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On The Costs of Being Left

By Paul Street at Apr 12, 2005

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Don't let the title of this essay throw you. I'm happy to have been a person of the left since at least age 19, when I first read Leo Huberman's Man's Worldly Goods, Eric Hobsbawm's The Age of Revolution, and Karl Marx and Frederich Engels' Communist Manifesto. I've derived considerable personal satisfaction and no small sense of community from being part of that sizeable slice of humanity that is passionately and intractably dissatisfied with institutions and ideas that generate and/or sustain social inequality and hierarchy. We are lucky on the left to grasp things for something closer to what they really are than what the masters of policy and opinion say they are: to see an illegal and murderous imperial conquest in what the masters call a war against terrorism and for democracy; to see the transparent rule of the heavily state-subsidized corporation (designed precisely to master and internalize market processes and forces) in what the masters call the glorious reign of “the free market;” to see the advancement of concentrated investor rights in what the “elite” calls “free trade;” to see business class plutocracy in what the rulers call "democracy;" to see authoritarian thought-control and propagandistic power-worship in what they call a “free press,” “independent media,” “educational standards,” and “popular culture;” to see labor exploitation and capitalist profit in what they call a reasonable exchange of equivalents – money for labor (really labor power); to see ecocide, disease, and widening social disparity in what they praise as “economic growth;” to see racial, ethnic, and gender disparity beneath what they call color- and sex-blind multicultural diversity; to see noble democratic dissent in what they call subversion and even "anti-Americanism;" to see nihilistic oppression in what they call “faith;" to see fatalism behind what they call "realism;" to see exhausting over-work behind what they call "productivity;" to see deepening corporate control behind what they call "efficiency;" to see authoritarian distortion behind their definition of "human nature." The list of corrected meanings goes on and on. And we are also unlucky ….to see through their lies and behind their masks. Who on the left has not at least once cursed his or her possession of the ability to immediately take apart the latest tragic absurdity playing itself out – between the endless stream of commodity-fetishising advertisements – on The Corporation's glowing telescreens and ubiquitous newssheets? Who amongst us has not once wondered if we would not be better off NOT knowing that so incredibly much of what we and our fellow citizens are routinely told by the authorities is complete unadulterated bullshit. It is sheer Orwellian brain torture to hear over and over again that 2+2= 5, that War is Peace, that Love is Hate, and (for one among many examples) that hyper-regressive tax cuts for the opulent few are designed to help the middle class and the poor. It's horrifying to see and hear masses of ordinary enfranchised people, purported citizens in a supposed democracy, apparently believing – and acting in accord with – such miserable totalitarian doublespeak. It messes with your mind and your heart. It attacks your faith in humanity. Cursed with my basic knowledge (nothing brilliant here, I just pay attention to current events and read a little bit of what comes out on the topic) of the special role that The Corporation plays in the subversion of democracy at home and abroad, I am one of few people at the supposed civil rights agency where I work who loses sleep over the fact that my employing organization receives significant institutional income from tyrannical union-busting corporations, with terrible consequences for the policy orientation of that institution. People who don't know or care that something's "rotten in the state of Denmark" don't have to worry about changing Denmark. They also don't have to constantly reproach themselves for not doing more to make Denmark right. Of course, one of the reasons people prefer not to give a decent hearing to radical ideas is their fear that the knowledge possessed by leftists will make them want to challenge structures and authorities they don't feel powerful enough and/or worthy to fight. In a world of savage inequality and entrenched hierarchy, after all, acting on egalitarian and democratic knowledge and principles can get you in a lot of trouble. It can get you ostracized, demoted, ridiculed, fired, and even in some cases killed. It's certainly no way to attain the comforts and securities that are granted to some of those who keep their mouths shut and their eyes on the individualistic prize dangled at the end the masters' stick. The system is tilted and built to punish those who reject --- and reward those who at least outwardly accept --- the victory of individualistic and self-interested pursuits over social and democratic aspiration. At the same time. some of the pain and alienation experienced by people on the left seems rather self-imposed. Too many of us, in my experience, fail to grasp that most citizens (including many radicals, truth be told) have some very real material reasons to fear the dissolution of the existing social order. It's a dangerous leftist illusion that “the people” have “nothing to lose but their chains” under the existing system. After all, the people of “advanced” industrial societies were removed a very long time ago from direct connection to the land and the ability to maintain a decent self-sufficient living without assistance from “complex social institutions” (collective human organization). Talking about smashing the complex old order with no viable plan for the new order (which will have its own complexities) is a way to trigger peoples' already widely cultivated sense of insecurity. For some radicals, the overpowering evil of the system and its rulers can become something of an excuse for failing to embrace reasonable measures of personal responsibility and basic self-caretaking. It can also lead them to conflate nearly every single negative aspect of human existence with the socially constructed evils of the powers that be. Portside people can deal with the costs (both externally and internally imposed) of being left in various ways. They can make sure to balance their knowledge of outrageous evil and injustice with a determination to regularly clear and slow their ever-racing (and often rage-consumed) minds. In my experience, radicals burn out...alot. Refusing to cede the imperatives of self-help and personal and spiritual balance to Oprah, Dr. Phil, the local minister or priest and other corporate New Age lifestyle authorities, they can balance their sometimes overdeveloped mind energy with a commitment to cultivating their physical and emotional well-being and to realizing that their heart is going to be as important as their mind in the creation of a more just and democratic world. They can seek to reduce their vulnerability to economic punishment and insulate their dependence on the energy-stealing/life-sucking employer class by working to minimize unnecessary expenditures and debt. They can reduce their sense of isolation by keeping themselves regularly in touch with fellow leftists and also by looking for the often impressively progressive sentiments that are held and expressed by people who are not openly on the left. We can work to rescue the basic notion of personal moral responsibility from the clutches of the right, remembering that we possess a significant capacity to improve personal and social experience short of the many-sided social revolution that remains highly desirable ....and probably necessary for long-term human survival. We can remember that not all human dilemmas are caused by “the man” and his vicious interlocking systems of hierarchy and inequality. Radical social theory is about disentangling historically specific, particular, and socially constructed oppression structures from universal human difficulties and existential conundrums. Thinking perhaps about the distinct personal-historical circumstances that led to our own awakening as radicals, we can commit ourselves (on the model of the civil rights movement at its best) to communicating our ideas in ways that show respect and understanding for the related difficulties many people face in accepting and acting on our ideas. We can and must combine our criticism of the existing order with a practical and actionable vision of an alternative democratic, egalitarian, and participatory social order that would meet peoples' basic material needs without replicating the evils of class inequality, racism, sexism, and empire, etc. We can lift the burden of world history from our merely individual shoulders, remembering that none of us will set the world rightly upside down alone and once and for all in our own lifetimes. We can graciously accept in advance the certainty of numerous defeats and frustrations. We can and will do our best – and often quite a great deal – to advance humanity towards a more just and glorious world: the beloved egalitarian community of the freely associated producers, citizens, artists, poets, scientists, and others.

Comment On This Blog Post  See All Comments (46)

Occupy_iowa_city_rally

Re: On The Costs of Being Left

By Street, Paul at Apr 23, 2005 01:22 AM
In my opinion you are badly mispresenting Albert and Chomsky's position. They said fire Bush because he's supremely dangerous and hyper-regressive and fight the new boss with equal passion. That position is born out by recent and ongoing events. NC and MA are left anarchs and so do not fetishize the corporate dominated ballot box and saw real reasons for why the left and humanity would be better off with Bush out. They had no -- zero -- illusions about Kerry. They also had no illusions about Nader or about the electoral or the propaganda systems' openness and the radical potential of a "left" (and actually Ralph is a liberal) candidacy. Calling them Left "cheerleaders" for the corporate Democrats is a bad mistake I think.

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Person

Re: On The Costs of Being Left

By Matrix4, Appleman at Apr 21, 2005 21:28 PM
This is a repost but I feel it is relevant here with regards to being a leftists and being a bit burned out/depressed. I am a product of the 60s, as I imagine many people are here and looking at the situation today, how the Left has virtually accepted the "lesser evilism" of John Kerry and the Democrats is very troubling and depressing. I'm sure I'm not alone when I thought in 68 that I better world was not only possible but even probable in the near future,now it seems as if we are turning back the clock. Maybe it's just because I knew how things were in the 60s but to see people like Chomsky and Albert and all the rest line up right behind the pro war, pro corporate capitalist and pro everything else John Kerry is just ridiculous and higly disappointing. 40 years after 68 and the Left is reduced to being a cheerleader for the most right wing Democratic Party I have seen in my lifetime. It seems that the Left will be forever in the position of backing the "lesser of two evils" Democrats no matter how right wing they are. I can't believe that after all the hope and all the idealism of the 60s we've turned into this. I was reading Tom Frank for instance and wrote about how during the Democratic Convention he saw heroes of the 60s being courted by weapons manufacturers. It's just a real shame. The Left in America has betrayed itself. It's a shadow of what it once was. It's really sad and depressing to me and I imagine many other leftists and radicals as well...

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Re: On The Costs of Being Left

By Organum, Baby at Apr 16, 2005 14:34 PM
A vision of class difference in the future: Lifeextension and the ability to improve the genepool will create a new breed of man. I would like to critisize the notion that it is possible to work hard and take out a presumed surpluss. This is still robbing the globe and future generations of life qualitative and quantitative. Fair pay , yes please, but we need a way to economize the energy we spend. A revolution that ends in a radioactive nightmare is not cool. Why not focus on properly isolatedinsulated houses . Transportation less murderous, and a sustainable industry. If these things were to work properly i would not care if some greedy egosentrics had more than others.

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Re: On The Costs of Being Left

By Cryofan, Cryofan at Apr 16, 2005 02:02 AM
Sullivan wrote: I often find myself overemphasizing culture as the determining factor in society Maybe American culture is an evolved product, much as a particular type of livestock is evolved over generations by sheepherders, farmers, etc., to have certain desired characteristics, e.g., a domestic turkey with overdevoloped breasts. But what forces evolved this culture? And were those forces completely random, or is American culture a designed product, a result of calculated forces? American culture (in a way, a form of livestock, actually) is partially a product of calculated forces exerted through propaganda mechanisms, such as newspapers, mass media, etc., and also through laws, judicial rulings, wars, etc. Of course we are all forces that act to influence American culture, but some force vectors are "more equal than others". Such forces have evolved American culture to be a creature with characteristic favorable to those more powerful force vectors. Of course, maybe this is so obvious that it is not worth discussing. But it is a perspective that I find enlightening. Call me a conspiracy theorist, but when you go back and research the early history of America, looking at the early application of the molding forces, and see the motivations behind those forces, it is quite revealing. Well, more than revealing--chilling, and disturbing, because the propaganda was not quite as sophisticated as it is today.

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Occupy_iowa_city_rally

Re: On The Costs of Being Left

By Street, Paul at Apr 16, 2005 01:59 AM
well, then we agree on a good economy but after the revolution I will apparently be more suspicious than you of others' desire to get "more cash" (or whatever)and to become rich. If basic needs (the floor definition of which can and would go way up) are met for all, I don't see, well, the need for special "mores" for any few, and --- more to the point --- I see the seed of new class formation (which can happen without private ownership of productive capital) in the claim of such a need. Inheritance bans and equity norms/rules aside, the desire for "more" cash/good would still have to be carefully discussed and checked. You left out my comment about "distort policy," which is how inheritance might have a comeback....over time. Let's get to where these post-revolutionary questions are actually on the societal agenda. I have no idea or information on what the 1200-second rule is about. Am going to be away from computers for a few days but people are free to continue forum--izing this blog's comments section at least if they so desire.

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Occupy_iowa_city_rally

Re: On The Costs of Being Left

By Street, Paul at Apr 16, 2005 00:35 AM
I'm surprised anybody is actually taking this brain chemistry thing seriously. "more power to 'em." That's precisely the problem with any special individual wealth, FC: it will grant its holders not just some more (in itself innocuous) material enjoyment to some but will also garner them additional resources to widen their extras, pass them on to their kids, distort policy, and replicate the vicious circle of class inequality. Maybe thats a bit paranoid but serious leftists have very good reasons to see problems with people wanting to have what you call "a little more cash." Also don't know what on earth you mean by "a good economy." We're talking about an egalitarian versus a classist economy..."good economy" is a meaningless or at least strange phrase in this context. But then why are you debating things on the ZNet blogs? You just announced on another blog that that's only what the forums are for and that these comments are just to make links and say "see this" and "you might want to look at that," etc. If that's ZNet blog policy, then this ZNet "blogger" (me) should be informed about that as I have in fact been making follow up debate points in the comments section. If you know something I don't about the nature of this blog design, please let me in on it.

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Person

Re: On The Costs of Being Left

By Sullivan, M. at Apr 15, 2005 20:13 PM
Hi Cryofan, Thanks for posting the link to that interesting article. Your "rambling" is very useful for these discussions, and good luck with your project! I will give your posts a more thorough reading later as I have to go to work soon. Biology versus culture/society. Structure versus agency. The human individual versus human communities. These are some of the most difficult pairs of ideas to work with and understand in their dialectical relationships. (Is it appropriate to describe the relationship of these consepts as dialectical?) I often find myself overemphasizing culture as the determining factor in society because it is what I have recently begun studying. How sectarian! I think these flaws within my understanding of the world are evident in many leftist high theorists and academics who take the social construction of reality past its breaking point and beyond absurdity. I think the left would do well to lose what some aspects of its members suffer from-cultural determinism. Perhaps only by understanding the relationships between biology, culture, economics, etc. will many of our understandings be able to be advanced, and new areas of understanding carved out. As always, most important is putting these things into practice on the ground. Cheers.

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Re: On The Costs of Being Left

By Cryofan, Cryofan at Apr 15, 2005 20:12 PM
more development of this citzen-shareholder theme and the development of the fruits of science and the dividend returns from such science: the growth in science and technology takes place in a stable American environment that has been created largely though the actions of publicly funded government. This infrastructural cradle, this stable incubator of technology belongs to all Americans. We built it. Our military defended it (yeah, right. OK, a little propaganda judo, there). And we are the landlords, fully deserving of "rent" and other benefits accruing therefrom. But our management (politicians) has been skimming the till, in collusion with business lobbies. Witness the lowering of taxes on the rich, thus robbing the citizen-shareholders of tax revenue; witness the flooding of the labor market with desperate 3rd world labor, thus depressing wages; witness foriegn outsourcing and trade which is really nothing more than labor arbitrage. What we see here is theft, theft aided and abetted by the management of America, the political class.

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Re: On The Costs of Being Left

By Cryofan, Cryofan at Apr 15, 2005 19:51 PM
a major problem with America is that those at the top have used the benefits accruing from technology and science and the exponential growth of written knowledge to HIDE the fact that the citizen-shareholder dividend is getting smaller relative to the growth of the pie. We as owners are gettng ripped off by our management. We grow knowledge through science (often publicly funded), and this growth in knowledge makes life better for everyone. But the dividends are not growing as much as they should. The cream is being skimmed off of the top by those with power and money. We as citizen-shareholders are getting screwed. We should be saying, "why are the Swedes and French getting ever larger citizenship dividends, while for most of us Americans, our dividend is getting smaller?" Right now, with the insane American healthcare situation, this approach may be ripe for exploitation. They say: "look at the benefits that freetrade/neoliberalism/low taxes have brought us! You cannot argue with these results!" However, the benefits should have been even better. They ascribe to neoliberalism what is really due mainly to the steady exponential growth of scientific knowledge. Excuse my ramblings, but I am writing a documentary script that deals with this subject--among others--and I am trying to develop this particular area of the script right now.

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Person

Re: On The Costs of Being Left

By Cryofan, Cryofan at Apr 15, 2005 19:25 PM
now, what about "biological determinism" and equality? Now I've done it! This could lead to a discussion of IQ and other forbidden subjects! Now, I do not believe that all humans are physically or mentally equal. But so what? So what if one nuclear family, or one extended family has a collective IQ a few points higher or lower than another? And so what if one extended family has a more robust physique than another? So what if one human is born with highly functional brain matter,a and another's is not as functional? This is where I go back to my "ownership/shareholder" theories: LIFE ahould be a dividend, a natural benefit accruing to a citizen based on citizenship. And life includes opportunities, comforts, security, time to live, and other intangibles. It doesn't matter whether a citizen has an IQ == N or N*1.2. Same goes for circumstances of birth. A share is a share. And although delivering exact share equity may not be possible, given the large amounts of resources needed to do that, the basic idea is a good one, I think.

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Re: On The Costs of Being Left

By Cryofan, Cryofan at Apr 15, 2005 19:01 PM
M. Sullivan wrote: "This almost sounds like biological determinism. Leftism as OCD regarding the acknowledgement of and resistance to oppression?" There is likely some truth in what you just said. Again, I suspect that many leftist activists (including myself) may have (or develop) unusual brain chemistry. Different levels of neurotransmitters or whatever. Same goes for atheists (such as myself), and other people with outlying ideological beliefs. I am indeed a strong believer in biology as a major influence on human behavior. This school of thought deals with sociobiology, evolutionary psychology, and other buzzwords that are proto-sciences in the making. Biology does not determine absolutely. Of course not. But it is a MUCH bigger influence that we give it credit for. Just another example of one of the elephants in the corner that everyone ignores.

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Person

Re: On The Costs of Being Left

By Cryofan, Cryofan at Apr 15, 2005 18:40 PM
M Sullivan wrote: "I think leftists are formed through lived experience and/or education and enculturation rather than a certain predisposition via brain chemistry for radical politics-same goes for fascists and all politcal ideologies." Yeah, life experience is probably a major factor with many leftists. Perhaps it is a precipitating factor. But I still think leftist activist brain chemistry is likely to be unusual. Also, I think it is important not to associate creativity or art with leftism as many in my social spheres do. I COMPLETELY agree. The Left needs to be associated with WORK, hard work, dirty work, grinding office work, service sector work, manual labor. We need to reunite the blue collar and white collar worlds. Here is an excellent essay by Joe Bageant about uniting white collar left with blue collar right

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Re: On The Costs of Being Left

By Organum, Baby at Apr 15, 2005 15:23 PM
J.Galtung once said , when asked to comment about the american heraldic emblem of the baldheaded eagle. "Its beak is a formidable weapon and its brain is quite small. This is a dangerouse combination". A term like anti-european would be laughed at in europe and the terms creator labeled a nazi ( or something close ). We call this Nationalist slur. The only thing that makes americans more prone to being stupid than the average euro is that you are further ahead in the tunnel of TV-love. Your comercials come more often and you have had them longer. And if 60minutes is your "serious" newsprogram that speaks volumes. But all of europe is hard on the trail and our Rite-worshipers are eager for that twodimensional bliss of GOOD vs EVIL. Ghandi and Jesus have the strategies.

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Re: On The Costs of Being Left

By Sullivan, M. at Apr 14, 2005 22:34 PM
I think leftists are formed through lived experience and/or education and enculturation rather than a certain predisposition via brain chemistry for radical politics-same goes for fascists and all politcal ideologies. I think I may be misunderstanding this. Also, I think it is important not to associate creativity or art with leftism as many in my social spheres do. The right has many artists and stenographers who turn atrocities into oh-so-beautiful prose and paintings as a legitimising practice. "We threw all the dead poverty-draft soldiers in a ditch and placed a sculpure crafted by an elite artist on top." Apologies for any incoherence in my posts, I'm running on two hours sleep today.

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Occupy_iowa_city_rally

Re: On The Costs of Being Left

By Street, Paul at Apr 14, 2005 21:49 PM
Hellbender I personally would also be willing to suffer enormous privations to bring the rich bastards down, but let's not confuse such unusual and bitter sentiments with a constructive and popular program for change and alternative humanstic social development. Many radicals do sort of do feel like we have nothing more to lose but our chains, thought that's a bit of an illusion and --- my main point --- it's not where most people are at all. Most people are not willing to plunge into poverty --- or further into poverty --- in the name of revolutionary retribution against the ruling class (which is as a group about as bad as you say....I deal with some of them and you are right: they just can't get their asses kissed often or hard enough). It's up to radicals to develop serious alternative systems that meet peoples' basic material needs without replicating the evils of the old inequality. And at the end of the day, however much we might rightly loathe the rich, it's not really about them: it's about creating a more democratic and just social order where people would be naturally ashamed at the thought of becoming rich in the first place. It's a terrible thing to want to be.

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Re: On The Costs of Being Left

By Matrix4, Appleman at Apr 14, 2005 21:49 PM
"I think people are overwhelmingly decent, intelligent, loving people who want to see the world be a better place. Almost all of the crappy things that happen in the world don't happen because of monsters or mad(wo)men, but because of institutions that make people into monsters or mad(wo)men." Exactly. "As for me: I'm currently 19. I read Noam Chomsky's Secrets, Lies and Democracy when I was 15, was deeply inspired," Wow..if that's true I'm greatly impressed (and I'm not an easy person to impress either!) You should be very proud of yourself!

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Re: On The Costs of Being Left

By Matrix4, Appleman at Apr 14, 2005 20:57 PM
"When Mr Moore goes to Europe and tells an audience that Americans are "stupid and lazy" he IS being anti-american" (says r4d20) No that's ridiculous. Michael Moore is a comedian and I'm sure he's just making some light-hearted jokes the same way that Robin Williams pokes fun at gays and foreign accents without being accused of homophobia or racism. Michael Moore is a great man and a patriot. For r4d20 to call him "anti American" a term that doesn't even exist outside of totlitarian societies, as Noam Chomsky (one of the chief targets of "Anti Americanism") accurately points out, is absurd. The Left should be doing all it can to actively discourage the meaningless term "anti-American" (it adds absolutely nothing to the discussion) and denounce those who use it as it is being used, 99.9% of the time to slander dissidents and leftist critics of US policy.

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Re: On The Costs of Being Left

By Sullivan, M. at Apr 14, 2005 20:44 PM
"I really do think that leftist activists may have some sort of brain chemistry "imbalance" (says cryofan). It may cause them (us!) to be obsessed with finding patterns, especially patterns in history, in politics, in news and global affairs. But then historians and sociologists do the same thing, albeit within the bounds of academia. That said, I think that the basic leftist paradigm is correct. Just because your brain chemistry makes you obsess over seeing patterns in news, in the machinations of power, that don't mean that such patterns do not exist." This almost sounds like biological determinism. Leftism as OCD regarding the acknowledgement of and resistance to oppression?

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Re: On The Costs of Being Left

By Otto, Steve at Apr 14, 2005 20:14 PM
As for as capitalism goes, I don't care how wonderful it is, it is run by egotistic self centered snobs who believe most of us should be kissing their ass 90% of the time. I used do keep turtles as pets and they found food and females without every kissing anyone's ass. Who is smarter, them or us? I say they are. As for as the need for roads, goods, etc., I would rather drive my car on mounds of broken glass, live in a tent and eat crappy food, if it meant the demise of all the scum that have run our country since I was old enough to notice them. In my opinion, no burden is too much to bear to see the U.S. Capilolist scum and their allies go down in flames. Keep your capitalist toys, I'll keep the brown off my nose.

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Occupy_iowa_city_rally

Re: On The Costs of Being Left

By Street, Paul at Apr 14, 2005 19:59 PM
This is sad and bizarre. I just finished commenting on why I follow other leftists in rejecting market logic as anti-social, alienating, mean-spirited, and contrary to social needs. I'm not calling for the end of government (where did you get that?)under currently existing conditions but for a "radical restructing of government's [and society's]priorities" (Martin Luther King. Jr. in the mid-late 1960s) from empire and inequality to serving social needs and democracy. I would take the billions spent on the murderous imperial conquest of Iraq and spend it on health insurance for the working poor and social programs in the inner cities and (fill in the unmet social need) but I "seek to destroy." There's nothing more inefficient and vile than modern "capitalism" --- look at the tragically unequal, vicious, polluted, unsustainable, militaristic, soulless, proto-fascist world around you for God's sake. Open your eyes (and your heart) to the suffering your miserable system imposes. My building is actually a cooperative...the meetings can be irritating and time-consuming but the main efficiency problem we experience is with some folks have appointed themselves over time as the Lenin and Trotsky of the coop...things happen most effectively and efficiently when everyone is participating.

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Re: On The Costs of Being Left

By Bok, Yakov at Apr 14, 2005 18:12 PM
Contrary to your beliefs, I do care what the left thinks. That is why I read and comment on this blog. While you criticize the status quo as being destructive to everything, you provide no alternatives other than destruction. Your logic is circular. If you truely believe in free markets, like you claim, criticize Dept. of Ag. subsidy programs that go against the free market. Instead, you simply criticize and seek to destroy. How do you expect society to function if there is no government? Who will pave the roads and supply the water? A collective? If you have ever participated in a condo board meeting, then you know how inefficient collectives are. But you probably wouldn't do that because that would show the failure of your beliefs. I wonder how long it will be until I am censored from Znet?

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Occupy_iowa_city_rally

Re: On The Costs of Being Left

By Street, Paul at Apr 14, 2005 16:26 PM
You get that feeling r4d20 because you have probably picked up that I'm left and therefore attach great positive significance to the values of solidarity, empathy, democracy, community, equality, and ecological sustainability. All of those values are violated by even the freest of markets. Markets by their very nature concentrate economic and hence political power. They exacerbate human inequalities and privilege economic over social and environmental values. They select and reward the worst, most- cut-throat human behaviors and values and drown everything -- all past values and commitments as well as the material world --- in what Marx called "the icy waters of egotistical calculation," leaving no real connection between people but "the cash nexus." Left and democratic values have no functionality under the rule of markets and so are left to wither and die. Market logic is soulless. All it cares about is cash nexus outcomes for the people most able and/or most willing (and part of being the most able is the willingness to make being a wealth-accumulator, that is a bastard, your raison d'etre) to score economic gains. Even a truly free market would simply replicate the current intensely political capitalism and the rule of The Corporation. And markets aren't even particularly efficient mechanisms for allocating resources. The place to start on this IMO is Mike Albert, Life After Capitalism, chapter 3, "Judging Economies," the section titled "Markets."

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Re: On The Costs of Being Left

By Tolsen1, R4d20 at Apr 13, 2005 23:09 PM
"to see the transparent rule of the heavily state-subsidized corporation (designed precisely to master and internalize market processes and forces) in what the masters call the glorious reign of “the free market;" You see how the term "the free market" is, in the current world, a big lie and that the market is anything but free or really open. So why do I get the feeling that you also reject a REAL free market too?

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Re: On The Costs of Being Left

By Tolsen1, R4d20 at Apr 13, 2005 22:46 PM
Please do NOT feed the Troll.

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Re: On The Costs of Being Left

By Rekouche, Koceilah at Apr 13, 2005 22:20 PM
I didn't even know what "left" was or anything Marx/socialist related or even who Chomsky was until I was 23. Grew up in the deep South and isolated from anything like that. I pretty much came to a socialist/leftist viewpoint entirely on my own while clinging to rebellious anthems in rock music and joining the computer hacker underground and learning its version of anarchism.

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Re: On The Costs of Being Left

By Street, Paul at Apr 13, 2005 20:19 PM
Schor's argument was essentially Marxist but I noticed that she ended up getting some corporate attention and support and this may reflect bwong's point: the employers' own ability to sense the diminishing returns from overwork and perhaps the rising health care costs from an exhausted workforce. She did not really address the question of the core nature and purpose and direction or content of work: I don't want people manufacturing weapons or obesity burgers even for a small number of hours with full benefits. She also didn't address something else I was moved (at age 12) to write about: overwork as a democracy issue, which is largely how it was initially framed and understood by the labor movement (which made time its first issue). See "Labor Day Reflections: Time As a Democracy Issue" at http://www.zmag.org/Sustainers/content/2002-09/03street.cfm.

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Re: On The Costs of Being Left

By Street, Paul at Apr 13, 2005 20:15 PM
Good analysis of American overwork can be found in Juliet Schor's widely read book --- The Overworked American (1992). Schor provided a structural explanation, showing how employers naturally seek to get the most work from the fewest workers possible. The most obvious incentive for them to do this is the desire to maintain the maximum amount of unemployed and under-employed, who serve to discipline the full-time/over-time workforce precisely as Marx said...as the reserve army of labor that the boss holds over the active army of labor. The employer incentive for overwork is especially strong in a nation where most people get their health insurance on the job, through the workplace, not from the state: health care costs are a huge employer expenditure and they are paid --- this is a key point --- per worker, not per hour worked, which adds to the logic of getting as much work as possible from as few full time staff as they can. The weakness of unions (a product largely of business class hostility) and the welfare state in the US mean that employers can get away with more over-working in the "land of freedom." Capitalsts fill the labor gaps with part-timers who are not eligible for health benefits....ctd

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Re: On The Costs of Being Left

By Gammon101, Bwong at Apr 13, 2005 20:13 PM
I meant to say "By corrupting the meanings of common sense notions, it[capitalism] constructs a false aura of "naturalness" and "inevitability" around itself."

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Re: On The Costs of Being Left

By Gammon101, Bwong at Apr 13, 2005 20:10 PM
It often strikes me how little do capitalism apologists really understand the working of the very system they defend so passionately. They talk about concepts like work, production, "wealth creation", scarcity, needs, market, property right, debt and spending etc in some sort of common sense, folksy kind of ways which has nothing or little to do with the technical meanings in real capitalism. It is a great propaganda triumph of Capitalism to be able to muddle the water this way. By corrupting the meanings of notions it constructs a false aura of "naturalness" and "inevitability" around itself. Karl Polanyi's seminal work "The great transformation" did an admirable job in debunking the myth that Capitalism is "natural". I highly recomend it.

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Re: On The Costs of Being Left

By Gammon101, Bwong at Apr 13, 2005 19:49 PM
Just to add one more commnet to "productivity". Yakov Bok doesn't even make sense within the capitalist framework. Higher productivity means higher efficiency. That means you get more work done by putting in LESS. Working longer hours is not the same as increasing productivity. At best you get more work done because of more input( hence there is no net gain in productivity) But overworking far more likely results in getting less out of more input because of burnt out and stress, etc. It has a negative impact on productivity. Slave driving is BAD for productivity. Even capitalists in Western Europe realize this. It is not even a "leftist" position to object to overworking per se, it's just common sense.You don't even have to be a humanist.Slave driving doesn't make sense even from the cold calculations of economics. Yakov's knee jerk red baiting once again shows that the man is an idealogue. Funny he is accusing others of alledged idealogical induced blindness. PS A leftist critique does not just oppose to overworking. It has a much wider scope. It examines the very nature of "work" itself under capitalism, the comodification of labour and the instrumentaliztion of the worker etc.I thrust that our 19 year old genuis would be able to explain these things in much more detail than I want to attempt here.:)

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Re: On The Costs of Being Left

By Street, Paul at Apr 13, 2005 18:05 PM
...I've seen enough of YB's biting little flame jobs by now to see no point in arguing with him on how we might more effectively advance left goals: like another regular critic, he doesn't care about left goals. Still, I find comments from the capitalist and "human nature" crowd useful in a way --- showing how mean-spirited such people truly are at the end of the day. Generally my argument was positive and hopeful and I hoped constructive, reasonably left-self-critical and certainly not a cry for pity or of despair (though there's nothing wrong with occasional despair...it's only natural)or a and call for resort to antidepressants. And just for the record, I read Frederick Engels' pamphlet Socialism: Scientific and Utopian when I was in second grade. Ok, it was a comic book version.

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Re: On The Costs of Being Left

By Street, Paul at Apr 13, 2005 17:59 PM
I admire FC for responding so energetically to YB, who lost my interest earlier than usual by saying that "there's no such thing as overwork." Gee, ok. On thinking that left vision and ideas bring us closer to social and historical reality (I did not say we radicals get reality and everyone else doesn't)than dominant ideology, I shamelessly plead guilty; sorry about that. Still, I was actually making an argument for working sensitively to understand why many people are threatened by and resist left ideas.Anyone who reads my comment on joeblogs comment can see how much I reject Lenninist or other variants of know it all "left" vangaurdism (as does joeblogs...we are on the same page). I'm not terribly ashamed to not have all the solutions worked out --- Christ that''s no simple matter now is it. At least I recognize the necessity for a constructuve alternative vision (parecon is pretty interesting to me), which is different than following Marx in thinking that the "iron laws of history" will march us inexorably forward to the classless society or in naively thinking that the alternative social order will emerge automatically out of the noble democratic resistance.....ctd.

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Re: On The Costs of Being Left

By Bok, Yakov at Apr 13, 2005 08:30 AM
You state that radical theory is about deconstructing history and point to Orwell and the civil rights movement. Well, you quickly forget that Orwell was writing against the socialists who were taking over Europe and the civil rights movement succeeded by appealing to the very system you disdain. Your crocodile tears do reveal two things about socialists. You have no concrete plan for making the world better, thus you simply want to turn the world upside down. Perhaps socialist gibberish then is "from each according to his ability."

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Re: On The Costs of Being Left

By Bok, Yakov at Apr 13, 2005 08:25 AM
What a bunch of elitist self pity filled crap! Only leftists have the ability to see the world for what it truly is? The knowledge that leftists possess frightens people away from self examination? But leftists can feel better about themselves by engaging in communal love fests with other leftists? Hey Paul, take some Soma, man! If you're truly the egalitarian you claim to be, you wouldn't have a problem with views that don't match yours. All things are equal remember? You criticize productivity as a euphemism for overwork - well whatever happened to from each according to his ability? There's no such thing as overwork! And who are you to determine the difference between wants and needs? You question the fear of smashing the industrial social order. What do you want, to turn back the clock to before the invention of the cotton gin? If you think that "advanced" industrial societies are so bad, try scratching out a living in the dirt for awhile. Brother #1 Chomsky tried it in the 1950s and had to come running back to the good life in America.

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Re: On The Costs of Being Left

By Gammon101, Bwong at Apr 13, 2005 07:07 AM
Let's change the perspective a bit. Should a person be considered "anti- American" if he ACTS under the assumption that Americans are stupid morons even though he does not verbalize it, or in fact saying exactly the opposite for PR purpose? I am thinking of the Bush admin and their blatant lies and transparent spins. First about the war, then the smear and irrelevant drivels about God and gays that led up to the election. If I were an American I would feel it's an tremendous insult to my intelligence to assume that I would fall for such obvious lies and distractions But apparantly the stragtegy works. What does that say about the American people?

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Re: On The Costs of Being Left

By Tolsen1, R4d20 at Apr 13, 2005 06:44 AM
Obviously we can love somethin and still want to improve it. Husbands and Wives who have loved each other or years can easily rattle a list of "improvements" they would like in the other, but still be no less in love for it. However, to continue this analogy, if a man claimed to love his wife, but then desired to "improve" almost every aspect of who she was as a person, down to the most basic core of he personality, I think we would be justified in saying he did NOT actually love her - rather, like so often happens in real people, he loves what he wants her to become.

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Re: On The Costs of Being Left

By Tolsen1, R4d20 at Apr 13, 2005 06:27 AM
"What does that even mean? For me, to be "anti-American" would mean to actually want to see harm come to Americans for simple sadism, to actually hate Americans. Some folks on the Left do, but it's hardly a representative sample." 1) I was not trying to imply that it was representative. I was just playing Devils Advocate and saying that SOME criticism of America I have heard IS anti-american, and some of it comes from people who portray themselves as "patriotic" dissenters. 2) I think your definition of anti-american, as in requiring some desire to harm Americans, is overly restrictive. If a person believed that all Mexicans were lazy and incompetent, to use a real stereotype for example, we would be justified in calling him "anti-Mexican" even if he didn't want any harm to befall mexicans - he's still a racist. Well, if a person believes that Americans are stupid and lazy, or that Americans "have no culture", or any other negative overgeneralization, then I would call him anti-American.

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Re: On The Costs of Being Left

By Tolsen1, R4d20 at Apr 13, 2005 01:56 AM
"to see noble democratic dissent in what they call subversion and even “anti-Americanism;”" I agree that the Right has attempted to broaden the scope of "anti-americanism" to include a lot of patriotic dissent, but the left has tried ot narrow it so that it does not included REAL anti-americanism so long as it is covered by a veneer of "patriotism". While it is not anti-american to criticise American policies or American Government actions, it IS anti-american to make broadly disparaging comments about Americans and American culture. When Mr Moore goes to Europe and tells an audience that Americans are "stupid and lazy" he IS being anti-american - and no different from any other sell-out "uncle-tom" who is willing to take money and play the part of the token "one of them who agrees with us" in order to make the haters feel better about themselves. Don't get me wrong, he IS right - Americans are stupid and lazy because PEOPLE are stupid and lazy. Europeans, Asians, Arabs, Latinos - we are ALL stupid and lazy. But that is NOT what the haters mean. They mean Americans are MORE stupid and lazy - and THAT IS anti-american and just plain ignorant.

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Re: On The Costs of Being Left

By Tolsen1, R4d20 at Apr 13, 2005 01:39 AM
"BTW, people like Mozart and Shakesphere were pop artists at their time. They played to the illitarate peasants rather than university professors." Actually, like Artists throughout history, they played for whomever would pay them. For a long time the common people simply could not afford to fund art and so artists had to cater to the tastes of the more "refined" nobility and merchant families. Nowawdays, however, the common man can afford to spend some money on art, music, etc. and since they outnumber the elite, artists tend to make the most by making art that is popular with the masses. I, personally, find a lot of "mass art" to be lame and boring, but I think it is incredibly arrogant and ELITIST to call it "not art".

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Re: On The Costs of Being Left

By Street, Paul at Apr 13, 2005 00:55 AM
"Most people in the world get breadcrumbs. It's up to all of us to win them the bakery. End of story. Except, the oven will be solar-powered." Ok but I think it's up to us and them to radically restructure the bakery and the other key economic and political institutions from the bottom up, on the basis of democratic and participatory principles that are empowered to prevent the emergence of new self-appointed vanguards (Lenninist or otherwise) and ruling classes. We don't win it for them but with them and partly for ourselves, reflecting our own material and spiritual interest in transcending the alienating nothingness and generalized insecurity that is class society. I think we also appropriate and radically restructure the means of musical and poetic and scientific and historiographical (etc.) production, organically creating (not force-feeding like the Mark McGwire-esque Chinese Olympic program) many Shakespeares and Mozarts and Dylans and Hobsbawms and transcending the false dichotomy between Adorno-esque elitism and Stalin's dumbed- down "proletkult" (good reflections on that in Trotsky's Literature and Revolution). Bread and roses too. On how to do all that, which is what Marx actually envisaged in his more idealistic moments and which has never been remotely tried (contrary to the doctrinal claim that the decline of the Soviet bloc proves the impossibility of purposeful societal classlessness), we are at the beginning of the story.

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Re: On The Costs of Being Left

By Rekouche, Koceilah at Apr 12, 2005 23:17 PM
Yeah, Shakespeare was the Brittany Spears of his day. Ok. The point isn't that there isn't real art in existence today (although I do agree a critique can go too far as in Adorno's proclamation that "writing poetry after Auschwitz is barbaric,") but that "mass culture", is spliced and diced by music generation algorithms and boardroom PR pop-hit makers so that most contemporary music has no art value. What value it does have is the satisfaction of memorizing the latest 2-beat jingle and 3-line chorus so one can sing along in rhythm without stressing the cell phone, TV commercial attention span.

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Re: On The Costs of Being Left

By Gammon101, Bwong at Apr 12, 2005 22:50 PM
".. music and movies and compared them with "real" art say of Boch or Shakespeare" I must say this is a bit snobish. There are good, contemporary stuffs too. You just have to look around. BTW, people like Mozart and Shakesphere were pop artists at their time. They played to the illitarate peasants rather than university professors. Shakesphere's stuffs were the Victorian equivalent to Hollywood movies.

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By Otto, Steve at Apr 12, 2005 22:09 PM
I used to carefully study various aspects of the left, to understand what I believed in. Now, being liberal is as dangerous as being a communist. We have a political system that is going from conservative to just plain stupid.

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Re: On The Costs of Being Left

By Rekouche, Koceilah at Apr 12, 2005 21:55 PM
First Marxist-type thing I read was an essay by Theodor Adorno called Culture Industry. He totally rips apart the Western capitalist mass culture machinations from how radio broadcasts to movies put people into a passive universe ripe for mind rotting. This was written in the 40's and he was an immigrant from Germany I think. He lived near Hollywood for a while and the whole system here made him extremely depressed. He ended up burning out or something and moving back out of the country. I particularly liked his style of critique on mass culture, though, especially how he broke down simple mind-numbing patterns in contemporary (new capitalist) music and movies and compared them with "real" art say of Boch or Shakespeare.

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Re: On The Costs of Being Left

By Cryofan, Cryofan at Apr 12, 2005 21:35 PM
Paul, you have some really good points here. There does also appear to be a high suicide rate among leftist activists. Some of which may have been murders, but I suspect most were not. I really do think that leftist activists may have some sort of brain chemistry "imbalance." It may cause them (us!) to be obsessed with finding patterns, especially patterns in history, in politics, in news and global affairs. But then historians and sociologists do the same thing, albeit within the bounds of academia. That said, I think that the basic leftist paradigm is correct. Just because your brain chemistry makes you obsess over seeing patterns in news, in the machinations of power, that don't mean that such patterns do not exist. Time and again, thruoghout history, we see how people who do not fit into societal norms are often the ones that make discoveries, make great works of art, etc

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Re: On The Costs of Being Left

By Organum, Baby at Apr 12, 2005 18:45 PM
My mother doesnt want to much politickin , but even she got mad when the rightwing government sold out the publicly owned hydroelectrical plants around our country. Now the price is doubled and we get useless info about different "brands" of el. stuffed into our brains by comercial propaganda magicians. The Rite dont play by the same rules we do. "Do you swear to defend the constitution of the united states against its enemies, both INTERNAL and external". Semper Fei and long gone is the division between policework and military defence. As important as the tripartite division of power I`d say ( Digressing again , sorry) Anyway. Me and mum will both vote next election. Us both having formed important parts of our psyche before comercial television reached the country.

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