logically coherent]. In reality, capitalism only produces its own form of communism. But this is not the communism of everyone's capacity. There are those who say 'Look at what capitalism does. The idea of communism can't be so bad.' But I don't think those people are involved in constructing the idea of real equality today." What is this rambling discourse suppose to mean?

The last pronouncement I will consider comes from Peter Sloterdijk, who tells us that "People must join together to forge alliances against the lethal. They must provide mutual security and offer each other communities of solidarity on a planetary scale [sounds like an advert for NATO]. Because for the first time collective self destruction is possible. [Is he referring to the bomb? climate change?] Before we say 'communism' we must understand the principle of 'immunism' [a new -ism to worry about] or the principle of our mutual insurance which is the most profound motive of solidarity."

This is the sum and substance of the movie. Some of these thinkers are better than they have appeared in this movie-- but not by much. I don't think this film has reloaded Marx-- quite the contrary. I think it completely fails to present what Marxism is all about and its past accomplishments and future possibilities. No film can hope to present Marxism to the public without at the same time dealing with the real life problems of the union and working class movements and issues in the Third World. As I pointed out at the beginning of this review this film completely ignores working class leaders and the leaders of political movements inspired by Marxism and confines itself to interviewing intellectual talking heads who, quite frankly, often don't know what they are talking about. You can find this movie on You Tube complete with subtitles. It is 52 minutes long, and once you have watched it I think you will agree with my assessment.