Thomas Riggins
In the first chapter of Part Three of his classic work Anti-Dühring, Engels discusses the origins of the modern socialist movement. He begins with the enthronement of "Reason" by the pre-revolutionary 18th century French philosophers who thought that only reason could be used to answer any of the questions of existence.
After the overthrow of Louis XVI and the abolition of the monarchical French state, a new state was constructed by the revolutionaries-- one based on "eternal" reason and designed to be completely rational. The spiritual progenitor of this state was Rousseau's book The Social Contract.
But "eternal" reason turned out to be simply the explanation of existence from the point of view of the rising bourgeois class. The complexity of the new political reality they had created quite eluded them as the contradictions between their class and the newly conscious masses of the disposed poor of Paris and the countryside began to manifest themselves.
The wretched of the earth exerted themselves and the bourgeois rational state fell apart and morphed into the Reign of Terror under which the masses, for a moment, gained "the mastery" and saved the Revolution. With the abolition of feudalism the bourgeoisie had expected social peace but instead got a furious international response and the development of an intense struggle between the poor and the rich at home.
After Robespierre and the Jacobins, representing the French masses, were overthrown on 9 Thermidor Year II (July 27, 1794) by the conservative bourgeoisie, the new ruling class lost faith in its own ability to rule. After five years of corrupt government under the Directory, they surrendered to the coup d'etat of Napoleon Bonaparte on 18 Brumaire Year IX (November 9, 1799).
All this turmoil was a reflection of the "development of industry upon a capitalist basis [which] made poverty and misery of the working masses conditions of existence of society." From the dispossessed Paris masses (the "have-nothings" and other disadvantaged groups the proletariat began to develop "as the nucleus of a new class." However, at this time "the antagonism between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat, was still very incompletely developed."
At this historical juncture the three "founders" of socialism appeared: Saint-Simon, Fourier, and Owen. First on the scene was Claude Henri Comte de Saint-Simon (1760-1825). The Revolution was supposed to be a victory of the Third Estate (production workers) over a ruling class of idlers (the nobility and the Catholic hierarchy and its priests). But, in reality Engels says, the victory did not go to the Third Estate as a whole but only that part of it owning property, "the socially privileged part."
Saint-Simon saw the Revolution as a struggle between "workers" (anyone engaged in productive activity) and "idlers"-- people living off unearned income. For him "the workers were not only the wage workers, but also the manufacturers, the merchants, and the bankers." Science and Industry must move to the forefront and lead the revolution. The undeveloped nature of the class struggle within the Third Estate is apparent-- the proletariat and the capitalists are in the same "class." (I can't say the vast majority of the American people have gone much beyond that stage of consciousness yet but it has recently begin to dawn on them that class struggle is real).
Saint-Simon's heart was in the right place as he wanted to improve the conditions of the lowest and greatest number of the Third Estate-- what would become the proletariat and included the masses of downtrodden peasants, the most numerous and poor; Engels quotes him: "la class la plus nombreuse et la plus pauvre." However his socialism was utopian as he expected the bankers to lead the way into the new world! "The bankers especially were to be called upon to direct the whole of social production by the regulation of credit." Ironically the bankers today, the finance capitalists, do control production but in their interests not those of "la plus nombreuse et la plus pauvre."
Saint-Simon actually thought the rich bourgeoisie, bankers and manufactures, would change themselves into public servants and use their ruling positions to help the poor and oppressed. But at least he realized the "poor and oppressed" made up the majority of "the people" (Third Estate). In fact Engels credits him with understanding that the Revolution was a three way struggle-- Nobility vs. the Bourgeoisie AND the propertyless masses even though there was a tendency to group the latter two together when contrasted to the Nobility.
His greatness was in proclaiming that "all men ought to work" and recognizing that within the bourgeois revolution the Reign of Terror represented the power of "the toiling masses" against the haut bourgeoisie. Engels quotes Saint-Simon addressing himself to the poor masses: "See what happened in France at the time when your comrades held sway there; they brought about a famine." The "they" are the bourgeois enemies of Robespierre and the rule of the Parisian sans culottes.
Saint-Simon also saw a future where economics was more important than politics , i.e., the administration of things (planned economy) over the administration of people (the bourgeois state)-- i.e, he envisioned "the abolition of the state." We find in Saint-Simon the seeds, Engels says, of "almost all the ideas of later Socialists that are not strictly economic."
Following on the appearance of Saint-Simon came the ideas of Francois-Marie Charles Fourier (1772-1837). He contrasted the actual living conditions of the people after the establishment of bourgeois rule ("material and moral misery") with the pictures of what life would be like painted by their pre-revolutionary propaganda and by the "rose-colored phraseology of the bourgeois ideologists of his time."
In his first book, The Theory of the Four Movements (1808) he wrote, "Social progress and changes of a period are accompanied by the progress of women towards freedom, while the decay of the social system brings with it a reduction of the freedoms enjoyed by women." Therefore, "Extension of the rights of women is the basic principle of all social progress."
Engels says of him, with respect to the above passage, that: "He was the first to declare that in any given society the degree of woman's emancipation is the natural measure of the general emancipation." This not only tells us a lot about Saudi Arabia, but where our own society is heading with its failure to pass an Equal Rights Amendment and the movement to restrict the right to abortion, as well as the recent Supreme Court ruling that the woman discriminated against for years at Walmart have no right to a class action suit to redress their grievances.
Fourier also divided the history of human development up to the present era into "four stages of evolution," which were 1.) Savagery 2.) the Patriarchate 3.) Barbarism, and 4.) Civilization. In this scheme "Civilization" appears with the development of capitalism in the 1500s and he says "that the civilized stage raises every vice practiced by barbarism in a simple fashion into a form of existence, complex, ambiguous, equivocal [and] hypocritical."
Engels says that for Fourier civilization develops along "a vicious circle" throwing up contradictions it cannot resolve and arriving at the exact opposite destinations that it wants to arrive at or at least pretends to want to arrive at so that, as Fourier writes, "under civilization POVERTY IS BORN OF SUPER-ABUNDANCE ITSELF." For example the US, the richest country in the world, has 25% of its children at or under the official poverty line-- a completely ridiculous society!
One of the things Engels admires about Fourier is his masterly use of the dialectical method in his writings, which he compares to that of Hegel "his contemporary." Engels also says something curious here. He says Fourier postulates the "ultimate destruction of the human race" which he introduced into historical science just as Kant had introduced the "ultimate destruction of the Earth" into natural science. But, in this pre-Star Trek world, Kant's end of the Earth scenario would have entailed the end of the human race as well.
Saint-Simon and Fourier were products of the French Revolution but, Engels points out, at the same time over in England just as great a revolution was taking place. The whole basis of bourgeois society was being changed by the development of steam engines and tool making machines and manufacture (from the Latin "manus" hand) was being replaced by gigantic factories were machines tended by workers began to to turn out commodities rather than commodities directly made by them, "thus revolutionizing the whole foundation of bourgeois society."
This industrial revolution began to divide society in to a powerful group of capitalists on one hand, and propertyless proletarians on the other. The heretofore large and stable middle class began to break up and tended to be forced down into the lower class of workers-- "it now led a precarious existence." Sound familiar?
However, then the term "middle class" had a different meaning than it does now. Then it meant the class of artisans and small shop keepers who thrived in the era of manufacture. Now it is used to refer to an income group consisting of well paid workers and professionals whose wages were partially subsidized by the mega-profits of the imperialist international capitalist corporations who bought a modicum of social peace at home at the expense of the international solidarity of first world workers with third world workers and peasants by the creation of a labor aristocracy, according to Lenin, in the metropolitan countries.
Professionals such as lawyers, doctors and the parasitical class of preachers and priests were also included. With the decline of high paying production jobs in the West due to the rise of industry in the third world, among other factors, these high wage jobs are disappearing forcing the "middle class" down into lower paying jobs and so, as in the first days of capitalism, it now leads "a precarious existence."
Another difference is that today we have labor unions, pro-working class political parties and associations, and growing class awareness which is developing into a major class battle for the protection of people's jobs, life styles and incomes. This battle is just beginning and should grow as today's world capitalist system proceeds further down the path of decay and self destruction.
But in the England of the early 1800s, capitalism was on the rise and not the decline. It was into this world that the third great early founder of socialism arose: Robert Owen (1771-1858).
Owen was a materialist in philosophy and thought that humans were the product of their heredity (although at this time nothing was known of genes or DNA or any of the mechanisms of heredity) and their environment, most particularly their childhood environment.
For 29 years (1800-1829) he managed New Lanark the large cotton-mill employing around 2500 "hands" in Scotland. And, Engels says, by "simply placing the people in conditions worthy of human beings" the workers lived in a society without "drunkenness, police, magistrates, lawsuits, poor laws, [or] charity." He sent all the children off to school at age 2, put the working day at 101/2 hours (not the 13 or 14 that was the norm) and kept everyone on full wages when there was a four month shut down due to a cotton crisis AND made large profits and doubled the value of the business. Well, my goodness! Why didn't all the capitalists follow suit?
They didn't follow suit, for the same reason Owen fought with the other shareholders at new Lanark-- they didn't like the extra expenses that had to be put out for "conditions worthy of human beings." After Owen left in 1829 the community continued, in one form or another, under different capitalists, until 1968 when it went bust. It is now a UNESCO World Heritage Site drawing in around 400,000 tourists a year to visit it and the house where Owen lived.
In his work "The Revolution in Mind and Practice" (1849) Owen wrote he was unhappy with New Lanark because "The people were slaves at my mercy." He pointed out that New Lanark's 2500 workers, with steam power, created as much social wealth as it it took 600,000 workers to create a couple of generations earlier. Those 600,000 had to be paid living wages just as the 2500-- so what happened to all the surplus wealth saved in wages that would have gone to 597,500 extra workers? It was pocketed by the capitalists.
This new wealth was being generated all over England. It was being used to wage the wars of the Empire and to maintain an oppressive aristocratic and bourgeois order at home. "And yet this new power was the creation of the working class." Owen wanted this vast new wealth to go to the working class that created it for the building of a new society in which it would be, as Engels says "the common property of all, to be worked for the common good of all."
In his day, because of his reforms at New Lanark, Owen was considered a great philanthropist. He was lionized and respected and welcome at the tables of the rich and powerful. But as soon as he started talking about the working class creating all the wealth and how it ought to build a new society based on "common property" he was dropped like a hot potato, became persona non gratia, and shunned by official society. He therefore went to the working class and became a union leader and, Engels says, "Every social movement, every real advance in England on behalf of the workers links itself on to the name of Robert Owen."
Owen called for the overthrow of three great impediments to the advance of the working class and the reform of society along communist lines-- private property, religion, and "the present form of marriage (Engels)." Marriage is going through some radical changes nowadays and it is certainly very different from the forms of marriage Owen would have seen in the early 19th century. But private property and religion (i.e., supernaturalism and superstition) are still major impediments that hold back social progress for workers.
The last few pages of this chapter Engels devotes to vituperative attacks against Dühring and his negative views of the three utopians compared to whom Dühring is a pipsqueak. Engels says Dühring displays "a really frightful ignorance of the works of the three utopians." Their works are still worth reading (Dühring's are not) and whatever limitations they have were the result of the undeveloped conditions of early industrial capitalism.
But, since the time of the utopians and today (the 1870s) "modern industry has developed the contradictions laying dormant in the capitalist mode of production into such crying antagonisms that the approaching collapse of this mode of production is, so to speak, palpable."
Well they may have been "palpable" to Engels, but capitalism is still around, sad to say. And once again the palpability of capitalist collapse is in the air. From the looming default of Greece, to the threat of defaults spreading to Spain, Portugal and Italy which will bring down the Euro-zone and mobilize millions of workers to take to the streets of Europe, to the failure of the recovery in the United States and the desperate turn to the Tea Party by big capital to nurture home grown fascism to attack the workers and their unions, the smell of capitalist decay is everywhere. Let us hope this generation of workers will pay due to the long ago optimism of Frederick Engels.
Monday, July 11, 2011
Wednesday, July 06, 2011
Children's Mental Health and War
Thomas Riggins
We all know what happens to many of our troops when they return home after fighting one of the Pentagon's dirty wars overseas. Who can forget what happened to thousands of the Vietnam vets after they returned home from a useless and criminal war fought as a result of the government's lies about what caused it and that we had to go for the sake of our freedom and security.
The vets were provided with inadequate medical care, many committed suicide, their families broke up, thousands became homeless, derelict and drug addicted and alcoholic suffering with mental problems and posttraumatic stress syndrome and lacked adequate care and mental health counselling to help them recover from all the horror, killings and massacres they had been ordered to participate in. And all for what-- so that part of the cost of war could recouped on their backs so that the rich wouldn't have to pay more taxes.
So we know what the government and the Pentagon does to many of its troops when it is done with them. The same thing is now happening to thousands of the young men and women returning from the same types of unjust and aggressive adventures in Iraq and Afghanistan. We should not be surprised-- we have seen it all before and we will again if the peace movement does not galvanize more of us into action.
But now we are finding out, from new scientific surveys, that the government is not only willing to sacrifice thousands of veterans on the alter of capitalist greed and expansionism over its resource wars, but their children as well. ScienceDaily reports ("Length of Parental Military Deployment Associated with Children's Mental Health Diagnoses, Study Finds, July 4, 2011) that the children of soldiers deployed in Operation Iraqi Freedom (OIF) and Operation Enduring Freedom (OEF) [why does the military always name their actions the opposite of what they are?] for longer times were more likely to have mental health issues that those whose parents were not deployed.
We have known for a long time that children of soldiers deployed in our imperialist wars are more likely than others to have mental problems but this study brings us up to date on our recent conflicts. The authors say "As troops face dynamic and evolving threats (e.g., an increasingly sophisticated array of roadside explosive devices) the need to anticipate the psychological consequences for their children and to offer timely intervention becomes increasingly important."
The roadside bombs are only one threat to our troops, and not the most deadly. The most deadly is the US Congress that abdicates its responsibility and duty to only authorize military engagements against real threats to the US, instead of caving in to the imperial presidency and the war lobby representing the defense industry and those who who make mega profits out of US involvements overseas. These wars for private profit at public expense are the real threat to our troops who are shipped overseas in bad faith not to fight for the country but for Daddy Warbucks and associates.
The study was conducted by Alyssa J. Mansfield, PhD of the National Center for Posttraumatic Stress Disorder (PSD) and colleagues and involved 307,520 children 5 to 17 years old: 51,355 were found to have mental health issues: "most often for stress disorders , depression, behavioral problems, and sleep disorders."
These were the numbers for children with at least one active duty parent. Now in the subset of at least one parent deployed in Iraq or Afghanistan, the study found that the longer the deployment or redeployment the more likely a mental problem would be found in a child.
The study turned up 6,579 children of parents from OIF and OEF deployments who were diagnosed for "acute stress reaction and adjustment disorders, depressive disorders, and behavioral disorders." The more the parent was deployed, the worse the diagnosis for the child in general. "Similar to findings among military spouses, prolonged deployment appears to be taking a mental health toll on children."
There is clearly a problem. The military has a simple solution. Either don't deploy soldiers who have children to combat zones or do not allow people with children to join the arm services in the first place. What is more important killing people overseas, or being killed by them, or having happy mentally healthy children (and adults) at home. I'm afraid we all know the answer to that one.
We all know what happens to many of our troops when they return home after fighting one of the Pentagon's dirty wars overseas. Who can forget what happened to thousands of the Vietnam vets after they returned home from a useless and criminal war fought as a result of the government's lies about what caused it and that we had to go for the sake of our freedom and security.
The vets were provided with inadequate medical care, many committed suicide, their families broke up, thousands became homeless, derelict and drug addicted and alcoholic suffering with mental problems and posttraumatic stress syndrome and lacked adequate care and mental health counselling to help them recover from all the horror, killings and massacres they had been ordered to participate in. And all for what-- so that part of the cost of war could recouped on their backs so that the rich wouldn't have to pay more taxes.
So we know what the government and the Pentagon does to many of its troops when it is done with them. The same thing is now happening to thousands of the young men and women returning from the same types of unjust and aggressive adventures in Iraq and Afghanistan. We should not be surprised-- we have seen it all before and we will again if the peace movement does not galvanize more of us into action.
But now we are finding out, from new scientific surveys, that the government is not only willing to sacrifice thousands of veterans on the alter of capitalist greed and expansionism over its resource wars, but their children as well. ScienceDaily reports ("Length of Parental Military Deployment Associated with Children's Mental Health Diagnoses, Study Finds, July 4, 2011) that the children of soldiers deployed in Operation Iraqi Freedom (OIF) and Operation Enduring Freedom (OEF) [why does the military always name their actions the opposite of what they are?] for longer times were more likely to have mental health issues that those whose parents were not deployed.
We have known for a long time that children of soldiers deployed in our imperialist wars are more likely than others to have mental problems but this study brings us up to date on our recent conflicts. The authors say "As troops face dynamic and evolving threats (e.g., an increasingly sophisticated array of roadside explosive devices) the need to anticipate the psychological consequences for their children and to offer timely intervention becomes increasingly important."
The roadside bombs are only one threat to our troops, and not the most deadly. The most deadly is the US Congress that abdicates its responsibility and duty to only authorize military engagements against real threats to the US, instead of caving in to the imperial presidency and the war lobby representing the defense industry and those who who make mega profits out of US involvements overseas. These wars for private profit at public expense are the real threat to our troops who are shipped overseas in bad faith not to fight for the country but for Daddy Warbucks and associates.
The study was conducted by Alyssa J. Mansfield, PhD of the National Center for Posttraumatic Stress Disorder (PSD) and colleagues and involved 307,520 children 5 to 17 years old: 51,355 were found to have mental health issues: "most often for stress disorders , depression, behavioral problems, and sleep disorders."
These were the numbers for children with at least one active duty parent. Now in the subset of at least one parent deployed in Iraq or Afghanistan, the study found that the longer the deployment or redeployment the more likely a mental problem would be found in a child.
The study turned up 6,579 children of parents from OIF and OEF deployments who were diagnosed for "acute stress reaction and adjustment disorders, depressive disorders, and behavioral disorders." The more the parent was deployed, the worse the diagnosis for the child in general. "Similar to findings among military spouses, prolonged deployment appears to be taking a mental health toll on children."
There is clearly a problem. The military has a simple solution. Either don't deploy soldiers who have children to combat zones or do not allow people with children to join the arm services in the first place. What is more important killing people overseas, or being killed by them, or having happy mentally healthy children (and adults) at home. I'm afraid we all know the answer to that one.
Wednesday, June 29, 2011
Big Tobacco Targets Minority Youth
Thomas Riggins
According to a recent Sanford University Medical School study, the big tobacco companies are trying to lure minority youth into taking up the smoking of menthol cigarettes. Even though these companies know many of the these young people will die down the line from smoking their product, and they claim not to be targeting young people, the evidence uncovered by the Stanford report makes it it clear these companies are out to make a profit by selling as much death and disease as they can to minority youth.
The report is featured in ScienceDaily, "Menthol Cigarettes Marketed in 'Predatory' Pattern, Study Shows," for June 27, 2011. The Food and Drug Administration is on the verge of banning menthol in cigarettes. The lead researcher of the report, Lisa Henriksen, PhD, says, "The tobacco companies went out of their way to argue to the Food and Drug Administration that they don't use racial targeting. This evidence[of the Stanford study] is not consistent with those claims."
Menthol is used to make cigarettes less harsh and is said in company ads to bring about a feeling of "freshness." The major users of these kinds of cigarettes are teenagers, minorities and the poor ("low-income populations"). The FDA tasked the Tobacco Products Scientific Advisory Committee to study the health hazards of menthol cigarettes and the committee concluded, in its own words, "removal of menthol cigarettes from the marketplace would benefit public health in the United States."
This is not very startling since removing all cigarettes would benefit public health so naturally we didn't need a special committee to report back that banning menthol cigarettes would be beneficial. The recommendation in non-binding anyway. The committee is going to meet again in the middle of July to write up a final report-- let's hope it is more specific than the quote in SD.
The FDA should ban menthol cigarettes just to stop the industry's predation against middle and high school students. The committee, which has the Stanford report, should really come down hard on the industry. Since it was charged, Dr, Henriksen said, "with considering a broad definition of harm to smokers and other populations, particularly youth. We think our study, which shows the predatory marketing in school neighborhoods with higher concentrations of youth and African-American students, fits a broad definition of harm."
The report reveals an increase in cigarette use by youth between 2004 and 2008, and that in the age group 12-17 71.9% of African American youth prefer menthol brands (the figures for "whites" was 41% and Hispanics 47%). Comparing the actions of Newport (menthols made by Lorillard) with Marlboro Reds (Obama's brand and non menthol made by Philip Morris) the report shows that Newport offers special price reductions around schools that have a large African-American enrollment. Other brands were also studied.
SD reported that the study found that ads for menthol cigarettes increased by almost 6% near schools for every increase in the proportion of African-American students of 10%, and Newport cut the price of a pack by 12 cents for each of those 10% increases.
Also in the surrounding neighborhoods Newport also seemingly checked out the proportion of youth ages 10-17 (!)-- and for each 10% increase in their proportion, increased ads by 11.6% and had odds of 5.3% that Newports would sell at discounted prices. Marlboro Reds had no ads or price changes related to the presence of youth or African-American students.
So we now know despite the claims of the industry that it is targeting young people and minorities to take up smoking menthol cigarettes. African-American teens are being especially targeted.
Stephen Fortmann, MD, who also participated in making this study, was quoted as saying, "When kids are exposed to more cigarette advertising they are more likely to start smoking, which will undoubtedly lead to dire health consequences. Our study finds that tobacco companies are trying to make smoking more attractive to teens, when we as a society should be doing just the opposite. Adding menthol to cigarettes makes it easier to smoke and harder to quit, so the public health community strongly supports an FDA ban on menthol flavoring."
My prediction. The FDA will vote for the ban and the Supreme Court will over turn it as a violation of free speech. Libertarians and Tea Party folks will be against the ban as an infringement of personal liberty. What 10 year doesn't want a Newport to suck on while playing a slice'em and dice''em video game.
According to a recent Sanford University Medical School study, the big tobacco companies are trying to lure minority youth into taking up the smoking of menthol cigarettes. Even though these companies know many of the these young people will die down the line from smoking their product, and they claim not to be targeting young people, the evidence uncovered by the Stanford report makes it it clear these companies are out to make a profit by selling as much death and disease as they can to minority youth.
The report is featured in ScienceDaily, "Menthol Cigarettes Marketed in 'Predatory' Pattern, Study Shows," for June 27, 2011. The Food and Drug Administration is on the verge of banning menthol in cigarettes. The lead researcher of the report, Lisa Henriksen, PhD, says, "The tobacco companies went out of their way to argue to the Food and Drug Administration that they don't use racial targeting. This evidence[of the Stanford study] is not consistent with those claims."
Menthol is used to make cigarettes less harsh and is said in company ads to bring about a feeling of "freshness." The major users of these kinds of cigarettes are teenagers, minorities and the poor ("low-income populations"). The FDA tasked the Tobacco Products Scientific Advisory Committee to study the health hazards of menthol cigarettes and the committee concluded, in its own words, "removal of menthol cigarettes from the marketplace would benefit public health in the United States."
This is not very startling since removing all cigarettes would benefit public health so naturally we didn't need a special committee to report back that banning menthol cigarettes would be beneficial. The recommendation in non-binding anyway. The committee is going to meet again in the middle of July to write up a final report-- let's hope it is more specific than the quote in SD.
The FDA should ban menthol cigarettes just to stop the industry's predation against middle and high school students. The committee, which has the Stanford report, should really come down hard on the industry. Since it was charged, Dr, Henriksen said, "with considering a broad definition of harm to smokers and other populations, particularly youth. We think our study, which shows the predatory marketing in school neighborhoods with higher concentrations of youth and African-American students, fits a broad definition of harm."
The report reveals an increase in cigarette use by youth between 2004 and 2008, and that in the age group 12-17 71.9% of African American youth prefer menthol brands (the figures for "whites" was 41% and Hispanics 47%). Comparing the actions of Newport (menthols made by Lorillard) with Marlboro Reds (Obama's brand and non menthol made by Philip Morris) the report shows that Newport offers special price reductions around schools that have a large African-American enrollment. Other brands were also studied.
SD reported that the study found that ads for menthol cigarettes increased by almost 6% near schools for every increase in the proportion of African-American students of 10%, and Newport cut the price of a pack by 12 cents for each of those 10% increases.
Also in the surrounding neighborhoods Newport also seemingly checked out the proportion of youth ages 10-17 (!)-- and for each 10% increase in their proportion, increased ads by 11.6% and had odds of 5.3% that Newports would sell at discounted prices. Marlboro Reds had no ads or price changes related to the presence of youth or African-American students.
So we now know despite the claims of the industry that it is targeting young people and minorities to take up smoking menthol cigarettes. African-American teens are being especially targeted.
Stephen Fortmann, MD, who also participated in making this study, was quoted as saying, "When kids are exposed to more cigarette advertising they are more likely to start smoking, which will undoubtedly lead to dire health consequences. Our study finds that tobacco companies are trying to make smoking more attractive to teens, when we as a society should be doing just the opposite. Adding menthol to cigarettes makes it easier to smoke and harder to quit, so the public health community strongly supports an FDA ban on menthol flavoring."
My prediction. The FDA will vote for the ban and the Supreme Court will over turn it as a violation of free speech. Libertarians and Tea Party folks will be against the ban as an infringement of personal liberty. What 10 year doesn't want a Newport to suck on while playing a slice'em and dice''em video game.
Sunday, June 26, 2011
Russell, Mao and the Fate of China (Part Four & Last)
Thomas Riggins
The last chapter in Bertrand Russell's The Problem of China is entitled "The Outlook for China." Russell, writing in 1922, thinks that China (due to its population and resources) has the capacity to become the second greatest power in the world (after the United States). Today the US seems to be slipping economically so maybe China will become number one in the world sometime in the present century.
Three things will have to about for China to reach its full potential. Russell lists them as: 1.) The establishment of an orderly government [the CPC has accomplished this requirement]; 2.) Industrial development under Chinese control [this too has been brought about by the CPC whether you call it "market socialism" or "state capitalism"]; 3.) the spread of education [ditto care of the CPC].
All three prerequisites put forth by Russell have been attained if not quite in the manner he imagined in his book. Let's look at some of Russell's elaborations on these prerequisites.
First, the problem of orderly government: Russell says that in the 1920s China was functionally anarchic with battling warlords and weak central governments in the north and south of the country. He envisioned an eventual constitutional setup and a parliamentary form of government. But he cautioned that even so the masses of the people (Russell uses the term "public opinion") will have to be guided by what amounts to a Leninist political party using democratic centralist methods.
Here is what Russell wrote: "It will be necessary for the genuinely progressive people throughout the country to unite in a strongly disciplined society, arriving at collective decisions and enforcing support for those decisions upon all its members." That is just what happened under the leadership of CPC.
Second, the problem of industrial development: China, or any country for that matter, to be truly free has to also be economically free and that requires that it has control of its own railroads and natural resources. He thus thinks the Chinese government should own the railroads and the mines of China. He also thinks that state ownership of "a large amount" of the industry in China should also occur. "There are many arguments for State Socialism, or rather what Lenin calls State Capitalism, in any country which is economically but not culturally backward."
Russell thinks that is possible for China, with a strong and honest government, to skip over the stage of capitalism and lay the foundations for socialism. This is tricky business as the Chinese would find out much later. If you skip too far and too fast you can trip and fall on your face. With the right government "it will be possible to develop Chinese industry without, at the same time, developing the overweening power of private capitalists by which the Western nations are now both oppressed and misled." We can only hope that China is heading in this direction.
Third, the problem of education: Russell says that "Where the bulk of the population
cannot read, true democracy is impossible. Education is a good in itself, but is also essential for developing political consciousness, of which at present there is almost none in rural China."
By "democracy" Russell then, and almost all Western governments and their intellectual tools today, mean "bourgeois democracy"-- i.e., "democratic" institutions and constitutions that guarantee the government will be controlled by, for, and of one of two contending classes that exist in the modern capitalist world, i.e., the capitalist class. Russell proclaimed his belief in "socialism" (Mao even said Russell believed in "communism") but he never transcended the bourgeois concept of "democracy" inculcated in him by the British ruling class by which he was educated.
But the wider, and I believe correct, meaning of "democracy" (rule of the "demos" or people) includes other forms of government than those proclaimed by the bourgeoisie and their lackeys. It must refer to any form of government that objectively rules in the interests of its people i.e., the vast majority of its population composed of working people, called by old time communists "the toiling masses" and historically personified by the "people's democracies" and "people's republics" of eastern Europe and Asia, and by the only completely democratic state in the Western Hemisphere, Cuba.
In just a few years after Russell wrote the above words, hundreds of millions of the peasants of "rural China" would develop a political consciousness that would lead to the overthrow of the rule by landlords and capitalists in China and the establishment, however flawed, of a true people's republic. Then they learned to read.
Russell was both correct and incorrect in saying the following: "Until it has been established for some time, China must be, in fact if not in form, an oligarchy, because the uneducated masses cannot have any effective political opinion [or in the case of the US-- miseducated masses]. If that "oligarchy" is a real communist party (not one in name only) it will bring to the masses the correct political opinion that they and they alone control their own destiny and can abolish their subjection to a class that only lives off of their exploitation. The one party state may be the instrument leading to this liberation and its own eventual elimination, along with the state, but it also gives to the masses "effective political opinion" and if it doesn't it may find itself being eliminated ahead of schedule.
Russell hoped the Chinese, by combining "Western" science with their traditional culture, would create a new civilization free of the deficiencies of the capitalist West. What we are seeing now, in the 21st century, in China is perhaps the fulfillment of Russell's vision but it is a synthesis of Marx, left wing Confucianism, and modern science. Hopefully the coming century will see the end of Western "civilization" as we know it, a predatory war based imperialist system attempting to enchain the world, and the establishment of a real new world order. The values of Bertrand Russell will be better remembered and served in such a world.
Epilogue: What Mao thought of Russell's views on China.
Selected Works of Mao Tse-tung
COMMUNISM AND DICTATORSHIP
November 1920. January 1921
[Extracted from. two letters to Ts’ai Ho-sen[1895-1932 a leader of the CPC, arrested in Hong Kong by the British and turned over to the Kuomintang which killed him- tr], in November 1920 and January 1921.]
In his lecture at Changsha, Russell .... took a position in favour of communism but against the dictatorship of the workers and peasants. He said that one should employ the method of education to change the consciousness of the propertied classes, and that in this way it would not be necessary to limit freedom or to have recourse to war and bloody revolution.... My objections to Russell's view point can be stated in a few words: 'This is all very well as a theory, but it is unfeasible in practice' .... Education requires money, people and instruments. In today's world money is entirely in the hands of the capitalists. Those who have charge of education are all either capitalists or wives of capitalists. In today's world the schools and the press, the two most important instruments of education are entirely under capitalist control. In short, education in today's world is capitalist education. If we teach capitalism to children, these children, when they grow up will in turn teach capitalism to a second generation of children. Education thus remains in the hands of the capitalists. Then the capitalists have 'parliaments' to pass laws protecting the capitalists and handicapping the proletariat; they have 'governments' to apply these laws and to enforce the advantages and the prohibitions that they contain; they have 'armies' and 'police' to defend the well-being of the capitalists and to repress the demands of the proletariat; they have 'banks' to serve as repositories in the circulation of their wealth ; they have ' factories', which are the instruments by which they monopolize the production of goods. Thus, if the communists do not seize political power, they will not be able to find any refuge in this world; how, under such circumstances, could they take charge of education? Thus, the capitalists will continue to control education and to praise their capitalism to the skies, so that the number of coverts to the proletariat's communist propaganda will diminish from day to day. Consequently, I believe that the method of education is unfeasible.... What I have just said constitutes the first argument. The second argument is that, based on the principle of mental habits and on my observation of human history, I am of the opinion that one absolutely cannot expect the capitalists to become converted to communism.... If one wishes to use the power of education to transform them, then since one cannot obtain control of the whole or even an important part of the two instruments of education — schools and the press — even if one has a mouth and a tongue and one or two schools and newspapers as means of propaganda.... this is really not enough to change the mentality of the adherents of capitalism even slightly; how then can one hope that the latter will repent and turn toward the good? So much from a psychological standpoint. From a historical standpoint.... one observes that no despot imperialist and militarist throughout history has ever been known to leave the stage of history of his own free will without being overthrown by the people. Napoleon I proclaimed himself emperor and failed; then there was Napoleon III. Yuan Shih-K'ai failed; then, also there was Tuan Ch'i-jui.... From what I have just said based on both psychological and a historical standpoint, it can be seen that capitalism cannot be overthrown by the force of a few feeble efforts in the domain of education. This is the second argument. There is yet a third argument, most assuredly a very important argument, even more important in reality. If we use peaceful means to attain the goal of communism, when will we finally achieve it? Let us assume that a century will be required, a century marked by the unceasing groans of the proletariat. What position shall we adopt in the face of this situation? The proletariat is many times more numerous than the bourgeoisie; if we assume that the proletariat constitutes two-thirds of humanity, then one billion of the earth's one billion five hundred million inhabitants are proletarians (I fear that the figure is even higher), who during this century will be cruelly exploited by the remaining third of capitalists. How can we bear this? Furthermore, since the proletariat has already become conscious of the fact that it too should possess wealth, and of the fact that its sufferings are unnecessary, the proletarians are discontented, and a demand for communism has arisen and has already become a fact. This fact confronts us, we cannot make it disappear; when we become conscious of it we wish to act. This is why, in my opinion, the Russian revolution, as well as the radical communists in every country, will daily grow more powerful and numerous and more tightly organized. This is the natural result. This is the third argument.....
There is a further point pertaining to my doubts about anarchism. My argument pertains not merely to the impossibility of a society without power or organization. I should like to mention only the difficulties in the way of the establishment of such form of society and of its final attainment.... For all the reasons just stated, my present viewpoint on absolute liberalism, anarchism, and even democracy is that these things are fine in theory, but not feasible in practice....
The last chapter in Bertrand Russell's The Problem of China is entitled "The Outlook for China." Russell, writing in 1922, thinks that China (due to its population and resources) has the capacity to become the second greatest power in the world (after the United States). Today the US seems to be slipping economically so maybe China will become number one in the world sometime in the present century.
Three things will have to about for China to reach its full potential. Russell lists them as: 1.) The establishment of an orderly government [the CPC has accomplished this requirement]; 2.) Industrial development under Chinese control [this too has been brought about by the CPC whether you call it "market socialism" or "state capitalism"]; 3.) the spread of education [ditto care of the CPC].
All three prerequisites put forth by Russell have been attained if not quite in the manner he imagined in his book. Let's look at some of Russell's elaborations on these prerequisites.
First, the problem of orderly government: Russell says that in the 1920s China was functionally anarchic with battling warlords and weak central governments in the north and south of the country. He envisioned an eventual constitutional setup and a parliamentary form of government. But he cautioned that even so the masses of the people (Russell uses the term "public opinion") will have to be guided by what amounts to a Leninist political party using democratic centralist methods.
Here is what Russell wrote: "It will be necessary for the genuinely progressive people throughout the country to unite in a strongly disciplined society, arriving at collective decisions and enforcing support for those decisions upon all its members." That is just what happened under the leadership of CPC.
Second, the problem of industrial development: China, or any country for that matter, to be truly free has to also be economically free and that requires that it has control of its own railroads and natural resources. He thus thinks the Chinese government should own the railroads and the mines of China. He also thinks that state ownership of "a large amount" of the industry in China should also occur. "There are many arguments for State Socialism, or rather what Lenin calls State Capitalism, in any country which is economically but not culturally backward."
Russell thinks that is possible for China, with a strong and honest government, to skip over the stage of capitalism and lay the foundations for socialism. This is tricky business as the Chinese would find out much later. If you skip too far and too fast you can trip and fall on your face. With the right government "it will be possible to develop Chinese industry without, at the same time, developing the overweening power of private capitalists by which the Western nations are now both oppressed and misled." We can only hope that China is heading in this direction.
Third, the problem of education: Russell says that "Where the bulk of the population
cannot read, true democracy is impossible. Education is a good in itself, but is also essential for developing political consciousness, of which at present there is almost none in rural China."
By "democracy" Russell then, and almost all Western governments and their intellectual tools today, mean "bourgeois democracy"-- i.e., "democratic" institutions and constitutions that guarantee the government will be controlled by, for, and of one of two contending classes that exist in the modern capitalist world, i.e., the capitalist class. Russell proclaimed his belief in "socialism" (Mao even said Russell believed in "communism") but he never transcended the bourgeois concept of "democracy" inculcated in him by the British ruling class by which he was educated.
But the wider, and I believe correct, meaning of "democracy" (rule of the "demos" or people) includes other forms of government than those proclaimed by the bourgeoisie and their lackeys. It must refer to any form of government that objectively rules in the interests of its people i.e., the vast majority of its population composed of working people, called by old time communists "the toiling masses" and historically personified by the "people's democracies" and "people's republics" of eastern Europe and Asia, and by the only completely democratic state in the Western Hemisphere, Cuba.
In just a few years after Russell wrote the above words, hundreds of millions of the peasants of "rural China" would develop a political consciousness that would lead to the overthrow of the rule by landlords and capitalists in China and the establishment, however flawed, of a true people's republic. Then they learned to read.
Russell was both correct and incorrect in saying the following: "Until it has been established for some time, China must be, in fact if not in form, an oligarchy, because the uneducated masses cannot have any effective political opinion [or in the case of the US-- miseducated masses]. If that "oligarchy" is a real communist party (not one in name only) it will bring to the masses the correct political opinion that they and they alone control their own destiny and can abolish their subjection to a class that only lives off of their exploitation. The one party state may be the instrument leading to this liberation and its own eventual elimination, along with the state, but it also gives to the masses "effective political opinion" and if it doesn't it may find itself being eliminated ahead of schedule.
Russell hoped the Chinese, by combining "Western" science with their traditional culture, would create a new civilization free of the deficiencies of the capitalist West. What we are seeing now, in the 21st century, in China is perhaps the fulfillment of Russell's vision but it is a synthesis of Marx, left wing Confucianism, and modern science. Hopefully the coming century will see the end of Western "civilization" as we know it, a predatory war based imperialist system attempting to enchain the world, and the establishment of a real new world order. The values of Bertrand Russell will be better remembered and served in such a world.
Epilogue: What Mao thought of Russell's views on China.
Selected Works of Mao Tse-tung
COMMUNISM AND DICTATORSHIP
November 1920. January 1921
[Extracted from. two letters to Ts’ai Ho-sen[1895-1932 a leader of the CPC, arrested in Hong Kong by the British and turned over to the Kuomintang which killed him- tr], in November 1920 and January 1921.]
In his lecture at Changsha, Russell .... took a position in favour of communism but against the dictatorship of the workers and peasants. He said that one should employ the method of education to change the consciousness of the propertied classes, and that in this way it would not be necessary to limit freedom or to have recourse to war and bloody revolution.... My objections to Russell's view point can be stated in a few words: 'This is all very well as a theory, but it is unfeasible in practice' .... Education requires money, people and instruments. In today's world money is entirely in the hands of the capitalists. Those who have charge of education are all either capitalists or wives of capitalists. In today's world the schools and the press, the two most important instruments of education are entirely under capitalist control. In short, education in today's world is capitalist education. If we teach capitalism to children, these children, when they grow up will in turn teach capitalism to a second generation of children. Education thus remains in the hands of the capitalists. Then the capitalists have 'parliaments' to pass laws protecting the capitalists and handicapping the proletariat; they have 'governments' to apply these laws and to enforce the advantages and the prohibitions that they contain; they have 'armies' and 'police' to defend the well-being of the capitalists and to repress the demands of the proletariat; they have 'banks' to serve as repositories in the circulation of their wealth ; they have ' factories', which are the instruments by which they monopolize the production of goods. Thus, if the communists do not seize political power, they will not be able to find any refuge in this world; how, under such circumstances, could they take charge of education? Thus, the capitalists will continue to control education and to praise their capitalism to the skies, so that the number of coverts to the proletariat's communist propaganda will diminish from day to day. Consequently, I believe that the method of education is unfeasible.... What I have just said constitutes the first argument. The second argument is that, based on the principle of mental habits and on my observation of human history, I am of the opinion that one absolutely cannot expect the capitalists to become converted to communism.... If one wishes to use the power of education to transform them, then since one cannot obtain control of the whole or even an important part of the two instruments of education — schools and the press — even if one has a mouth and a tongue and one or two schools and newspapers as means of propaganda.... this is really not enough to change the mentality of the adherents of capitalism even slightly; how then can one hope that the latter will repent and turn toward the good? So much from a psychological standpoint. From a historical standpoint.... one observes that no despot imperialist and militarist throughout history has ever been known to leave the stage of history of his own free will without being overthrown by the people. Napoleon I proclaimed himself emperor and failed; then there was Napoleon III. Yuan Shih-K'ai failed; then, also there was Tuan Ch'i-jui.... From what I have just said based on both psychological and a historical standpoint, it can be seen that capitalism cannot be overthrown by the force of a few feeble efforts in the domain of education. This is the second argument. There is yet a third argument, most assuredly a very important argument, even more important in reality. If we use peaceful means to attain the goal of communism, when will we finally achieve it? Let us assume that a century will be required, a century marked by the unceasing groans of the proletariat. What position shall we adopt in the face of this situation? The proletariat is many times more numerous than the bourgeoisie; if we assume that the proletariat constitutes two-thirds of humanity, then one billion of the earth's one billion five hundred million inhabitants are proletarians (I fear that the figure is even higher), who during this century will be cruelly exploited by the remaining third of capitalists. How can we bear this? Furthermore, since the proletariat has already become conscious of the fact that it too should possess wealth, and of the fact that its sufferings are unnecessary, the proletarians are discontented, and a demand for communism has arisen and has already become a fact. This fact confronts us, we cannot make it disappear; when we become conscious of it we wish to act. This is why, in my opinion, the Russian revolution, as well as the radical communists in every country, will daily grow more powerful and numerous and more tightly organized. This is the natural result. This is the third argument.....
There is a further point pertaining to my doubts about anarchism. My argument pertains not merely to the impossibility of a society without power or organization. I should like to mention only the difficulties in the way of the establishment of such form of society and of its final attainment.... For all the reasons just stated, my present viewpoint on absolute liberalism, anarchism, and even democracy is that these things are fine in theory, but not feasible in practice....
Wednesday, June 22, 2011
Budget Cuts are really People Cuts
Thomas Riggins
When governments decide to balance their budgets by cutting services to the very young and to the elderly, or by cutting medical care and pension benefits, they are doing more than just saving some money for the current fiscal year and trying to reign in social spending so that they can continue to cut taxes for the rich and increase military spending. They are also bringing about the premature deaths of thousands of people they judge to be a socially useless surplus population unable to produce surplus value for the capitalist economic system. Their deaths are the real savings, as the dead no longer need any services or medical care at all.
I'm not making this up. Science Daily reported that the British Medical Journal has concluded, "Radical cuts to social welfare spending could cause not just economic pain but cost lives." The BMJ article describes the effect of spending cuts in Europe, but it is not too wild to speculate that here in the U.S., where our social safety net has many more and bigger holes in it than in Europe, budget cuts to social and medical services will have even worse consequences for people.
David Stuckler of Oxford University and his team have shown a relation, revealing that the amounts of social spending by governments are "strongly associated" with people's risk of death from heart disease and illnesses linked to alcohol and other like conditions, which Science Daily calls "diseases relating to social circumstances."
The study showed that this association shows up even with health care budgets that have been protected. The science magazine reports that, according to Stuckler, "social welfare spending is as important, if not more so [than health budgets], for population health." It is not hard to figure out what will happen to the poor and elderly if, in the U.S., the big cuts to Medicare go through, along with reductions in social programs.
The Oxford group went over data, which included social programs aimed at families with children, job programs for the unemployed and help for the disabled, from 15 countries collected by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development.
We should not be surprised by their findings, namely "that when social spending was high, mortality rates fell, but when they were low, mortality rates rose substantially." They also found out that there were two areas where the state could cut spending without killing off the poor and elderly - areas with no "negative impact on the public's health." Those areas were the military and the prisons. But these are the very areas where they want to increase spending, for which cuts in public welfare have to be made.
The study concludes, "This report reveals that ordinary people may be paying the ultimate price for budget cuts - potentially costing them their lives."
You can be sure that what applies to the Europeans also applies to us, in spades.
When governments decide to balance their budgets by cutting services to the very young and to the elderly, or by cutting medical care and pension benefits, they are doing more than just saving some money for the current fiscal year and trying to reign in social spending so that they can continue to cut taxes for the rich and increase military spending. They are also bringing about the premature deaths of thousands of people they judge to be a socially useless surplus population unable to produce surplus value for the capitalist economic system. Their deaths are the real savings, as the dead no longer need any services or medical care at all.
I'm not making this up. Science Daily reported that the British Medical Journal has concluded, "Radical cuts to social welfare spending could cause not just economic pain but cost lives." The BMJ article describes the effect of spending cuts in Europe, but it is not too wild to speculate that here in the U.S., where our social safety net has many more and bigger holes in it than in Europe, budget cuts to social and medical services will have even worse consequences for people.
David Stuckler of Oxford University and his team have shown a relation, revealing that the amounts of social spending by governments are "strongly associated" with people's risk of death from heart disease and illnesses linked to alcohol and other like conditions, which Science Daily calls "diseases relating to social circumstances."
The study showed that this association shows up even with health care budgets that have been protected. The science magazine reports that, according to Stuckler, "social welfare spending is as important, if not more so [than health budgets], for population health." It is not hard to figure out what will happen to the poor and elderly if, in the U.S., the big cuts to Medicare go through, along with reductions in social programs.
The Oxford group went over data, which included social programs aimed at families with children, job programs for the unemployed and help for the disabled, from 15 countries collected by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development.
We should not be surprised by their findings, namely "that when social spending was high, mortality rates fell, but when they were low, mortality rates rose substantially." They also found out that there were two areas where the state could cut spending without killing off the poor and elderly - areas with no "negative impact on the public's health." Those areas were the military and the prisons. But these are the very areas where they want to increase spending, for which cuts in public welfare have to be made.
The study concludes, "This report reveals that ordinary people may be paying the ultimate price for budget cuts - potentially costing them their lives."
You can be sure that what applies to the Europeans also applies to us, in spades.
Sunday, June 19, 2011
Russell, Mao and the Fate of China (Part Three)
Thomas Riggins
Russell's chapter, "Present Forces and Tendencies in the Far East" (in The Problem of China) deals with the balance of power in this region in the 1920s and focuses on China, Japan, Russia and America. I will omit his comments on Japan here and concentrate on China's dealings with America and the influence of Russia. Russell points out that the interests of Britain are (leaving India to the side) basically the same as those of America-- at least its ruling sector of finance capital and NOT "the pacifistic and agrarian tendencies of the Middle West."
At this time Russell thought that the two most important "moral forces" in the Far East were those emanating from Russia and America. He thought the Americans to be more idealistic than the jaded imperialists running the European capitalist states. However he thought that cynical imperialist views were an inevitability as a nation's power increased and the Americans would abandon their idealism.
We must keep this in mind, he warns us, "when we wish to estimate the desirability of extending the influence of the United States." Today we can see that Russell was right. The United States has evolved into the most cynical and ruthless imperial power in the world, encircling the globe with its garrisons and fleets, and subjecting whole nations and peoples to its bloody domination in search of power, wealth, and resources.
All this, however, was in the future. The benign United States that appeared to Russell was that of the Harding Administration and the Washington Naval Conference, presided over by Secretary of State Charles Evan Hughes. The conference was held from late 1921 to early 1922 and was the first disarmament conference in modern history. It was designed to reign in Japanese aggression in China, limit naval construction, and keep the Open Door Policy in place in China.
Russell thought America's policy at the conference was a liberal one, but only because the outcome of the conference was in line with American interests in the Far East. What Russell really believed was that "when American interests or prejudices are involved liberal and humanitarian principles have no weight whatever." Have we seen anything to contradict this assessment since the days of Warren Harding (or those of George Washington for that matter)?
If American plans for the future economic development of China should be successful Russell thought it would be disastrous for China. It would certainly be good for America and her allies, but would involve "a gradually increasing flow of wealth from China to the investing countries, the chief of which is America [the CPC appears to have reversed this flow]; the development of a sweated proletariat [still a problem]; the spread of Christianity [another great evil]; the substitution of American civilization for Chinese [not yet but McDonalds and KFC have secured beach heads];…. the gradual awakening of China to her exploitation by the foreigner [China was already awake when Russell wrote]; and one day, fifty or a hundred years hence [around 1972 or 2022], the massacre of every white man throughout the Celestial Empire at a signal from some vast secret society."
Well, the great awakening was already at hand when Russell wrote, he was just blind to it. China liberated itself in a little over 25 years, despite the best actions the US and its allies could do to prevent it, and no vast secret society sprang up to threaten every "white man." The Celestial Empire has become a People's Republic.
Well, Russell's vision of the future was off, but the definition he gave of what the West considers "good" government was spot on, even today: "it is a government that yields fat dividends for capitalists." This is still the game plan in the 21st century.
Russell now embarks on some ill founded speculations which, nevertheless, hint at a grain of truth. He predicts, for example "it is not likely that Bolshevism [as seen in Russia-tr] as a creed will make much progress in China." He gives the following three reasons: 1) China has a decentralized state tending towards feudalism whereas Bolshevism requires a centralized state. Russell doesn't seem to understand a successful socialist revolution would reverse this tendency.
2) China is more suitable for anarchism because the Chinese have a great sense of personal freedom and the Bolsheviks need to have (and do have) more control over individuals "than has ever been known before." This is strange. The Chinese had just emerged from an oriental despotism under the Manchus that had regulated everything including dress and hair styles for the population, and had no tradition of anything like "personal freedom" as had developed in Europe.
3) Bolshevism opposes "private trading" which is the "breath of life to all Chinese except the literati." But ninety percent of the Chinese at this time were basically illiterate peasants most of whom were under the control of a feudalistic landlord class. The Chinese masses had more in common with the Russian masses than Russell seemed to realize.
The greatest appeal of Bolshevism, Russell said, was to the youth of China who wanted to develop industry by skipping the stage of capitalist development. But Russia was now engaged in the New Economic Policy and Russell thought this signaled a slow return to capitalist methods which would disillusion the Chinese.
But, Russell said, the fact that as a creed Bolshevism [i.e., Marxism] would not hold any lasting appeal, Bolshevism "as a political force" had a great future. What he meant was that Bolshevik Russia would continue to play the Great Game in Asia and follow in the footsteps of Tsarist imperialism with Bolshevik imperialism since "the Russians have an instinct for colonization" [!!].
Here is where Russell becomes very confused in his analysis. He doesn't really define "imperialism." Marxists at this time defined it as the international policy of monopoly capitalism based on the control of the state by financial capital sometimes allied with industrial capital. In this sense Bolshevik imperialism was a contradiction in terms. As far as "the Russians," lumped together without any attempt at class analysis, having an "instinct" to become colonialists -- such general statements are useless in trying to describe social reality.
Regardless, Russell thinks it would not be so bad for Russia to become hegemonic in Asia. The Russians could enter into more nearly equal relations with Asian peoples because their "character" [!!] is more "Asiatic" than that of the "English speaking-nations." English speaking nations would not be able to have the same understanding and ability "to enter into relations of equally" with these strange inscrutable Orientals. As a result an Asian Block of nations would arise as a defensive block and this would be good for world peace as well as "humanity."
Russell recommends that outside powers leave off meddling with the Chinese and attempting to impose their own values on them as the Chinese will, left to themselves, "find a solution suitable to their character" for their own political problems. This idea is of "national character" is quite unscientific and if Russell had understood what he read of Das Kapital and other Marxist writings and substituted some such phrase as "find a solution based on their own historical development and class relations" he would have made better sense. POC would have been better understood, in fact, if "national character" had been replaced by "historical development" whenever it occured along with a brief description of that development.
Russell goes on to predict what the future of China will most likely be. Marxists, as great predictors of the future themselves, especially its inevitable trends and outcomes, understand what a risky business this is and should have great sympathy for Russell's wrong headed prognosis.
Since the US emerged unscathed from WW I it had an excess of available capital to invest and would be the principal nation involved in China's future development. "As the financiers are the most splendid feature of the American civilization, China must be so governed as to enrich the financiers." The US will contribute greatly to building educational institutions in China so that Chinese intellectuals will end up serving the interests of the big Trusts just as American intellectuals do. As a result a conservative anti-radical reform system will be produced and touted as a great force for peace. But, Russell points out: "it is impossible to make a silk purse out of a sow's ear or peace and freedom out of capitalism."
The US will encourage the growth of a stable government, foster an increase in income to build up a market for American goods, discourage other powers besides themselves from meddling in China, and look askance upon all attempts of the Chinese to control their own economy, especially the nationalization of the mines and railroads, which Russell sees as a "form of State Socialism or what Lenin calls State Capitalism." The reference to Lenin is in respect to the New Economic Plan (NEP) in Russia.
The US would also keep lists of radical students and see to it that they would not get jobs, try to impose its puritan morality on the Chinese, and because Americans think their own country and way of life are "perfect" they will do great damage to what is best in Chinese culture in their attempts to make China as much as possible resemble what they call "God's own country."
As a result of all this a "Marxian class-war will break out" between Asia and the West. The Asian forces will be led by a socialist Russia and be fought for freedom from the imperialist powers and their exploitation. These views are very different from those Russell will be representing in his future Cold War phase.
Ever the pessimist, Russell sees this war as so destructive all around that probably "no civilization of any sort would survive it." When the actual war came is was very destructive, but it was a civil war between the bourgeois democratic capitalist powers and the authoritarian fascist capitalist powers into which the Russians were drawn against their will and from which the Chinese emerged as a free and independent people determined to build socialism.
Russell ends his chapter on a socialist note about the evils of the "present "(1920s)
system of world wide capitalist domination. Russell's conclusion is almost a perfect description of the world we live in today. "The essential evil of the present system," he says, "as Socialists have pointed out over and over again, is production for profit instead of for use." American power may, for a while, impose peace, but never freedom for weak countries. "Only international Socialism can secure both; and owing to the stimulation of revolt by capitalist oppression, even peace alone can never be secure until international Socialism is established throughout the world."
Part Four coming up.
Russell's chapter, "Present Forces and Tendencies in the Far East" (in The Problem of China) deals with the balance of power in this region in the 1920s and focuses on China, Japan, Russia and America. I will omit his comments on Japan here and concentrate on China's dealings with America and the influence of Russia. Russell points out that the interests of Britain are (leaving India to the side) basically the same as those of America-- at least its ruling sector of finance capital and NOT "the pacifistic and agrarian tendencies of the Middle West."
At this time Russell thought that the two most important "moral forces" in the Far East were those emanating from Russia and America. He thought the Americans to be more idealistic than the jaded imperialists running the European capitalist states. However he thought that cynical imperialist views were an inevitability as a nation's power increased and the Americans would abandon their idealism.
We must keep this in mind, he warns us, "when we wish to estimate the desirability of extending the influence of the United States." Today we can see that Russell was right. The United States has evolved into the most cynical and ruthless imperial power in the world, encircling the globe with its garrisons and fleets, and subjecting whole nations and peoples to its bloody domination in search of power, wealth, and resources.
All this, however, was in the future. The benign United States that appeared to Russell was that of the Harding Administration and the Washington Naval Conference, presided over by Secretary of State Charles Evan Hughes. The conference was held from late 1921 to early 1922 and was the first disarmament conference in modern history. It was designed to reign in Japanese aggression in China, limit naval construction, and keep the Open Door Policy in place in China.
Russell thought America's policy at the conference was a liberal one, but only because the outcome of the conference was in line with American interests in the Far East. What Russell really believed was that "when American interests or prejudices are involved liberal and humanitarian principles have no weight whatever." Have we seen anything to contradict this assessment since the days of Warren Harding (or those of George Washington for that matter)?
If American plans for the future economic development of China should be successful Russell thought it would be disastrous for China. It would certainly be good for America and her allies, but would involve "a gradually increasing flow of wealth from China to the investing countries, the chief of which is America [the CPC appears to have reversed this flow]; the development of a sweated proletariat [still a problem]; the spread of Christianity [another great evil]; the substitution of American civilization for Chinese [not yet but McDonalds and KFC have secured beach heads];…. the gradual awakening of China to her exploitation by the foreigner [China was already awake when Russell wrote]; and one day, fifty or a hundred years hence [around 1972 or 2022], the massacre of every white man throughout the Celestial Empire at a signal from some vast secret society."
Well, the great awakening was already at hand when Russell wrote, he was just blind to it. China liberated itself in a little over 25 years, despite the best actions the US and its allies could do to prevent it, and no vast secret society sprang up to threaten every "white man." The Celestial Empire has become a People's Republic.
Well, Russell's vision of the future was off, but the definition he gave of what the West considers "good" government was spot on, even today: "it is a government that yields fat dividends for capitalists." This is still the game plan in the 21st century.
Russell now embarks on some ill founded speculations which, nevertheless, hint at a grain of truth. He predicts, for example "it is not likely that Bolshevism [as seen in Russia-tr] as a creed will make much progress in China." He gives the following three reasons: 1) China has a decentralized state tending towards feudalism whereas Bolshevism requires a centralized state. Russell doesn't seem to understand a successful socialist revolution would reverse this tendency.
2) China is more suitable for anarchism because the Chinese have a great sense of personal freedom and the Bolsheviks need to have (and do have) more control over individuals "than has ever been known before." This is strange. The Chinese had just emerged from an oriental despotism under the Manchus that had regulated everything including dress and hair styles for the population, and had no tradition of anything like "personal freedom" as had developed in Europe.
3) Bolshevism opposes "private trading" which is the "breath of life to all Chinese except the literati." But ninety percent of the Chinese at this time were basically illiterate peasants most of whom were under the control of a feudalistic landlord class. The Chinese masses had more in common with the Russian masses than Russell seemed to realize.
The greatest appeal of Bolshevism, Russell said, was to the youth of China who wanted to develop industry by skipping the stage of capitalist development. But Russia was now engaged in the New Economic Policy and Russell thought this signaled a slow return to capitalist methods which would disillusion the Chinese.
But, Russell said, the fact that as a creed Bolshevism [i.e., Marxism] would not hold any lasting appeal, Bolshevism "as a political force" had a great future. What he meant was that Bolshevik Russia would continue to play the Great Game in Asia and follow in the footsteps of Tsarist imperialism with Bolshevik imperialism since "the Russians have an instinct for colonization" [!!].
Here is where Russell becomes very confused in his analysis. He doesn't really define "imperialism." Marxists at this time defined it as the international policy of monopoly capitalism based on the control of the state by financial capital sometimes allied with industrial capital. In this sense Bolshevik imperialism was a contradiction in terms. As far as "the Russians," lumped together without any attempt at class analysis, having an "instinct" to become colonialists -- such general statements are useless in trying to describe social reality.
Regardless, Russell thinks it would not be so bad for Russia to become hegemonic in Asia. The Russians could enter into more nearly equal relations with Asian peoples because their "character" [!!] is more "Asiatic" than that of the "English speaking-nations." English speaking nations would not be able to have the same understanding and ability "to enter into relations of equally" with these strange inscrutable Orientals. As a result an Asian Block of nations would arise as a defensive block and this would be good for world peace as well as "humanity."
Russell recommends that outside powers leave off meddling with the Chinese and attempting to impose their own values on them as the Chinese will, left to themselves, "find a solution suitable to their character" for their own political problems. This idea is of "national character" is quite unscientific and if Russell had understood what he read of Das Kapital and other Marxist writings and substituted some such phrase as "find a solution based on their own historical development and class relations" he would have made better sense. POC would have been better understood, in fact, if "national character" had been replaced by "historical development" whenever it occured along with a brief description of that development.
Russell goes on to predict what the future of China will most likely be. Marxists, as great predictors of the future themselves, especially its inevitable trends and outcomes, understand what a risky business this is and should have great sympathy for Russell's wrong headed prognosis.
Since the US emerged unscathed from WW I it had an excess of available capital to invest and would be the principal nation involved in China's future development. "As the financiers are the most splendid feature of the American civilization, China must be so governed as to enrich the financiers." The US will contribute greatly to building educational institutions in China so that Chinese intellectuals will end up serving the interests of the big Trusts just as American intellectuals do. As a result a conservative anti-radical reform system will be produced and touted as a great force for peace. But, Russell points out: "it is impossible to make a silk purse out of a sow's ear or peace and freedom out of capitalism."
The US will encourage the growth of a stable government, foster an increase in income to build up a market for American goods, discourage other powers besides themselves from meddling in China, and look askance upon all attempts of the Chinese to control their own economy, especially the nationalization of the mines and railroads, which Russell sees as a "form of State Socialism or what Lenin calls State Capitalism." The reference to Lenin is in respect to the New Economic Plan (NEP) in Russia.
The US would also keep lists of radical students and see to it that they would not get jobs, try to impose its puritan morality on the Chinese, and because Americans think their own country and way of life are "perfect" they will do great damage to what is best in Chinese culture in their attempts to make China as much as possible resemble what they call "God's own country."
As a result of all this a "Marxian class-war will break out" between Asia and the West. The Asian forces will be led by a socialist Russia and be fought for freedom from the imperialist powers and their exploitation. These views are very different from those Russell will be representing in his future Cold War phase.
Ever the pessimist, Russell sees this war as so destructive all around that probably "no civilization of any sort would survive it." When the actual war came is was very destructive, but it was a civil war between the bourgeois democratic capitalist powers and the authoritarian fascist capitalist powers into which the Russians were drawn against their will and from which the Chinese emerged as a free and independent people determined to build socialism.
Russell ends his chapter on a socialist note about the evils of the "present "(1920s)
system of world wide capitalist domination. Russell's conclusion is almost a perfect description of the world we live in today. "The essential evil of the present system," he says, "as Socialists have pointed out over and over again, is production for profit instead of for use." American power may, for a while, impose peace, but never freedom for weak countries. "Only international Socialism can secure both; and owing to the stimulation of revolt by capitalist oppression, even peace alone can never be secure until international Socialism is established throughout the world."
Part Four coming up.
Wednesday, June 15, 2011
Video Games, Free Speech and Socialism
Thomas Riggins
Under socialism society would work to improve the well being of all its members. Individuals would be free to say and do what they wish with the proviso that they could not engage in activities that were harmful to others. There would also be a rich civil society wherein groups and organizations could form to pursue ends and activities that interested them, again with the only restraint being that they could not hurt others in pursuit of their special aims.
This kind of society would be very different from the capitalist society we are presently living under where individuals and groups are allowed to form that do pursue aims that are hurtful to others. Private businesses and corporations, for example, can form with the purpose, and indeed the duty, to increase their capital and make private profits.
There is nothing wrong with that as long as their activities are beneficial to society or at least do not harm others. In fact we have in the US a Bill of Rights as part of our Constitution and its function is to protect members of society to the extent of giving them certain rights to engage in individual and group actions which the government as such might not approve of.
What a socialist government would approve of is, in many instances, very different from what our present capitalist government would approve of. In the case of the application of the Bill of Rights there would presumably be certain activities prohibited under one form of government that would be allowed under the other.
For example, I think violent video games should be prohibited under any form of government, but definitely under socialism, and I don't think any violation of the Bill of Rights is involved.
Under our present capitalist government, however, special interest groups, whose goal is profit regardless of the harm that might be done to others, produce and sell violent video games and claim protection under the first amendment in the Bill of Rights (freedom of speech) to do so.
Why I think this is wrong is based on the following scientific evidence from Science Daily of 26 May 2011 ("Violent Video Games Reduce Brain Response to Violence and Increase Aggressive Behavior, Study Suggests").
This science report starts by informing us that;"Scientists have known for years that playing violent video games causes players to become more aggressive." Just what we need in our violence prone gun toting society where people are gunned down daily in the streets. Well, anyway, ''knowing that" and "knowing why" are two different questions. SD says new findings at the University of Missouri have discovered at least one reason why these games lead to aggressive behavior: "the brains of violent video game players become less responsive to violence, and this diminished brain response predicts an increase in aggression."
Dr. Bruce Bartholow, one of the scientists conducting the study, is quoted as saying: "Many researchers have believed that becoming desensitized to violence leads to increased human aggression. Until our study, however, this causal association had never been demonstrated experimentally."
In the experiment, people played violent and nonviolent video games and then played competitive games with an opponent in which they could inflict a painful stimulus to the loser. The games were rigged so the winners would be the ones who had just played the two types of video games. The experiment showed that those who had played the violent games inflicted more painful stimuli. There was a series of tests as well all of which reached the same conclusions about brain activity and aggression related to violent video games.
There is always the possibility that some third unknown factor is responsible for both the desire to play violent video games and the diminished brain activity that leads to aggressive behavior. But so far all the evidence points to the violent video games as the cause of the aggressive behavior.
Dr. Bartholow pointed out, according to SD, that evidence shows that grade school children on average are playing video games for forty hours a week-- more than any other activity. The scientists say young "children could become accustomed to violent behavior as their brains are forming." What kind of rational decent society would allow such a thing? Certainly not a socialist one. There is nothing in the first amendment that protects speech that is dangerous and harmful to the public. Violent video games should be treated just as falsely "shouting 'Fire' in a crowded theatre."i.e., as a clear and present danger to any society-- capitalist or socialist.
We don't want our kids to smoke, drink, or eat too much as that would hurt their bodies. But violent and aggressive (and unemployed) young brains are just what the military recruiters are looking for as we will need to expand the all volunteer army in the years ahead as our commitments in the middle east and Africa grow. A socialist society will have no need to bring up its youth in this way.
The last word goes to Dr. Bartholow: "More than any other media, these video games encourage active participation in violence. From a psychological perspective, video games are excellent teaching tools because they reward players for engaging in certain types of behavior.
Unfortunately, in many popular video games, the behavior is violence."
Under socialism society would work to improve the well being of all its members. Individuals would be free to say and do what they wish with the proviso that they could not engage in activities that were harmful to others. There would also be a rich civil society wherein groups and organizations could form to pursue ends and activities that interested them, again with the only restraint being that they could not hurt others in pursuit of their special aims.
This kind of society would be very different from the capitalist society we are presently living under where individuals and groups are allowed to form that do pursue aims that are hurtful to others. Private businesses and corporations, for example, can form with the purpose, and indeed the duty, to increase their capital and make private profits.
There is nothing wrong with that as long as their activities are beneficial to society or at least do not harm others. In fact we have in the US a Bill of Rights as part of our Constitution and its function is to protect members of society to the extent of giving them certain rights to engage in individual and group actions which the government as such might not approve of.
What a socialist government would approve of is, in many instances, very different from what our present capitalist government would approve of. In the case of the application of the Bill of Rights there would presumably be certain activities prohibited under one form of government that would be allowed under the other.
For example, I think violent video games should be prohibited under any form of government, but definitely under socialism, and I don't think any violation of the Bill of Rights is involved.
Under our present capitalist government, however, special interest groups, whose goal is profit regardless of the harm that might be done to others, produce and sell violent video games and claim protection under the first amendment in the Bill of Rights (freedom of speech) to do so.
Why I think this is wrong is based on the following scientific evidence from Science Daily of 26 May 2011 ("Violent Video Games Reduce Brain Response to Violence and Increase Aggressive Behavior, Study Suggests").
This science report starts by informing us that;"Scientists have known for years that playing violent video games causes players to become more aggressive." Just what we need in our violence prone gun toting society where people are gunned down daily in the streets. Well, anyway, ''knowing that" and "knowing why" are two different questions. SD says new findings at the University of Missouri have discovered at least one reason why these games lead to aggressive behavior: "the brains of violent video game players become less responsive to violence, and this diminished brain response predicts an increase in aggression."
Dr. Bruce Bartholow, one of the scientists conducting the study, is quoted as saying: "Many researchers have believed that becoming desensitized to violence leads to increased human aggression. Until our study, however, this causal association had never been demonstrated experimentally."
In the experiment, people played violent and nonviolent video games and then played competitive games with an opponent in which they could inflict a painful stimulus to the loser. The games were rigged so the winners would be the ones who had just played the two types of video games. The experiment showed that those who had played the violent games inflicted more painful stimuli. There was a series of tests as well all of which reached the same conclusions about brain activity and aggression related to violent video games.
There is always the possibility that some third unknown factor is responsible for both the desire to play violent video games and the diminished brain activity that leads to aggressive behavior. But so far all the evidence points to the violent video games as the cause of the aggressive behavior.
Dr. Bartholow pointed out, according to SD, that evidence shows that grade school children on average are playing video games for forty hours a week-- more than any other activity. The scientists say young "children could become accustomed to violent behavior as their brains are forming." What kind of rational decent society would allow such a thing? Certainly not a socialist one. There is nothing in the first amendment that protects speech that is dangerous and harmful to the public. Violent video games should be treated just as falsely "shouting 'Fire' in a crowded theatre."i.e., as a clear and present danger to any society-- capitalist or socialist.
We don't want our kids to smoke, drink, or eat too much as that would hurt their bodies. But violent and aggressive (and unemployed) young brains are just what the military recruiters are looking for as we will need to expand the all volunteer army in the years ahead as our commitments in the middle east and Africa grow. A socialist society will have no need to bring up its youth in this way.
The last word goes to Dr. Bartholow: "More than any other media, these video games encourage active participation in violence. From a psychological perspective, video games are excellent teaching tools because they reward players for engaging in certain types of behavior.
Unfortunately, in many popular video games, the behavior is violence."
Sunday, June 12, 2011
Russell, Mao and the Fate of China (Part Two)
Thomas Riggins
Russell discusses the internal state of China, as he understood it in 1920-21, in his chapter "Modern China" in The Problem of China. He thinks there are only two ways the Chinese can escape from imperialist domination. The first way is for China to become a strong military power. Russell thinks this would be a disaster.
However since "the capitalist system involves in its very essence a predatory relation of the strong towards the weak [a perfectly good Leninist proposition even if clumsily expressed], internationally as well as nationally" he proposes a second way for Chinese liberation. The foreign imperialist powers will have to " become Socialistic." Russell thinks this is the only real solution for the Chinese.
It didn't occur to Russell that China might free itself by military means and work towards socialism at the same time. It goes without saying that the Chinese would be waiting for kingdom come to be liberated if they had taken Russell's advice and expected Europe and America to turn socialist.
Russell, as did many in his generation, expected a major war to eventually break out between Japan and the United States over which would be top dog in the far east, but did not see that war as an opportunity for the victims of imperialism to break free and become independent. At any rate, in respect to his "only" solution to Chinese liberation, Russell was wildly off the mark-- despite his Leninist grasp of the nature of capitalism.
Russell did, however, urge progressives to support the fledgling government of Sun Yat-sen which was at this time battling the war lord system. No one at that time foresaw that the Kuomintang would degenerate into a fascist despotism under Sun's successor Chiang Kai-shek, or that the recently founded Communist Party of China would be the eventual vehicle both for Chinese liberation and regeneration.
Russell's next comment was completely correct and was about an issue that, after the success of the revolution, the Chinese took very seriously. Russell wrote that "in the long run, if the birth-rate is as great as is usually supposed, no permanent cure for their poverty is possible while their families continue to be so large."
The introduction of birth control and the one child policy, which was a drastic step and is now being reevaluated, probably helped to considerably contain the population from an unmanageable explosion (not to credit natural disasters and the unintended consequences of policies that turned out to be mistaken with respect to premature industrial expansion and agricultural reforms in the 1950s).
Another problem the Chinese would have to overcome before they could hope to compete with the West, according to Russell, was lack of a modern educational system for the masses. This too the CPC saw as a major problem and immediately after coming to power launched a mass literacy program and built schools and institutions of higher learning throughout China.
This was a prerequisite, Russell said, as Chinese workers would need education and skills in order to command decent wages (he did not foresee a socialist revolution in China). Nevertheless industrialization in China, as in all other countries, would begin to develop by methods that are "sordid and cruel." Intellectuals, he remarked, "wish to be told of some less horrible method by which their country may be industrialized, but so far none is in sight."
Whether you are capitalist or socialist, it appears, if you are starting from a primitive economic base the only way you can accumulate capital to make industrial advances is to take it from the surplus value created by the working class. As we will see Russell thinks state capitalism, or state socialism (they are the same for him), would be the best way for the Chinese to go-- but he doesn't envision a revolution.
Russell now hits upon a major problem which I think was responsible for some of the major errors of the Mao era. "There is one traditional Chinese belief which dies very hard, and that is the belief that correct ethical sentiments are more important than detailed scientific knowledge. This view is, of course, derived from the Confucian tradition, and is more or less true in a pre-industrial society."
One would think that Russell, with commitments to science as the basis for correct knowledge of the world, would hold that "detailed scientific knowledge" is always to be preferred; how would a pre-industrial society ever advance to a higher level without also developing science?
In the 1950s and 60s Mao pushed the line that politics ( "correct ethical sentiments") was the correct guide to action and could win out over any objections based on economic (scientific) considerations. This led to the twin disasters of the Great Leap Forward and the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution. There was no basis in Marxism for the views he was espousing even though Mao used Marxist terminology to try and explain his thought. If Russell was correct, this would have been a case of the unconscious Confucian substrata in Mao's world view manifesting itself in Marxist guise.
Mao himself was ant-Confucian at this time so even he was blind to the real origins of the reactionary policies he was peddling in Marxist dress. I should also point out that it was only one wing of Confucianism that held to this view-- an Idealist trend that developed in the Ming Dynasty and that there were other wings of Confucianism that were materialistically motivated. Mao had indeed studied Ming Confucianism and was influenced by it in his youth, and , I think, unconsciously after he assumed power.
Stay tuned for Part Three.
Russell discusses the internal state of China, as he understood it in 1920-21, in his chapter "Modern China" in The Problem of China. He thinks there are only two ways the Chinese can escape from imperialist domination. The first way is for China to become a strong military power. Russell thinks this would be a disaster.
However since "the capitalist system involves in its very essence a predatory relation of the strong towards the weak [a perfectly good Leninist proposition even if clumsily expressed], internationally as well as nationally" he proposes a second way for Chinese liberation. The foreign imperialist powers will have to " become Socialistic." Russell thinks this is the only real solution for the Chinese.
It didn't occur to Russell that China might free itself by military means and work towards socialism at the same time. It goes without saying that the Chinese would be waiting for kingdom come to be liberated if they had taken Russell's advice and expected Europe and America to turn socialist.
Russell, as did many in his generation, expected a major war to eventually break out between Japan and the United States over which would be top dog in the far east, but did not see that war as an opportunity for the victims of imperialism to break free and become independent. At any rate, in respect to his "only" solution to Chinese liberation, Russell was wildly off the mark-- despite his Leninist grasp of the nature of capitalism.
Russell did, however, urge progressives to support the fledgling government of Sun Yat-sen which was at this time battling the war lord system. No one at that time foresaw that the Kuomintang would degenerate into a fascist despotism under Sun's successor Chiang Kai-shek, or that the recently founded Communist Party of China would be the eventual vehicle both for Chinese liberation and regeneration.
Russell's next comment was completely correct and was about an issue that, after the success of the revolution, the Chinese took very seriously. Russell wrote that "in the long run, if the birth-rate is as great as is usually supposed, no permanent cure for their poverty is possible while their families continue to be so large."
The introduction of birth control and the one child policy, which was a drastic step and is now being reevaluated, probably helped to considerably contain the population from an unmanageable explosion (not to credit natural disasters and the unintended consequences of policies that turned out to be mistaken with respect to premature industrial expansion and agricultural reforms in the 1950s).
Another problem the Chinese would have to overcome before they could hope to compete with the West, according to Russell, was lack of a modern educational system for the masses. This too the CPC saw as a major problem and immediately after coming to power launched a mass literacy program and built schools and institutions of higher learning throughout China.
This was a prerequisite, Russell said, as Chinese workers would need education and skills in order to command decent wages (he did not foresee a socialist revolution in China). Nevertheless industrialization in China, as in all other countries, would begin to develop by methods that are "sordid and cruel." Intellectuals, he remarked, "wish to be told of some less horrible method by which their country may be industrialized, but so far none is in sight."
Whether you are capitalist or socialist, it appears, if you are starting from a primitive economic base the only way you can accumulate capital to make industrial advances is to take it from the surplus value created by the working class. As we will see Russell thinks state capitalism, or state socialism (they are the same for him), would be the best way for the Chinese to go-- but he doesn't envision a revolution.
Russell now hits upon a major problem which I think was responsible for some of the major errors of the Mao era. "There is one traditional Chinese belief which dies very hard, and that is the belief that correct ethical sentiments are more important than detailed scientific knowledge. This view is, of course, derived from the Confucian tradition, and is more or less true in a pre-industrial society."
One would think that Russell, with commitments to science as the basis for correct knowledge of the world, would hold that "detailed scientific knowledge" is always to be preferred; how would a pre-industrial society ever advance to a higher level without also developing science?
In the 1950s and 60s Mao pushed the line that politics ( "correct ethical sentiments") was the correct guide to action and could win out over any objections based on economic (scientific) considerations. This led to the twin disasters of the Great Leap Forward and the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution. There was no basis in Marxism for the views he was espousing even though Mao used Marxist terminology to try and explain his thought. If Russell was correct, this would have been a case of the unconscious Confucian substrata in Mao's world view manifesting itself in Marxist guise.
Mao himself was ant-Confucian at this time so even he was blind to the real origins of the reactionary policies he was peddling in Marxist dress. I should also point out that it was only one wing of Confucianism that held to this view-- an Idealist trend that developed in the Ming Dynasty and that there were other wings of Confucianism that were materialistically motivated. Mao had indeed studied Ming Confucianism and was influenced by it in his youth, and , I think, unconsciously after he assumed power.
Stay tuned for Part Three.
Wednesday, June 08, 2011
U.S. Prepares for Iraq Retreat
Thomas Riggins
According to the New York Times (6-7-2011) this summer the U.S. may be facing its "most dangerous remaining mission" in Iraq-- getting its troops out. Reading between the lines of Michael S. Schmidt's report from Baghdad reveals that the U.S. is about to leave a country that will be glad to see us go and that we have failed to have accomplished anything of value in for its people--- despite killing and displacing millions of them. We didn't even get the control of Iraq's oil as we had hoped. Witness Vincent Fernando's comments in Business Insider (online 2-3-2010): "Thus the U.S. invasion indeed unlocked Iraq's oil production potential as many critics said had been the plan all along, but in the end the U.S. won't have much control over it." (Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/sovereign-backed-oil-companies-creamed-the-multinationals-in-iraq-2010-2#ixzz1OhQqlFAs)
Meanwhile, the Iraqi resistance to occupation, "the resurgent threat", struck a U.S. base on Monday with deadly force unseen since 2009. It is difficult to estimate the popularity of the insurgence, as it is in constant flux, but a review of the research over the last several years indicates it has wide popular support as most people do not like being invaded and occupied.
According to the Times the resistance is waging a three pronged attack against the American occupation forces-- even as they prepare a partial retreat to Kuwait beginning, they hope, in July: they want the invaders to leave as planned, break their will to leave parts of the occupation army in situ, and impress upon the Iraqi people that they forced the invaders to withdraw.
There are about 46 to 47,000 troops left in the country and they have to leave along
a desert road 168 miles long that leads to Kuwait. They could be sitting ducks. The Iraqi's certainly remember how, after the cease fire in the Gulf War, their retreating troops were attacked in cold blood and thousands were butchered as they fled along the roads after leaving Kuwait.
Col. D. Crossman told the Times on Monday: "Our forces were attacked today, and we were just sitting still. What is going to happen to the threat [?] when we line up our trucks to leave and start moving out of the country?"
Well, Schmidt reports that the U.S., has learned a hard lesson and that is that it needs the support of the local population in order to succeed. But after having destroyed their country how can we count on their support? In that most American of ways, we will pay for it.
The U.S. will pay $100,000 a month in tribute to ten local tribal elders if they will protect the passage of the troops. At least its cheaper than asking Blackwater to do it. Of course the mighty U.S. military doesn't pay protection money so "officially the money is paid to have Iraqis clean the crucial roadway of debris" no doubt inspired by Lady Bird Johnson's program to spruce up the highways and byways of America while LBJ gassed and napalmed the Vietnamese peasantry.
Col. Crossman explained, "I can't possibly be all places at one time. There are real incentives for them to keep the highway safe. Those sheiks we have the best relationships with and have kept their highways clear and safe will be the most likely ones to get renewed for the rest of the year."
So far so good? The Times says roadside bomb attacks are "down" and so are attacks from the areas under control of the sheiks. At least that is the claim-- remember the worst attack in two years was just last monday. At any rate the sheiks "are happy to get the money" they have their own uses for it and it will soon run out after the withdrawal. So maybe the U.S. can pull off a safe retreat. Who wants to kill the goose who lays the golden the egg? But what if the goose is leaving town?
Money is money and the resistance also can pay off the sheiks, and the sheiks have to live with the resistance after the U.S. military has left the country (if indeed they are all really getting out). So, Col. Crossman admits, "There are some sheiks who are working for the other team and are being paid well by the militants so they can operate in their land." He should consider the fact that they are probably the same sheiks he thinks are on his payroll.
According to the New York Times (6-7-2011) this summer the U.S. may be facing its "most dangerous remaining mission" in Iraq-- getting its troops out. Reading between the lines of Michael S. Schmidt's report from Baghdad reveals that the U.S. is about to leave a country that will be glad to see us go and that we have failed to have accomplished anything of value in for its people--- despite killing and displacing millions of them. We didn't even get the control of Iraq's oil as we had hoped. Witness Vincent Fernando's comments in Business Insider (online 2-3-2010): "Thus the U.S. invasion indeed unlocked Iraq's oil production potential as many critics said had been the plan all along, but in the end the U.S. won't have much control over it." (Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/sovereign-backed-oil-companies-creamed-the-multinationals-in-iraq-2010-2#ixzz1OhQqlFAs)
Meanwhile, the Iraqi resistance to occupation, "the resurgent threat", struck a U.S. base on Monday with deadly force unseen since 2009. It is difficult to estimate the popularity of the insurgence, as it is in constant flux, but a review of the research over the last several years indicates it has wide popular support as most people do not like being invaded and occupied.
According to the Times the resistance is waging a three pronged attack against the American occupation forces-- even as they prepare a partial retreat to Kuwait beginning, they hope, in July: they want the invaders to leave as planned, break their will to leave parts of the occupation army in situ, and impress upon the Iraqi people that they forced the invaders to withdraw.
There are about 46 to 47,000 troops left in the country and they have to leave along
a desert road 168 miles long that leads to Kuwait. They could be sitting ducks. The Iraqi's certainly remember how, after the cease fire in the Gulf War, their retreating troops were attacked in cold blood and thousands were butchered as they fled along the roads after leaving Kuwait.
Col. D. Crossman told the Times on Monday: "Our forces were attacked today, and we were just sitting still. What is going to happen to the threat [?] when we line up our trucks to leave and start moving out of the country?"
Well, Schmidt reports that the U.S., has learned a hard lesson and that is that it needs the support of the local population in order to succeed. But after having destroyed their country how can we count on their support? In that most American of ways, we will pay for it.
The U.S. will pay $100,000 a month in tribute to ten local tribal elders if they will protect the passage of the troops. At least its cheaper than asking Blackwater to do it. Of course the mighty U.S. military doesn't pay protection money so "officially the money is paid to have Iraqis clean the crucial roadway of debris" no doubt inspired by Lady Bird Johnson's program to spruce up the highways and byways of America while LBJ gassed and napalmed the Vietnamese peasantry.
Col. Crossman explained, "I can't possibly be all places at one time. There are real incentives for them to keep the highway safe. Those sheiks we have the best relationships with and have kept their highways clear and safe will be the most likely ones to get renewed for the rest of the year."
So far so good? The Times says roadside bomb attacks are "down" and so are attacks from the areas under control of the sheiks. At least that is the claim-- remember the worst attack in two years was just last monday. At any rate the sheiks "are happy to get the money" they have their own uses for it and it will soon run out after the withdrawal. So maybe the U.S. can pull off a safe retreat. Who wants to kill the goose who lays the golden the egg? But what if the goose is leaving town?
Money is money and the resistance also can pay off the sheiks, and the sheiks have to live with the resistance after the U.S. military has left the country (if indeed they are all really getting out). So, Col. Crossman admits, "There are some sheiks who are working for the other team and are being paid well by the militants so they can operate in their land." He should consider the fact that they are probably the same sheiks he thinks are on his payroll.
Sunday, June 05, 2011
Russell, Mao and the Fate of China (Part One)
Thomas Riggins
In 1922 Bertrand Russell, then probably the most famous living philosopher in the world, published The Problem of China [POC]. This book was the result of Russell's being invited to China to give a series of lectures and conduct meetings with leading Chinese over a period of about six months. In POC Russell diagnoses the problems facing China as a result of its semi-occupation by European and Japanese imperialism. In the course of the book he also makes several recommendations and predictions concerning the future development of China.
The future leader of China, Mao Zedong, was either present at one of Russell's lectures or read a detailed account of it in the Chinese press. The purpose of this article is to discuss Russell's blueprint for Chinese liberation and compare it to what the Chinese, under the leadership of the Communist Party, actually did. Another purpose is to point out that many of Russell's comments about the role of the United States made over 90 years ago, as well as what was needed in China, are still relevant today.
A word of caution. Russell considered himself a radical and a "socialist", perhaps even a theoretical "communist" (although he was hostile to many of the actions of the Russian Bolsheviks) at this time. After WWII and up to the late 1950s Russell was a cold war anti-Communist, though not a ridiculous mindless one a la Sidney Hook and those in his milieu, before coming to his senses in the 1960s. I am only concerned, in this article, with Russell's political statements and opinions in the early 1920s. Some of Russell's views, while commonly held in the 20s, are completely politically incorrect by today's standards-- I will note them with explanation marks (!!) but otherwise I will not address them or pass over them in silence. These are usually remarks dealing with the nature of the "Chinese mind" or "character" as if all Chinese think a certain way.
This article will deal with Chapter One of POC: "Questions.''
In trying to understand China, Russell thinks he is dealing with a totally alien culture. He is forced to ask himself what his ultimate values are, what makes one culture or society "better" than another, and what ends does he wish to see triumph in the world. He says different people have different answers to these questions and he thinks they are just subjective preferences not amenable to argument. He will merely state his own and hope his reader will agree with him. Russell is no objectivist in morals. The ends he values are: "knowledge, art, instinctive happiness, and relations of friendship and affection." He believes in the goals, if not always the methods, of communism (although he is not a Marxist), and thinks a socialist society will best approximate the ends he wants. There are elements in Chinese culture that also reflect his ends better than they are reflected in Euro-American culture.
Russell thinks a nation should be judged not only on how its own people are treated, but also on how it treats others. He finds China, in this respect, better than the imperialist nations of the West. In the following quote Russell uses the word "our" and I want to stress that he does not intend to restrict its meaning to the British Empire but uses it inclusively to refer to the major imperialist nations of Europe and the English speaking world or even to "capitalist" nations thus including Japan.
"Our prosperity," he writes, "and most of what we endeavor to secure for ourselves, can only be obtained by widespread exploitation of weaker nations ." The Chinese, however, obtain what they have by means of their own hard work. China is radically different today but I think what Russell says about it is still basically correct and what he says about "us" hasn't changed very much at all.
What happens in China, he says will determine the whole future course of world history. There are tremendous resources in China and whether they are to be controlled "by China, by Japan, or by the white races [!!], is a question of enormous importance, affecting not only the whole development of Chinese civilization, but the balance of power in the world, the prospects of peace, the destiny of Russia, and the chances of development toward a better economic system in the advanced nations."
This remark is as true today as it was some 90 years ago. Chinese civilization, however, is now, at least, much more in the hands of the Chinese, the world balance of power remains in flux, the destiny of Russia is still undetermined, and a better economic system for the West (i.e., socialism) is still a distant dream but may be positively influenced by the economic development of China.
I didn't mention the "prospects for peace" and that is because in the short term Russell was absolutely correct: the civil war and revolution in China, World War II (in the Pacific), the Korean War, and the Vietnam War all had China, in one way or another, as their focus and the hope of eventually controlling her resources as a backdrop. Today as well many circles in the West, associated with international finance capital, see China as a future threat and the US military has contingency plans for a war with her. So, Russell was quite prescient to see the economic resources of China as the focal point of contemporary history.
Part Two coming up!
In 1922 Bertrand Russell, then probably the most famous living philosopher in the world, published The Problem of China [POC]. This book was the result of Russell's being invited to China to give a series of lectures and conduct meetings with leading Chinese over a period of about six months. In POC Russell diagnoses the problems facing China as a result of its semi-occupation by European and Japanese imperialism. In the course of the book he also makes several recommendations and predictions concerning the future development of China.
The future leader of China, Mao Zedong, was either present at one of Russell's lectures or read a detailed account of it in the Chinese press. The purpose of this article is to discuss Russell's blueprint for Chinese liberation and compare it to what the Chinese, under the leadership of the Communist Party, actually did. Another purpose is to point out that many of Russell's comments about the role of the United States made over 90 years ago, as well as what was needed in China, are still relevant today.
A word of caution. Russell considered himself a radical and a "socialist", perhaps even a theoretical "communist" (although he was hostile to many of the actions of the Russian Bolsheviks) at this time. After WWII and up to the late 1950s Russell was a cold war anti-Communist, though not a ridiculous mindless one a la Sidney Hook and those in his milieu, before coming to his senses in the 1960s. I am only concerned, in this article, with Russell's political statements and opinions in the early 1920s. Some of Russell's views, while commonly held in the 20s, are completely politically incorrect by today's standards-- I will note them with explanation marks (!!) but otherwise I will not address them or pass over them in silence. These are usually remarks dealing with the nature of the "Chinese mind" or "character" as if all Chinese think a certain way.
This article will deal with Chapter One of POC: "Questions.''
In trying to understand China, Russell thinks he is dealing with a totally alien culture. He is forced to ask himself what his ultimate values are, what makes one culture or society "better" than another, and what ends does he wish to see triumph in the world. He says different people have different answers to these questions and he thinks they are just subjective preferences not amenable to argument. He will merely state his own and hope his reader will agree with him. Russell is no objectivist in morals. The ends he values are: "knowledge, art, instinctive happiness, and relations of friendship and affection." He believes in the goals, if not always the methods, of communism (although he is not a Marxist), and thinks a socialist society will best approximate the ends he wants. There are elements in Chinese culture that also reflect his ends better than they are reflected in Euro-American culture.
Russell thinks a nation should be judged not only on how its own people are treated, but also on how it treats others. He finds China, in this respect, better than the imperialist nations of the West. In the following quote Russell uses the word "our" and I want to stress that he does not intend to restrict its meaning to the British Empire but uses it inclusively to refer to the major imperialist nations of Europe and the English speaking world or even to "capitalist" nations thus including Japan.
"Our prosperity," he writes, "and most of what we endeavor to secure for ourselves, can only be obtained by widespread exploitation of weaker nations ." The Chinese, however, obtain what they have by means of their own hard work. China is radically different today but I think what Russell says about it is still basically correct and what he says about "us" hasn't changed very much at all.
What happens in China, he says will determine the whole future course of world history. There are tremendous resources in China and whether they are to be controlled "by China, by Japan, or by the white races [!!], is a question of enormous importance, affecting not only the whole development of Chinese civilization, but the balance of power in the world, the prospects of peace, the destiny of Russia, and the chances of development toward a better economic system in the advanced nations."
This remark is as true today as it was some 90 years ago. Chinese civilization, however, is now, at least, much more in the hands of the Chinese, the world balance of power remains in flux, the destiny of Russia is still undetermined, and a better economic system for the West (i.e., socialism) is still a distant dream but may be positively influenced by the economic development of China.
I didn't mention the "prospects for peace" and that is because in the short term Russell was absolutely correct: the civil war and revolution in China, World War II (in the Pacific), the Korean War, and the Vietnam War all had China, in one way or another, as their focus and the hope of eventually controlling her resources as a backdrop. Today as well many circles in the West, associated with international finance capital, see China as a future threat and the US military has contingency plans for a war with her. So, Russell was quite prescient to see the economic resources of China as the focal point of contemporary history.
Part Two coming up!
Tuesday, May 31, 2011
Mr. Justice Scalia and the Dybbuk
Mr. Justice Scalia and the Dybbuk
Thomas Riggins
I don't know exactly what the relation is between federal judges and dybbuks, but it seems that for second time since I can remember a federal justice has been possessed by a dybbuk.
The first time was when judge Julius Hoffman was possessed during the the 1969 trail of the Chicago Seven. Hoffman's behavior on the bench was so outrageous (he was later rebuked by a Federal Appeals Court) that the defense suggested that he been possessed by a dybbuk. Fortunately for him, the Radical Jewish Union in New York performed an exorcism, in absentia, in the the early 70s to free him of the dybbuk.
Now it seems that Justice Scalia has also been possessed by a dybbuk, even though dybbuks are not known to possess goyim, as no other explanation seems possible for the way he had demeaned his office by comments he made pertaining to the recent Supreme Court ruling requiring California to eliminate the severe over crowding in its prisons. (New York Times, 5-24-2011)
The court found that California was violating the Eighth Amendment (against cruel and unusual punishments) and must reduce its prison overcrowding by 30,000 souls or so over the next two years.
Here is some of evidence presented to the justices: prisoners held in cages the size of a telephone booth with no toilet; an inmate suicide rate 80 times the national average; a prisoner dies every 6 or 7 days as a result of unconstitutional behavior [that is 52 "capital punishments" as it were every year at least]. The Court, in ordering a reduction of the prison population by 30,000, will still leave the prison population at 137.5 % of capacity so some horrific conditions will still continue. The Times quotes David C. Fathi of the ACLU as saying, "This case involves ongoing, undisputed and lethal constitutional violations."
These horrible facts, being "undisputed", you might think the Court would have been outraged by this violation of the Constitution-- but it wasn't, it was only a 5 to 4 decision with the usual suspects caring little for the constitutional issues (i.e., Scalia, Alito (who has a touch of a Dybbuk himself), Thomas and Roberts).
Justice Kennedy, writing for the majority, said, "A prison which deprives prisoners of basic sustenance, including adequate medical care, is incompatible with the concept of human dignity and has no place in civilized society." The votes against the majority indicates that some justices think it IS compatible, but their views on what it means to be civilized are wanting in the extreme.
Scalia's comments were particularly disgusting and demeaned his office-- faced with the evidence of high suicide rates and the unjust suffering and deaths of prisoners, he tried to justify his inhumane vote by insinuating that the court would be responsible for releasing thousands of "happy go lucky felons" many of whom "will undoubtedly be fine physical specimens who have developed intimidating muscles pumping iron in the prison gym."
This type of polemic is far beneath the dignity of the Supreme Court and can only be explained the the presence of a dybbuk or similar creature in control of the justice's mouth (he gave a rare oral objection). The other three dissenters also worried about violence that may be let loose on society and shed crocodile tears for future victims. But they know perfectly well, as the state had already declared that NO violent prisoners or those convicted of violent crimes would be released.
This split vote reveals that at least four of the justices on the Supreme Court are lacking in basic feelings of humanity and have no concerns about outrageous violations of those parts of the Bill of Rights designed to protect people from governmental abuse. In the name of the Bill of Rights it is imperative that no Republican president should come to power and be able to appoint such troglodytes to the Court. As for Justice Scalia-- I hope he gets treatment for his dybbuk as soon as possible-- certainly before he offers any more decisions to the Court.
Thomas Riggins
I don't know exactly what the relation is between federal judges and dybbuks, but it seems that for second time since I can remember a federal justice has been possessed by a dybbuk.
The first time was when judge Julius Hoffman was possessed during the the 1969 trail of the Chicago Seven. Hoffman's behavior on the bench was so outrageous (he was later rebuked by a Federal Appeals Court) that the defense suggested that he been possessed by a dybbuk. Fortunately for him, the Radical Jewish Union in New York performed an exorcism, in absentia, in the the early 70s to free him of the dybbuk.
Now it seems that Justice Scalia has also been possessed by a dybbuk, even though dybbuks are not known to possess goyim, as no other explanation seems possible for the way he had demeaned his office by comments he made pertaining to the recent Supreme Court ruling requiring California to eliminate the severe over crowding in its prisons. (New York Times, 5-24-2011)
The court found that California was violating the Eighth Amendment (against cruel and unusual punishments) and must reduce its prison overcrowding by 30,000 souls or so over the next two years.
Here is some of evidence presented to the justices: prisoners held in cages the size of a telephone booth with no toilet; an inmate suicide rate 80 times the national average; a prisoner dies every 6 or 7 days as a result of unconstitutional behavior [that is 52 "capital punishments" as it were every year at least]. The Court, in ordering a reduction of the prison population by 30,000, will still leave the prison population at 137.5 % of capacity so some horrific conditions will still continue. The Times quotes David C. Fathi of the ACLU as saying, "This case involves ongoing, undisputed and lethal constitutional violations."
These horrible facts, being "undisputed", you might think the Court would have been outraged by this violation of the Constitution-- but it wasn't, it was only a 5 to 4 decision with the usual suspects caring little for the constitutional issues (i.e., Scalia, Alito (who has a touch of a Dybbuk himself), Thomas and Roberts).
Justice Kennedy, writing for the majority, said, "A prison which deprives prisoners of basic sustenance, including adequate medical care, is incompatible with the concept of human dignity and has no place in civilized society." The votes against the majority indicates that some justices think it IS compatible, but their views on what it means to be civilized are wanting in the extreme.
Scalia's comments were particularly disgusting and demeaned his office-- faced with the evidence of high suicide rates and the unjust suffering and deaths of prisoners, he tried to justify his inhumane vote by insinuating that the court would be responsible for releasing thousands of "happy go lucky felons" many of whom "will undoubtedly be fine physical specimens who have developed intimidating muscles pumping iron in the prison gym."
This type of polemic is far beneath the dignity of the Supreme Court and can only be explained the the presence of a dybbuk or similar creature in control of the justice's mouth (he gave a rare oral objection). The other three dissenters also worried about violence that may be let loose on society and shed crocodile tears for future victims. But they know perfectly well, as the state had already declared that NO violent prisoners or those convicted of violent crimes would be released.
This split vote reveals that at least four of the justices on the Supreme Court are lacking in basic feelings of humanity and have no concerns about outrageous violations of those parts of the Bill of Rights designed to protect people from governmental abuse. In the name of the Bill of Rights it is imperative that no Republican president should come to power and be able to appoint such troglodytes to the Court. As for Justice Scalia-- I hope he gets treatment for his dybbuk as soon as possible-- certainly before he offers any more decisions to the Court.
Wednesday, May 25, 2011
JUST WHAT DO IQ TESTS REALLY MEASURE?
Thomas Riggins
Ever since I can remember IQ tests and what they are supposed to measure has
been one of the biggest controversies in psychology. The one thing most people agreed upon was that, whatever was being measured, these tests did not measure "intelligence."
The latest explanation is that they measure a person's "motivation" AND the likely hood of future success ("Motivation Plays a Critical Role in Determining IQ Test Scores" ScienceDaily 4-27-2011). And by "motivation" is meant that of the person being tested for taking the test itself.
Research carried out at the University of Pennsylvania by Angela Lee Duckworth
looked for a correlation between IQ test taking scores and the motivation shown by the test takers-- did they bother to finish, did they rush through the test just be done with it, were they just going through the motions having no real interest or belief the test meant anything versus following orders, taking it seriously and thinking a high score would benefit them.
"When people use IQ tests in social science research, where thousands of kids are taking IQ tests where it doesn't matter to them what they get, what's the effect of motivation on those scores?" Duckworth asked.
What the research showed was that long term outcomes could be predicted by these tests (higher economic and social status). "But," Duckworth said, "what our study questions is whether that's entirely because smarter people do better in life than other people or whether part of the predictive power [is] coming from test motivation." In other words the IQ tests may be measuring motivation to succeed rather than raw intelligence.
Then she asks, "Could it be that part of the reason doing well on this test predicts future success is because the kinds of traits that would result in you doing well -- compliance with authority, self-control, attentiveness, competitiveness -- are traits that also help you in life?"
Now "compliance with authority" and "self-control" (i.e., rebelliousness) may well be traits that exploited groups within society lack and thus are not traits valued by mainstream society. It would seem the tests also measure DOCILITY as well as motivation.
Duckworth's conclusion regarding her study is it "means that for people who get high IQ scores, they probably try hard and are intelligent. But for people who get low scores, it can be an absence of either or both of those traits."
So, if you get a low score you are either not intelligent or not motivated, or both. It follows, however, that intelligent, even very highly intelligent, people could score low on the IQ test because they are not motivated to go along with the social regime in which they find themselves. Therefore IQ tests are UNRELIABLE measures of a person's "intelligence."
On the other hand people who are docile around authority and take orders easily are likely to score high on the test compared to people who question authority and the status quo-- everything else being equal-- so the that test's main use would seem to be as a tool used by the powers to be to identify and hold back people who might potentially challenge their monopoly and control of power.
The results of Duckworth's study suggests that progressives should object to the use of IQ tests on students and young people by the authorities in an attempt to classify their future behaviors.
Ever since I can remember IQ tests and what they are supposed to measure has
been one of the biggest controversies in psychology. The one thing most people agreed upon was that, whatever was being measured, these tests did not measure "intelligence."
The latest explanation is that they measure a person's "motivation" AND the likely hood of future success ("Motivation Plays a Critical Role in Determining IQ Test Scores" ScienceDaily 4-27-2011). And by "motivation" is meant that of the person being tested for taking the test itself.
Research carried out at the University of Pennsylvania by Angela Lee Duckworth
looked for a correlation between IQ test taking scores and the motivation shown by the test takers-- did they bother to finish, did they rush through the test just be done with it, were they just going through the motions having no real interest or belief the test meant anything versus following orders, taking it seriously and thinking a high score would benefit them.
"When people use IQ tests in social science research, where thousands of kids are taking IQ tests where it doesn't matter to them what they get, what's the effect of motivation on those scores?" Duckworth asked.
What the research showed was that long term outcomes could be predicted by these tests (higher economic and social status). "But," Duckworth said, "what our study questions is whether that's entirely because smarter people do better in life than other people or whether part of the predictive power [is] coming from test motivation." In other words the IQ tests may be measuring motivation to succeed rather than raw intelligence.
Then she asks, "Could it be that part of the reason doing well on this test predicts future success is because the kinds of traits that would result in you doing well -- compliance with authority, self-control, attentiveness, competitiveness -- are traits that also help you in life?"
Now "compliance with authority" and "self-control" (i.e., rebelliousness) may well be traits that exploited groups within society lack and thus are not traits valued by mainstream society. It would seem the tests also measure DOCILITY as well as motivation.
Duckworth's conclusion regarding her study is it "means that for people who get high IQ scores, they probably try hard and are intelligent. But for people who get low scores, it can be an absence of either or both of those traits."
So, if you get a low score you are either not intelligent or not motivated, or both. It follows, however, that intelligent, even very highly intelligent, people could score low on the IQ test because they are not motivated to go along with the social regime in which they find themselves. Therefore IQ tests are UNRELIABLE measures of a person's "intelligence."
On the other hand people who are docile around authority and take orders easily are likely to score high on the test compared to people who question authority and the status quo-- everything else being equal-- so the that test's main use would seem to be as a tool used by the powers to be to identify and hold back people who might potentially challenge their monopoly and control of power.
The results of Duckworth's study suggests that progressives should object to the use of IQ tests on students and young people by the authorities in an attempt to classify their future behaviors.
Wednesday, May 18, 2011
Thousands of Women Will Die of Breast Cancer Thanks to Republican Politics
Thomas Riggins
A study sponsored by the National Cancer Institute and recently published by ScienceDaily ("Air Pollution Exposure Affects Chances of Developing Premenopausal Breast Cancer, Study Finds" SD 4-20-2011) has found that both young girls and women (after their first baby) who have been exposed of air pollution may have had their DNA mutated so that they will contract breast cancer before menopause.
What the study showed was that this DNA mutation was greater in areas with higher levels of air pollution than in those with lower levels. These findings were presented at a recent meeting of the American Association for Cancer Research. The chief investigator, Katharine Dobson, stated, "The investigation looked for an association between exposure to pollution and alterations to DNA that influence the presence or absence of key proteins. Such genetic changes are thought to be major contributors to cancer development and progression, including at very early stages."
With this information at hand, plus the information we already have that air pollution causes untold numbers of deaths due to respiratory failures, you would think our law makers would want to reduce air pollution as much as possible to save women from these unnecessary deaths and the associated pain and suffering.
But it seems that Republican lawmakers (and conservative Democrats) and public officials are more interested in the money they get from the lobbyists representing the big polluting corporations-- oil, gas, coal, utilities, mining, etc., than they are in the health of the American people. They are perfectly willing to expose children to the deadly effects of air pollution and try and prevent any regulations from going into effect that might limit the rights of big business to dirty our air . They are on a mission to destroy the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA)-- which one of their own helped set up (President Nixon.)
Newt Gingrich (who is now running for the Republican nomination for president) for example, supports the movement to ABOLISH the EPA entirely and thus give free reign to the polluters. He claims, according to the Center for American Progress, that people who want to control the air have no respect for ordinary people and their jobs!
Meanwhile surveys by the American Lung Association and public opinions polls show that around 75% of the American people support the EPA and want even more regulation than the agency now tries to enforce. It is at least a good sign for progressives that the fascist leaning Republican right hasn't the faintest idea what the American people really want.
The American people want healthy air for themselves and their children-- the big energy corporations want bigger profits for themselves. Whose interests should prevail in a democracy? We shall soon find out as Congress hold hearing on these subjects.
The EPA says that newly proposed rules for reducing, forget about eliminating, deadly pollutants from power plants, cement kilns and industrial boilers-- pollutants such as toxic metals, mercury,and acid gases will prevent tens of thousands of lives every year. Tens of thousands!
So what-- those people are just collateral damage to the executives of the big polluting industries and their Republican lapdogs. Representatives of the polluters have testified to Congress that they just can't comply with the Clean Air Act, and besides it will cost too much and also cost jobs. Sorry no can do.
Riling the Republicans is the fact that the Supreme Court has ruled that CO2 can be considered a pollutant because of GLOBAL WARMING and subject to EPA regulation. But Republicans don't even believe in global warming! How can the Supreme Court rule on a non existent thing?
The good news is that the movement to abolish the EPA is limited to the House. The GOPoids don't have control of the Senate or the Presidency. It is our job to keep it that way and to recover the House from the lunatic fringe. This must be done in the name our health, the atmosphere and the fight against breast cancer and other deadly diseases spread by Republican politics.
A study sponsored by the National Cancer Institute and recently published by ScienceDaily ("Air Pollution Exposure Affects Chances of Developing Premenopausal Breast Cancer, Study Finds" SD 4-20-2011) has found that both young girls and women (after their first baby) who have been exposed of air pollution may have had their DNA mutated so that they will contract breast cancer before menopause.
What the study showed was that this DNA mutation was greater in areas with higher levels of air pollution than in those with lower levels. These findings were presented at a recent meeting of the American Association for Cancer Research. The chief investigator, Katharine Dobson, stated, "The investigation looked for an association between exposure to pollution and alterations to DNA that influence the presence or absence of key proteins. Such genetic changes are thought to be major contributors to cancer development and progression, including at very early stages."
With this information at hand, plus the information we already have that air pollution causes untold numbers of deaths due to respiratory failures, you would think our law makers would want to reduce air pollution as much as possible to save women from these unnecessary deaths and the associated pain and suffering.
But it seems that Republican lawmakers (and conservative Democrats) and public officials are more interested in the money they get from the lobbyists representing the big polluting corporations-- oil, gas, coal, utilities, mining, etc., than they are in the health of the American people. They are perfectly willing to expose children to the deadly effects of air pollution and try and prevent any regulations from going into effect that might limit the rights of big business to dirty our air . They are on a mission to destroy the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA)-- which one of their own helped set up (President Nixon.)
Newt Gingrich (who is now running for the Republican nomination for president) for example, supports the movement to ABOLISH the EPA entirely and thus give free reign to the polluters. He claims, according to the Center for American Progress, that people who want to control the air have no respect for ordinary people and their jobs!
Meanwhile surveys by the American Lung Association and public opinions polls show that around 75% of the American people support the EPA and want even more regulation than the agency now tries to enforce. It is at least a good sign for progressives that the fascist leaning Republican right hasn't the faintest idea what the American people really want.
The American people want healthy air for themselves and their children-- the big energy corporations want bigger profits for themselves. Whose interests should prevail in a democracy? We shall soon find out as Congress hold hearing on these subjects.
The EPA says that newly proposed rules for reducing, forget about eliminating, deadly pollutants from power plants, cement kilns and industrial boilers-- pollutants such as toxic metals, mercury,and acid gases will prevent tens of thousands of lives every year. Tens of thousands!
So what-- those people are just collateral damage to the executives of the big polluting industries and their Republican lapdogs. Representatives of the polluters have testified to Congress that they just can't comply with the Clean Air Act, and besides it will cost too much and also cost jobs. Sorry no can do.
Riling the Republicans is the fact that the Supreme Court has ruled that CO2 can be considered a pollutant because of GLOBAL WARMING and subject to EPA regulation. But Republicans don't even believe in global warming! How can the Supreme Court rule on a non existent thing?
The good news is that the movement to abolish the EPA is limited to the House. The GOPoids don't have control of the Senate or the Presidency. It is our job to keep it that way and to recover the House from the lunatic fringe. This must be done in the name our health, the atmosphere and the fight against breast cancer and other deadly diseases spread by Republican politics.
Sunday, May 15, 2011
Karl Marx on Eugen Dühring
Thomas Riggins
Anti-Dühring is Engels' enduring criticism of the mishmash of philosophy, science, and socialism published in Germany by Eugen Dühring (1833-1921) in the middle of the 19th century as an alternative to the thought of Karl Marx. Engels' book is divided into three parts-- philosophy, political science, and socialism. But Engels did not write every chapter in his famous book. Chapter 10, the last of the section on political economy, was written by his friend and life long collaborator Karl Marx. This article discusses Marx's opinions of Dühring in that chapter, entitled, "From the Critical History."
It is Dühring's 1871 work Critical History of Political Economy that Marx intends to critique, beginning with Dühring's claim that his work in Political Economy "is absolutely without precedent." Here we will find a definitive treatment of the subject in a scientific manner. The science is, he says, "peculiarly mine."
Dühring's first great "discovery" is that Political Science is a modern creation with no medieval or ancient roots. Marx points out, however, that this claim to modernity was already put forth by him in Capital and Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy. The difference is that Marx begins with the great founders of this science(from William Petty (1623-1687) and Boisguillebert (1646-1714) to Ricardo (1772-1823) and Sismondi (1773-1842) while Dühring begins with the "wretched abortions" of later bourgeois economists. Marx also has respect for the medieval and classical traditions.
Of course, since Political Science was founded in an attempt to scientifically understand modern CAPITALISM, you will not find it in the classical (slave) world , nor the middle ages (feudal). Capitalist societies are based on commodity production and exchange but there was limited commodity production and exchange in both the classical period and the Middle Ages and what the Ancients and other pre-moderns had to say about it is still worth while; Marx especially defends the economic writings of Aristotle (384-322 BC) and Plato (427-347 BC) from Dühring's unerudite "criticisms."
Dühring is also ignorant of the history and development of political economy in the modern period. For example, he takes a minor work [Antonio Serra's Breve trattato of 1613 as a defining work of Mercantilism-- the dominant economic theory of capitalism for its first 250 years of existence, ending around the time of Adam Smith (1723-1790)] while completely ignoring Thomas Mun's (1571-1641) A Discourse of Trade of 1609 which was "the mercantilist gospel" for the entire Seventeenth Century.
Worse than that is Dühring's treatment of William Petty, "the founder of modern political economy." After much hard thinking and many investigations, Petty in 1662
formulated one of the bed rock foundations of political economy as a science (Treatise on Taxes and Contributions). Here, Marx says he "lays it down in a definite and general form that the values of commodities must be measured by equal labour." Further, in a work of 1672 (Anatomy of Ireland) Petty has overcome "the last vestiges of mercantilist views."
These are great intellectual feats for the founder of the new science. Marx says about Petty, and this applies to Marx himself in our day, that what is "quite natural in a writer who is laying the foundations of political economy and is necessarily feeling his way, experimenting and struggling with a chaos of ideas which are only just taking shape, may seem strange in a writer who is surveying and summarizing more than a hundred and fifty years of investigation whose results have already passed in part from books into the consciousness of the generality." That Dühring fails to grasp this and thinks that "there is fair measure of superficiality" in Petty's thinking, only shows, Marx avers, that Dühring is a "vainglorious and pedantic mediocrity."
One of Petty's great successors was the the philosopher John Locke (1632-1704) who, besides his works on the social contract and the foundations of epistemology, also wrote an important work in the fledgling science of political economy: Some Considerations of the Consequences of the Lowering of Interests and Raising the Value of Money, 1691.
Petty had already compared interest to "rent on money"-- i.e. to "rent of land and houses." His position was that all rent should be unregulated and determined by the market. This, of course, is a reactionary view today but not so in 1691. This was part of the fight against Mercantilism which progressives in those days rightly viewed as a system that held back social and economic progress by using the state to impose import duties and taxes to defend domestic markets and subsidize exports.
Trying to regulate interest rates, i.e., rent on money, Petty felt was "against the law of nature". Petty, Marx wrote, "declared that legislative regulation of the rate of interest was as stupid as regulation of exports of precious metals [a pillar of Mercantilism] or regulation of exchange rates." Ideas that are reactionary and unworkable today (just think of the ridiculous economic and philosophical bloviations of Ayn Rand and her followers) in the end stage of capitalism, were forward looking and progressive during its birth pangs.
Locke, whose economic essay, basically followed Petty's lead, had a great influence in those European countries struggling to go beyond the strictures of the Mercanilists or economic nationalists. Petty, who is, incidentally credited with the invention of the laissie faire school, was also supported by Sir Dudley North (1641-1691) in A Discourse on Trade, 1691, a contemporary of Locke's, whose work, Marx says "is a classical exposition, driven home with relentless logic, of the doctrine of free trade-- both foreign and internal…."
Locke and North deserve credit for furthering Petty's views and in developing them along new lines. But Dühring sees none of this. For Marx, the period 1691-1752 is crucial for the understanding of the development of political science. In was in this period that the writers influenced by Petty, Locke, North, and others, laid down the foundations for overthrowing Mercantilism. This period is a blank page for Herr Dühring. Dühring passes directly to David Hume (1711-1776) and the physiocrats. Marx has many interesting things to say about Hume as an economist (his philosophy is not mentioned) and why Dühring is so enamored with him.
Hume published his Economic Essays in 1752 and they are, in our current terminology, basically a plagerised version of the 1734 work of Jacob Vanderlint (died 1740) Money Answers All Things. While Hume almost literally follows Vanderlint, he is, according to Marx, "less profound." Dühring is unaware of Vanderlint and praises Hume while none the less failing to understand what he says.
Since Dühring doesn't have a real understanding of Hume I will just present Marx's views for the record. Hume's theory of money is that money is just a TOKEN of value and, ceteris paribus, "commodity prices rise in proportion to the increase in the volume of money in circulation, and fall in proportion to its decrease." Hume is basically saying that the increase in the amount of gold and silver in circulation, due to the imports from the New World, increases the prices of commodities. He also notes that this takes some time to spread through out the country until it finally trickles down to the working people: in Hume's words "it must first quicken the diligence of every individual before it increases the price of labour." So old is Reaganomics.
But Hume is not, according to Marx, addressing the "real scientific question" in this description-- i.e., how an increase in money "affects the prices of commodities." However, Marx does not answer this question here as he really wants to remark on Hume's theory of INTEREST. Hume says it is the not the money supply but the rate of profit that regulates the amount of interest (here he attacks Locke's view). Hume's theory is not original. Just as he got almost all his ideas from Vanderlint on most economic issues, his interest theory is just a rehash, and not as exact, of the work of J. Massie (died 1784) An Essay on the Governing Causes of the Natural Rate of Interest, 1750.
Hume, by the way, maintains a low interest rate means a nation is in a "flourishing condition." Well maybe in his day-- but we have low interest rates in the USA and we are hardly "flourishing", at least with respect to the majority of the population which is made up of working people.
There are other problems with Hume's ideas, according to Marx. Marx says "he had not the slightest understanding of the function of the precious metals as the measure of value." This is because he didn't know what "value" itself meant in terms of capitalist production. For example, he corrects Locke for holding that the precious metals only have "an imaginary value" by saying what they really have is "a fictitious value." These views are "much inferior" not only to those of Petty but to his contemporaries as well who were writing on these subjects-- esp. his friend Adam Smith.
Hume also is blind to the economic world coming into existence all around him. He holds to the outmoded view "that the 'merchant' is the mainspring of production." Despite these limitations, Marx concedes that in his day Hume was still a "respectable" political economist. His criticism is meant to dispel the over wrought praise Hume is given by Dühring. Because, while respectable, Marx adds, "he is anything but an original investigator, an even less an epoch making one."
Why does Marx think that Dühring likes Hume so much? It is because Dühring identified with Hume. Hume was denounced by the church for some of his views, but not so much as Gibbon was for his, Dühring too fell afoul of the authorities for some of his views. Hume attained a better reputation as a philosopher, and Dühring thinks that will also be his fate (it was not to be.)
Marx can't resist giving two quotes which many Hume fans would resent. The first is from a popular German world history book by Friedrich Schlosser (1766-1861): "In politics Hume was and always remained conservative and strongly monarchist in his views." He was also highly racist in his views on Africans. And William Cobbett (1762-1835) calls him "selfish" and a "lying Historian" [Hume wrote a history of England] and implies he was an hypocrite for attacking monks for their fatness, their not having wives or children and begging for their bread while he himself was without "a family or a wife and was a great fat fellow, fed, in considerable part, out of public money, without having merited it by any real public services."
Well, enough about Hume. Marx next turns his attention to Dühring and the physiocrats, especially the Tableau Economique of Francois Quesnay (1694-1744). Marx says Dühring's attempt to explain Quesnay's economic theories (the physiocrats were the first real school of modern economics, not counting the Mercantilists as modern!, and Quesnay was the founder) is completely mixed up and confused and shows, once again, that Dühring doesn't know what he is talking about. But so that WE can understand what the school was all about, Marx undertakes to explain it for our benefit.
The physiocrats divided society into three classes: the PRODUCTIVE class-- i.e., agricultural workers and farmers-- all wealth comes from a nation's agricultural production; the LANDLORDS [landowners, the nobility, the Church] who live off of the surplus produced by the farmers; and the STERILE class [the industrial bourgeoisie, merchants, etc, who live off of the raw materials and surpluses of the productive class. Where's the proletariat? Sorry, 17th century France was too backward to have noticed this newly developing class.
Quesnay is not describing the actually real existing economy of France-- he is constructing a simple MODEL that represents a starting point for understanding the actual economy (just as Marx did in Das Kapital). Marx says Quesday makes three premises to simplify the model: 1) he only looks at circulation between the classes and not within them; 2) he only deals with simple reproduction and constant prices; and 3) he treats all the annual purchases between the classes as a lump sum. Marx also notes that at this time almost all the non-food articles consumed by peasant families in Europe were home made and "treated as supplementary to agriculture."
Lets start the ball rolling: the Tableau (all figures are based on the value of French money in the 17th century) the total value of the harvest for one year is the starting point. This amount will be the "total reproduction" in France for that year-- let us refer to it as 5 economic units [5EU-- this was 5 million livres in those days].
Since the farmers are the only productive class they have the entire 5EU to themselves. They produced it by investing 2EU in seeds, etc., so they have a surplus of 3EU. They give 2EU to the landlords as RENT and the landlords then buy food from them in the amount of 1EU for the year so now the farmers have 2EU and the landlords 1EU.
With their 1EU left, the landlords buy the things they need to live on, etc., [other than agricultural goods] from the STERILE class. The farmers also buy from the Sterile class say 1EU but the sterile class has to buy food from the farmers but it does not buy back as much in EUs from the farmers as the farmers gave to it because, instead of a fair trade in equivalents, the sterile class has extracted a profit from the farmers by selling their commodities to them above the cost of production AND above their real value.
By the end of the year it is time to reap another harvest and the cycle continues. I have simplified Marx's exposition because the physiocrats are now only of historical interest and the main point has been shown-- i.e., that for them all wealth is produced by the farmers and is then distributed about society to the other classes.
Having finished with the physiocrats Marx makes two more observations on Dühring's incompetence. First, Dühring thinks that the physiocratic school ended with Turgot (1727-1781) the originator of the Idea of Progress and controller-general of France, 1774-76, in charge of economic reforms under Louis XVI. But Marx says the school actually ended with Mirabeau (1749-1791) "the leading economic authority in the Constituent Assembly of 1789."
Second, Dühring barely mentions Sir James Steuart (1712-1780) whose work was between Hume and Adam Smith and who "permanently enriched the domain of political economy" (with An Inquiry into the Principles of Political Economy, 1767). And what he does say about him is wrong.
Marx ends his chapter with the opinion that Dühring's Critical History is not worth reading, and he is particularly upset that Dühring begins his history with the large landlords of ancient history and doesn't know anything about "the common ownership of land in the tribal and
village communities, which is the real starting-point of all history."
And with that said, we conclude our review of Part II of Herr Eugen Dühring's Revolution in Science.
Anti-Dühring is Engels' enduring criticism of the mishmash of philosophy, science, and socialism published in Germany by Eugen Dühring (1833-1921) in the middle of the 19th century as an alternative to the thought of Karl Marx. Engels' book is divided into three parts-- philosophy, political science, and socialism. But Engels did not write every chapter in his famous book. Chapter 10, the last of the section on political economy, was written by his friend and life long collaborator Karl Marx. This article discusses Marx's opinions of Dühring in that chapter, entitled, "From the Critical History."
It is Dühring's 1871 work Critical History of Political Economy that Marx intends to critique, beginning with Dühring's claim that his work in Political Economy "is absolutely without precedent." Here we will find a definitive treatment of the subject in a scientific manner. The science is, he says, "peculiarly mine."
Dühring's first great "discovery" is that Political Science is a modern creation with no medieval or ancient roots. Marx points out, however, that this claim to modernity was already put forth by him in Capital and Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy. The difference is that Marx begins with the great founders of this science(from William Petty (1623-1687) and Boisguillebert (1646-1714) to Ricardo (1772-1823) and Sismondi (1773-1842) while Dühring begins with the "wretched abortions" of later bourgeois economists. Marx also has respect for the medieval and classical traditions.
Of course, since Political Science was founded in an attempt to scientifically understand modern CAPITALISM, you will not find it in the classical (slave) world , nor the middle ages (feudal). Capitalist societies are based on commodity production and exchange but there was limited commodity production and exchange in both the classical period and the Middle Ages and what the Ancients and other pre-moderns had to say about it is still worth while; Marx especially defends the economic writings of Aristotle (384-322 BC) and Plato (427-347 BC) from Dühring's unerudite "criticisms."
Dühring is also ignorant of the history and development of political economy in the modern period. For example, he takes a minor work [Antonio Serra's Breve trattato of 1613 as a defining work of Mercantilism-- the dominant economic theory of capitalism for its first 250 years of existence, ending around the time of Adam Smith (1723-1790)] while completely ignoring Thomas Mun's (1571-1641) A Discourse of Trade of 1609 which was "the mercantilist gospel" for the entire Seventeenth Century.
Worse than that is Dühring's treatment of William Petty, "the founder of modern political economy." After much hard thinking and many investigations, Petty in 1662
formulated one of the bed rock foundations of political economy as a science (Treatise on Taxes and Contributions). Here, Marx says he "lays it down in a definite and general form that the values of commodities must be measured by equal labour." Further, in a work of 1672 (Anatomy of Ireland) Petty has overcome "the last vestiges of mercantilist views."
These are great intellectual feats for the founder of the new science. Marx says about Petty, and this applies to Marx himself in our day, that what is "quite natural in a writer who is laying the foundations of political economy and is necessarily feeling his way, experimenting and struggling with a chaos of ideas which are only just taking shape, may seem strange in a writer who is surveying and summarizing more than a hundred and fifty years of investigation whose results have already passed in part from books into the consciousness of the generality." That Dühring fails to grasp this and thinks that "there is fair measure of superficiality" in Petty's thinking, only shows, Marx avers, that Dühring is a "vainglorious and pedantic mediocrity."
One of Petty's great successors was the the philosopher John Locke (1632-1704) who, besides his works on the social contract and the foundations of epistemology, also wrote an important work in the fledgling science of political economy: Some Considerations of the Consequences of the Lowering of Interests and Raising the Value of Money, 1691.
Petty had already compared interest to "rent on money"-- i.e. to "rent of land and houses." His position was that all rent should be unregulated and determined by the market. This, of course, is a reactionary view today but not so in 1691. This was part of the fight against Mercantilism which progressives in those days rightly viewed as a system that held back social and economic progress by using the state to impose import duties and taxes to defend domestic markets and subsidize exports.
Trying to regulate interest rates, i.e., rent on money, Petty felt was "against the law of nature". Petty, Marx wrote, "declared that legislative regulation of the rate of interest was as stupid as regulation of exports of precious metals [a pillar of Mercantilism] or regulation of exchange rates." Ideas that are reactionary and unworkable today (just think of the ridiculous economic and philosophical bloviations of Ayn Rand and her followers) in the end stage of capitalism, were forward looking and progressive during its birth pangs.
Locke, whose economic essay, basically followed Petty's lead, had a great influence in those European countries struggling to go beyond the strictures of the Mercanilists or economic nationalists. Petty, who is, incidentally credited with the invention of the laissie faire school, was also supported by Sir Dudley North (1641-1691) in A Discourse on Trade, 1691, a contemporary of Locke's, whose work, Marx says "is a classical exposition, driven home with relentless logic, of the doctrine of free trade-- both foreign and internal…."
Locke and North deserve credit for furthering Petty's views and in developing them along new lines. But Dühring sees none of this. For Marx, the period 1691-1752 is crucial for the understanding of the development of political science. In was in this period that the writers influenced by Petty, Locke, North, and others, laid down the foundations for overthrowing Mercantilism. This period is a blank page for Herr Dühring. Dühring passes directly to David Hume (1711-1776) and the physiocrats. Marx has many interesting things to say about Hume as an economist (his philosophy is not mentioned) and why Dühring is so enamored with him.
Hume published his Economic Essays in 1752 and they are, in our current terminology, basically a plagerised version of the 1734 work of Jacob Vanderlint (died 1740) Money Answers All Things. While Hume almost literally follows Vanderlint, he is, according to Marx, "less profound." Dühring is unaware of Vanderlint and praises Hume while none the less failing to understand what he says.
Since Dühring doesn't have a real understanding of Hume I will just present Marx's views for the record. Hume's theory of money is that money is just a TOKEN of value and, ceteris paribus, "commodity prices rise in proportion to the increase in the volume of money in circulation, and fall in proportion to its decrease." Hume is basically saying that the increase in the amount of gold and silver in circulation, due to the imports from the New World, increases the prices of commodities. He also notes that this takes some time to spread through out the country until it finally trickles down to the working people: in Hume's words "it must first quicken the diligence of every individual before it increases the price of labour." So old is Reaganomics.
But Hume is not, according to Marx, addressing the "real scientific question" in this description-- i.e., how an increase in money "affects the prices of commodities." However, Marx does not answer this question here as he really wants to remark on Hume's theory of INTEREST. Hume says it is the not the money supply but the rate of profit that regulates the amount of interest (here he attacks Locke's view). Hume's theory is not original. Just as he got almost all his ideas from Vanderlint on most economic issues, his interest theory is just a rehash, and not as exact, of the work of J. Massie (died 1784) An Essay on the Governing Causes of the Natural Rate of Interest, 1750.
Hume, by the way, maintains a low interest rate means a nation is in a "flourishing condition." Well maybe in his day-- but we have low interest rates in the USA and we are hardly "flourishing", at least with respect to the majority of the population which is made up of working people.
There are other problems with Hume's ideas, according to Marx. Marx says "he had not the slightest understanding of the function of the precious metals as the measure of value." This is because he didn't know what "value" itself meant in terms of capitalist production. For example, he corrects Locke for holding that the precious metals only have "an imaginary value" by saying what they really have is "a fictitious value." These views are "much inferior" not only to those of Petty but to his contemporaries as well who were writing on these subjects-- esp. his friend Adam Smith.
Hume also is blind to the economic world coming into existence all around him. He holds to the outmoded view "that the 'merchant' is the mainspring of production." Despite these limitations, Marx concedes that in his day Hume was still a "respectable" political economist. His criticism is meant to dispel the over wrought praise Hume is given by Dühring. Because, while respectable, Marx adds, "he is anything but an original investigator, an even less an epoch making one."
Why does Marx think that Dühring likes Hume so much? It is because Dühring identified with Hume. Hume was denounced by the church for some of his views, but not so much as Gibbon was for his, Dühring too fell afoul of the authorities for some of his views. Hume attained a better reputation as a philosopher, and Dühring thinks that will also be his fate (it was not to be.)
Marx can't resist giving two quotes which many Hume fans would resent. The first is from a popular German world history book by Friedrich Schlosser (1766-1861): "In politics Hume was and always remained conservative and strongly monarchist in his views." He was also highly racist in his views on Africans. And William Cobbett (1762-1835) calls him "selfish" and a "lying Historian" [Hume wrote a history of England] and implies he was an hypocrite for attacking monks for their fatness, their not having wives or children and begging for their bread while he himself was without "a family or a wife and was a great fat fellow, fed, in considerable part, out of public money, without having merited it by any real public services."
Well, enough about Hume. Marx next turns his attention to Dühring and the physiocrats, especially the Tableau Economique of Francois Quesnay (1694-1744). Marx says Dühring's attempt to explain Quesnay's economic theories (the physiocrats were the first real school of modern economics, not counting the Mercantilists as modern!, and Quesnay was the founder) is completely mixed up and confused and shows, once again, that Dühring doesn't know what he is talking about. But so that WE can understand what the school was all about, Marx undertakes to explain it for our benefit.
The physiocrats divided society into three classes: the PRODUCTIVE class-- i.e., agricultural workers and farmers-- all wealth comes from a nation's agricultural production; the LANDLORDS [landowners, the nobility, the Church] who live off of the surplus produced by the farmers; and the STERILE class [the industrial bourgeoisie, merchants, etc, who live off of the raw materials and surpluses of the productive class. Where's the proletariat? Sorry, 17th century France was too backward to have noticed this newly developing class.
Quesnay is not describing the actually real existing economy of France-- he is constructing a simple MODEL that represents a starting point for understanding the actual economy (just as Marx did in Das Kapital). Marx says Quesday makes three premises to simplify the model: 1) he only looks at circulation between the classes and not within them; 2) he only deals with simple reproduction and constant prices; and 3) he treats all the annual purchases between the classes as a lump sum. Marx also notes that at this time almost all the non-food articles consumed by peasant families in Europe were home made and "treated as supplementary to agriculture."
Lets start the ball rolling: the Tableau (all figures are based on the value of French money in the 17th century) the total value of the harvest for one year is the starting point. This amount will be the "total reproduction" in France for that year-- let us refer to it as 5 economic units [5EU-- this was 5 million livres in those days].
Since the farmers are the only productive class they have the entire 5EU to themselves. They produced it by investing 2EU in seeds, etc., so they have a surplus of 3EU. They give 2EU to the landlords as RENT and the landlords then buy food from them in the amount of 1EU for the year so now the farmers have 2EU and the landlords 1EU.
With their 1EU left, the landlords buy the things they need to live on, etc., [other than agricultural goods] from the STERILE class. The farmers also buy from the Sterile class say 1EU but the sterile class has to buy food from the farmers but it does not buy back as much in EUs from the farmers as the farmers gave to it because, instead of a fair trade in equivalents, the sterile class has extracted a profit from the farmers by selling their commodities to them above the cost of production AND above their real value.
By the end of the year it is time to reap another harvest and the cycle continues. I have simplified Marx's exposition because the physiocrats are now only of historical interest and the main point has been shown-- i.e., that for them all wealth is produced by the farmers and is then distributed about society to the other classes.
Having finished with the physiocrats Marx makes two more observations on Dühring's incompetence. First, Dühring thinks that the physiocratic school ended with Turgot (1727-1781) the originator of the Idea of Progress and controller-general of France, 1774-76, in charge of economic reforms under Louis XVI. But Marx says the school actually ended with Mirabeau (1749-1791) "the leading economic authority in the Constituent Assembly of 1789."
Second, Dühring barely mentions Sir James Steuart (1712-1780) whose work was between Hume and Adam Smith and who "permanently enriched the domain of political economy" (with An Inquiry into the Principles of Political Economy, 1767). And what he does say about him is wrong.
Marx ends his chapter with the opinion that Dühring's Critical History is not worth reading, and he is particularly upset that Dühring begins his history with the large landlords of ancient history and doesn't know anything about "the common ownership of land in the tribal and
village communities, which is the real starting-point of all history."
And with that said, we conclude our review of Part II of Herr Eugen Dühring's Revolution in Science.
Tuesday, May 10, 2011
Profits, Pollution and Politics
Thomas Riggins
While the big oil companies and the government collude to get more off shore oil rigs up and running, scientists are busy warning us of the dangers to human health and well being of the pollution that inevitably comes with off shore drilling.
On May 1 of this year ScienceDaily published an article warning of the danger to fetal development from chemicals found in crude oil: SD 5-1-2011 "Chemical Found in Crude Oil Linked to Congenital Heart Disease: Fetal Exposure to Solvents May Damage Heart."
Congenital Heart Disease (CHD) is one of the biggest causes of death in children and can be a chronic life long condition. A scientific study carried out by Dr. D. Gale McCarver and published by the American Academy of Pediatrics indicates that up to 82% of children studied may have had fetal exposure to the chemicals in crude oil and to other oil based solvents.
Two of the many (there are seventeen or so deadly chemicals involved) that could cause abnormal heart development in a fetus are ethyl benzene and trichloroethylene (TCE).
Fetuses can be contaminated with ethyl benzene by exposure to crude oil in spills such as the gigantic spill caused by BP in the Gulf of Mexico or the one caused by Exxon in Alaska by the wreck of the Exxon Valdez. Besides oil spills, fetal contamination can occur by a woman breathing car emissions, gasoline vapors or tobacco smoke.
We also have to be on guard against TCE which is found at hazardous waste dumps as well as in commercial products (spot removers, degreasers, and other types of cleaning products.
It is not only CHF that can be traced back to these oil products. An earlier report in SD, "Biomedical Scientist Concerned About Effects of Oil Spill on Human Health" (6-25-2010) detailed warnings from Professor Bongsup Cho, a leading researcher funded by the American Cancer Society and National Institutes of Health regarding the chemicals in the tar balls found along the coast and out to sea in the Gulf as a result of the BP oil spill.
These tar balls are contaminated with the same cancer causing chemicals found in tobacco smoke and diesel exhaust. Professor Cho is worried about their effect on wildlife and animals in the food chain and what can happen to humans when they are exposed to them-- either in nature or in the food chain (eating fish or shrimp, for example.)
These chemicals, besides being carcinogens, can also cause DNA mutations and birth defects. Professor Cho thinks that "orange sheen" is another potential human health hazard. This is the sheen covering much of the Gulf as a result the chemical interaction of crude oil and the chemicals used by the oil companies to disperse it.
With all these deadly chemicals being dumped in the environment scientists are being prevented from even finding out what many of them are , there are some 80,000 of them, because the capitalist corporations are more interested in their profits that in people and the government PERMITS them to keep secret some of the chemicals they are dumping [what we don't know can't hurt us!]. Professor Cho says, with regard to orange sheen, that "nobody knows what's in that color [he means nobody outside of the oil companies] and how toxic the chemicals are. Companies keep the chemical makeup of the dispersants secret."
Its about the time our government started forcing these private capitalist corporations to take more interest in protecting people and the environment. Nationalizing them and letting the workers run them would be a good first step.
While the big oil companies and the government collude to get more off shore oil rigs up and running, scientists are busy warning us of the dangers to human health and well being of the pollution that inevitably comes with off shore drilling.
On May 1 of this year ScienceDaily published an article warning of the danger to fetal development from chemicals found in crude oil: SD 5-1-2011 "Chemical Found in Crude Oil Linked to Congenital Heart Disease: Fetal Exposure to Solvents May Damage Heart."
Congenital Heart Disease (CHD) is one of the biggest causes of death in children and can be a chronic life long condition. A scientific study carried out by Dr. D. Gale McCarver and published by the American Academy of Pediatrics indicates that up to 82% of children studied may have had fetal exposure to the chemicals in crude oil and to other oil based solvents.
Two of the many (there are seventeen or so deadly chemicals involved) that could cause abnormal heart development in a fetus are ethyl benzene and trichloroethylene (TCE).
Fetuses can be contaminated with ethyl benzene by exposure to crude oil in spills such as the gigantic spill caused by BP in the Gulf of Mexico or the one caused by Exxon in Alaska by the wreck of the Exxon Valdez. Besides oil spills, fetal contamination can occur by a woman breathing car emissions, gasoline vapors or tobacco smoke.
We also have to be on guard against TCE which is found at hazardous waste dumps as well as in commercial products (spot removers, degreasers, and other types of cleaning products.
It is not only CHF that can be traced back to these oil products. An earlier report in SD, "Biomedical Scientist Concerned About Effects of Oil Spill on Human Health" (6-25-2010) detailed warnings from Professor Bongsup Cho, a leading researcher funded by the American Cancer Society and National Institutes of Health regarding the chemicals in the tar balls found along the coast and out to sea in the Gulf as a result of the BP oil spill.
These tar balls are contaminated with the same cancer causing chemicals found in tobacco smoke and diesel exhaust. Professor Cho is worried about their effect on wildlife and animals in the food chain and what can happen to humans when they are exposed to them-- either in nature or in the food chain (eating fish or shrimp, for example.)
These chemicals, besides being carcinogens, can also cause DNA mutations and birth defects. Professor Cho thinks that "orange sheen" is another potential human health hazard. This is the sheen covering much of the Gulf as a result the chemical interaction of crude oil and the chemicals used by the oil companies to disperse it.
With all these deadly chemicals being dumped in the environment scientists are being prevented from even finding out what many of them are , there are some 80,000 of them, because the capitalist corporations are more interested in their profits that in people and the government PERMITS them to keep secret some of the chemicals they are dumping [what we don't know can't hurt us!]. Professor Cho says, with regard to orange sheen, that "nobody knows what's in that color [he means nobody outside of the oil companies] and how toxic the chemicals are. Companies keep the chemical makeup of the dispersants secret."
Its about the time our government started forcing these private capitalist corporations to take more interest in protecting people and the environment. Nationalizing them and letting the workers run them would be a good first step.
Tuesday, May 03, 2011
Evidence of Torture at Gitmo Covered Up
Thomas Riggins
On April 26, 2011 ScienceDaily reported the results of a new study made of the medical records of GTMO prisoners ("Medical Evidence of Torture Neglected in Guantanamo Bay Detainees, Suggests Review of Records"). The study was first reported in the online journal PLoS Medicine. The researchers, Vincent Iacopino (Physicians for Human Rights) and Stephen Xenakis, a retired US Army brigadier general, found that the medical personnel responsible for looking after the GTMO prisoners neither documented nor asked the causes for either the physical or mental injuries of the people they were supposed to "care" for. The researchers only had access to nine case files but the evidence they uncovered was considered "compelling" with respect to this dereliction of duty.
The GTMO prisoners described treatment by the US soldiers and other personnel that is torture according to the UN Convention Against Torture. The US says it doesn't torture prisoners and so uses a narrower definition than the UN and calls its techniques "enhanced interrogation." And Saddam Hussein didn't "gas" people, they were victims of "enhanced atmospheric pollution."
Here is what the US did, call it what you will. The prisoners were beaten really severely, bones were fractured, they were sexually assaulted, some were told they would be raped, they were water boarded to the point of asphyxiation, they were taken to be executed then spared at the last moment, they were "disappeared" then returned, they were not allowed to sleep, they were subject to extreme temperatures, they were put in stress positions, and forced to be nude. This last, by the way, is now used on the mainland --e.g, Pvt. Manning.
All these injuries, and the psychological results were in the medical records, without saying how they occurred, and the injuries are all CONSISTANT with torture techniques the prisoners reported being subject to. The Department of Defense medical personal failed to document any of the causes of the prisoners injuries and any psychological problems resulting from torture they attributed to "personality disorders" or "routine stressors of confinement" according to SD.
This evidence shows that the government's medical personnel FAILED both professionally and personally in their duty to their patients. It appears to me that they were complicit in covering up crimes against humanity in the treatment of these prisoners and in violations of basic human rights. And not only to me. The editors of PLoS wrote:"This paper adds new evidence that will bolster calls for further investigation into the complicity of medical personnel in torture at Guantanamo Bay, which clearly breaches fundamental human rights."
On April 26, 2011 ScienceDaily reported the results of a new study made of the medical records of GTMO prisoners ("Medical Evidence of Torture Neglected in Guantanamo Bay Detainees, Suggests Review of Records"). The study was first reported in the online journal PLoS Medicine. The researchers, Vincent Iacopino (Physicians for Human Rights) and Stephen Xenakis, a retired US Army brigadier general, found that the medical personnel responsible for looking after the GTMO prisoners neither documented nor asked the causes for either the physical or mental injuries of the people they were supposed to "care" for. The researchers only had access to nine case files but the evidence they uncovered was considered "compelling" with respect to this dereliction of duty.
The GTMO prisoners described treatment by the US soldiers and other personnel that is torture according to the UN Convention Against Torture. The US says it doesn't torture prisoners and so uses a narrower definition than the UN and calls its techniques "enhanced interrogation." And Saddam Hussein didn't "gas" people, they were victims of "enhanced atmospheric pollution."
Here is what the US did, call it what you will. The prisoners were beaten really severely, bones were fractured, they were sexually assaulted, some were told they would be raped, they were water boarded to the point of asphyxiation, they were taken to be executed then spared at the last moment, they were "disappeared" then returned, they were not allowed to sleep, they were subject to extreme temperatures, they were put in stress positions, and forced to be nude. This last, by the way, is now used on the mainland --e.g, Pvt. Manning.
All these injuries, and the psychological results were in the medical records, without saying how they occurred, and the injuries are all CONSISTANT with torture techniques the prisoners reported being subject to. The Department of Defense medical personal failed to document any of the causes of the prisoners injuries and any psychological problems resulting from torture they attributed to "personality disorders" or "routine stressors of confinement" according to SD.
This evidence shows that the government's medical personnel FAILED both professionally and personally in their duty to their patients. It appears to me that they were complicit in covering up crimes against humanity in the treatment of these prisoners and in violations of basic human rights. And not only to me. The editors of PLoS wrote:"This paper adds new evidence that will bolster calls for further investigation into the complicity of medical personnel in torture at Guantanamo Bay, which clearly breaches fundamental human rights."
Sunday, April 24, 2011
Republican Rejection of Science Threatens Humanity
Thomas Riggins
ScienceDaily for April 19, 2001 has a disturbing news report ("Democrats and Republicans Increasingly Divided Over Global Warming, Study Says"). While scientists around the world are coming to a growing consensus concurring on the reality of global warming Americans are being polarized along political lines with Democrats accepting the scientific consensus and Republicans rejecting it.
Dr. Aaron M. McCright of Michigan State University published "a first-of-its-kind"
study of the politics of global warming. McCright, who was named in 2007 as a Kavli Frontiers Fellow in the National Academy of Sciences for his work on the sociology of climate change, says that it is "depressing" to see the gap growing between Democrats and Republicans on the issue of climate change. The gap jumped by 30% between 2001 and 2010. SD says McCright concludes that this gap keeps "meaningful national energy policies from being considered."
As long as science is rejected for pseudo-science how can we meaningfully solve our problems. How could we have funded cancer research if Republicans rejected the scientific view that cancers exist? This is pretty much where we are at today on the issue of global warming.
McCright says, "Instead of a public debate about different policies to deal with global warming, a significant percentage of the American public is still debating the science. As a result, we're failing to significantly address one of the most serious problems of our time."
By going over 10 years of Gallup Poll results the study found that people on the political right are increasingly rejecting the scientific consensus on global warming while people on the political left basically accept it.
Other finding were that in 2001 49% of Republicans thought global warming was already having effects but this number dropped to 29% in 2010. In 2001 60% of Democrats thought global warming was under way, a number that grew to 70% by 2010. In 2001 the gap between Republicans and Democrats was 11% and in 2010 41%.
If people did not call themselves Republicans or Democrats, but used the terms conservative and liberal instead then the gap grew from around 18% in 2001 to 44% in 2010.
Having a college degree makes it more likely that liberals and Democrats accept the scientific view but more unlikely that Republicans and conservatives will. If even college educated Republicans and conservatives are rejecting science then we are in real trouble. However, since we don't know how many of them got their degrees from bible colleges we can't really know for sure what's going on with them.
McCright explains these figures from the "prevailing" theory of how the American people get their political ideas-- from "political elites." McCright says, "In the last few decades political elites have become polarized on climate change. This has driven the political divide on this topic within the American public, as regular citizens have taken cues from ideological and party leaders they trust."
People also tend to turn to media outlets that reinforce what they already think. Think of Fox news vs NPR (which itself has more conservative than liberal viewpoints expressed, yet is deemed liberal). People who like one rarely pay attention to the other. Yet one actually reports scientific findings and the other prefers pseudo-science (take your pick).
Well, "this is not a recipe," McCright says, "for promoting a civil science-based discussion on this very serious environmental problem. Like with the national discussion on health care, we don't even agree on what the basic facts are."
Are things looking better? Not according to Dr. McCright. SD quotes him as follows: "Many Republican Party leaders have moved further to the right since the 2008 presidential election. We've also seen attacks on climate science by Tea Party activists. It seems like climate change denial has become something of a litmus test for Republican candidates. This continued elite polarization on climate change means that the general public will likely remain politically divided on climate change for a while."
So, the future does not portend well for the US to do anything serious in the realm of climate change. With many scientists convinced that 350 Parts per million of atmospheric CO2 is the upper limit that our air can take that is compatible in the long run with most life on Earth (we are already at 391 ppm and growing by 2ppm every year) the longer the Republicans ignore science and cater to special interest groups [i.e., the big capitalist corporations] the more damage they do to the entire planet for their personal short term agendas. This is a real crime against humanity now and in the future.
ScienceDaily for April 19, 2001 has a disturbing news report ("Democrats and Republicans Increasingly Divided Over Global Warming, Study Says"). While scientists around the world are coming to a growing consensus concurring on the reality of global warming Americans are being polarized along political lines with Democrats accepting the scientific consensus and Republicans rejecting it.
Dr. Aaron M. McCright of Michigan State University published "a first-of-its-kind"
study of the politics of global warming. McCright, who was named in 2007 as a Kavli Frontiers Fellow in the National Academy of Sciences for his work on the sociology of climate change, says that it is "depressing" to see the gap growing between Democrats and Republicans on the issue of climate change. The gap jumped by 30% between 2001 and 2010. SD says McCright concludes that this gap keeps "meaningful national energy policies from being considered."
As long as science is rejected for pseudo-science how can we meaningfully solve our problems. How could we have funded cancer research if Republicans rejected the scientific view that cancers exist? This is pretty much where we are at today on the issue of global warming.
McCright says, "Instead of a public debate about different policies to deal with global warming, a significant percentage of the American public is still debating the science. As a result, we're failing to significantly address one of the most serious problems of our time."
By going over 10 years of Gallup Poll results the study found that people on the political right are increasingly rejecting the scientific consensus on global warming while people on the political left basically accept it.
Other finding were that in 2001 49% of Republicans thought global warming was already having effects but this number dropped to 29% in 2010. In 2001 60% of Democrats thought global warming was under way, a number that grew to 70% by 2010. In 2001 the gap between Republicans and Democrats was 11% and in 2010 41%.
If people did not call themselves Republicans or Democrats, but used the terms conservative and liberal instead then the gap grew from around 18% in 2001 to 44% in 2010.
Having a college degree makes it more likely that liberals and Democrats accept the scientific view but more unlikely that Republicans and conservatives will. If even college educated Republicans and conservatives are rejecting science then we are in real trouble. However, since we don't know how many of them got their degrees from bible colleges we can't really know for sure what's going on with them.
McCright explains these figures from the "prevailing" theory of how the American people get their political ideas-- from "political elites." McCright says, "In the last few decades political elites have become polarized on climate change. This has driven the political divide on this topic within the American public, as regular citizens have taken cues from ideological and party leaders they trust."
People also tend to turn to media outlets that reinforce what they already think. Think of Fox news vs NPR (which itself has more conservative than liberal viewpoints expressed, yet is deemed liberal). People who like one rarely pay attention to the other. Yet one actually reports scientific findings and the other prefers pseudo-science (take your pick).
Well, "this is not a recipe," McCright says, "for promoting a civil science-based discussion on this very serious environmental problem. Like with the national discussion on health care, we don't even agree on what the basic facts are."
Are things looking better? Not according to Dr. McCright. SD quotes him as follows: "Many Republican Party leaders have moved further to the right since the 2008 presidential election. We've also seen attacks on climate science by Tea Party activists. It seems like climate change denial has become something of a litmus test for Republican candidates. This continued elite polarization on climate change means that the general public will likely remain politically divided on climate change for a while."
So, the future does not portend well for the US to do anything serious in the realm of climate change. With many scientists convinced that 350 Parts per million of atmospheric CO2 is the upper limit that our air can take that is compatible in the long run with most life on Earth (we are already at 391 ppm and growing by 2ppm every year) the longer the Republicans ignore science and cater to special interest groups [i.e., the big capitalist corporations] the more damage they do to the entire planet for their personal short term agendas. This is a real crime against humanity now and in the future.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)