Category Rethinking The World

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Rethinking The World is a new regular column by Prakash Kona

Paul Krugman’s Rhetoric of ‘Anti-Science’: A Case of Ressentiment?

Sep 5, ’11 3:09 PM

Max Scheler, following up some clues in Nietzsche, developed a sociology of ‘ressentiment’, which – as a first pass — refers to the creation of scapegoats to deflect attention from one’s own inadequacies. Ressentiment was meant to explain how the desire for self-transcendence is perverted as the faithful come to believe that others have managed to reach much the same end by illegitimate means. In practice, the concept tends to refer to a rightward ideological turn by, say, working class or petit bourgeois who think that Jews or foreigners have usurped their prerogative. The left has not been traditionally implicated in this spoiler position because of its ‘progressive’ outlook, which was always constructive of the future, even as it laid waste to the past. Ressentiment, in contrast, is meant to be an exclusively negative – even nihilistic – sentiment born of fearful incomprehension.

Enter Nobel Prize economist and NY Times op-ed author, Paul Krugman, who may be the highest profile author to attempt to demonise the Republican Party as ‘anti-science’ in a way that is reminiscent of how US conservatives demonised the political and cultural left as ‘anti-American’ in the 20th century. In a piece originally published in the NYT and reprinted in the Guardian, Krugman scaremongers about the prospects for the US if Republican candidates who deny evolution and anthropocentric climate change manage to get into the White House. Krugman appears to believe that taking a loyalty oath to whatever happens to be the scientific consensus ought to be an entry requirement for anyone seeking elected office.

Perhaps the most odious feature of this suggestion is its appeal to science as a superordinate authority on the democratic political process. Whereas the right might try to co-opt the military under comparable circumstances, the left turns to science to threaten opponents who otherwise appear to be ascendant. Krugman’s suggestion also serves to corrupt science. No doubt Republicans are trying to gain advantage by casting doubt on various policy-relevant scientific views. Nevertheless there is legitimate room for disagreement and the offering of alternatives by scientists themselves, and exaggerated claims for consensus and certainty – simply to trump a group of politicians – does the cause of free scientific inquiry no favours. If anything, it reinforces the stereotype of scientists as an elite class contemptuous of the public.

When it comes to strictly scientific issues, what matters isn’t whether Texas governor Rick Perry (dis)believes in global warming or Darwinism, but what he believes should be taught and researched on these matters. However, even this somewhat misses the point. For when Perry makes statements denying global warming and Darwin, he is not mainly trying to say anything about science at all. Rather he is engaging in ‘dog whistle politics’, in which scientific opinions are meant to stand ‘metonymically’ (apologies for the old structuralist jargon) for a set of conservative cultural positions that appeal to a wide range of voters. Liberals like Krugman are so completely alienated from these positions that they can only register them as dangerous pathologies of the intellect (aka scientific illiteracy). But unless liberals change their tune, they will continue to fail to deal with the democratic process as it exists in the US today.

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UK Riots 2011 – A ‘social revolution’ yet to take place?

Aug 15, ’11 8:00 AM

In the chapter titled “Third World,” the historian Eric Hobsbawm writes in his autobiography Interesting Times that, “Columbia was, and continues to be, proof that gradual reform in the framework of liberal democracy is not the only, or even the most plausible, alternative to social and political revolutions, including the ones that fail or are aborted. I discovered a country in which the failure to make a social revolution had made violence the constant, universal, omnipresent core of public life.” This is the sad truth of an empire a little more than sixty years ago reduced to ruins in a matter of thirty years or so and being forced into a process of third worldization with its government and people pitted against each other. It needs a life as long as that of Hobsbawm to notice rapid changes that are strikingly historical and yet unpleasant in terms of the role they play in day-to-day life.

In a way there is a sinister resemblance between the Norway attacks in July and the UK riots just now. Both have the look of being predetermined and waiting to happen. Somebody had to throw the match for the leaking fuel tank to catch fire and explode. It could be as simple as that. In all such cases of violence of a larger kind which have the apparent look of “suddenness” there is no doubt the tacit support of a significant section of the masses, no matter how hard the corporate-driven media might try to make it look like this is the work of a few fringe “criminal” elements. That’s definitely not the case. Both the Norway attacks and UK disturbances are expressions of individual and collective bitterness and hatred towards a non-responsive and indifferent government that does not hesitate in using violence against them to keep a semblance of order.

In the case of UK the difference is that the riots had a forewarning. When the vehement student tuition fee protest was ignored towards the end of the last year the government created the conditions for these riots. I was surprised then that the government dared to ignore a protest of that magnitude, something that would’ve scared those at the helm of affairs in a poorer nation as well. When it did ignore the warning, it clearly demonstrated to the person on the street that it would not relent to popular pressure and was determined to go against the will of ordinary Britons. When a normal person is violent it is usually because all avenues to dialogue are closed and he or she wants you to hear them out. In cases where it is carefully thought out the violence turns into revolutionary action. In any other case the very fact that all customary restraints are broken down is a sign that there is nothing to stop people on streets from turning into mobs out of anger and frustration. The looting is a symptom of a larger malaise that stems from the fact that most people consciously or unconsciously feel unjustly treated.

This is a serious reminder to the David Cameron government on two counts. First, they – this includes the other European governments as well – better wake up and provide welfare measures to a large number of people especially working class whites who feel grieved by the fact that they’re being completely neglected in their own country along with the ill-founded perception that the government sucks up to immigrants, in addition to moving the jobs abroad at their expense. The truth is that the foreign policy pursued by western governments is a treacherous one where corporations draw the blood of cheap third world labor and make massive profits. The multinational companies are colonial in character and not bound by rules that operate in western liberal democracies. The terrible abuse of workers who get paid enough by local standards to barely survive will simply not be accepted in a developed nation. The “immigrant” is another word for cheap labor and the devastation caused by outsourcing to bodies of the third world poor is not a guarded secret as such.

I can see where men like Anders Brevik responsible for the death of seventy innocent lives come from. They’re victims in a way no different from rioters on the streets of London and other cities. They feel their way of life has been threatened and the government is prejudiced against them. They’re not completely wrong in feeling that way. An enlightened government needs to understand, assuage and respond to their grievances through positive and inclusive means that will give them a chance to education and a decent life. Economic reservations have to be made in terms of jobs and other benefits to local citizens who come from deprived backgrounds. That’s a practical solution. The world is not a global village and the locals are as local as ever before. Therefore there is nothing wrong in prioritizing their interests and giving consideration to their feelings.

The second count is that there is no point in pursuing a policy of vengeance. The arrests and harsh punishments meted out to rioters only convince the people that the intentions of the government are malafide. As such every section of British society ranging from students to workers has serious doubts about the credibility of the Tory government. The punishments will add to their disastrous resume as the party in power. The violence could temporarily be suppressed. But, if the government has the slightest imagination it should know that they will not be seeing the last of either the riots or the rioters.

Back in the 1920s when the young John Steinbeck was ready to embark on his life as a writer, he received a piece of advice from his teacher who asked him to go to Europe since he had no money. She told him that “in Europe poverty is a misfortune, but in America it is shameful.” Globalization, in the last couple of decades has ended up making the whole world ashamed of being poor, and with the weakening of conventional social bonds across the planet the poor are condemned to isolation in addition to the burden of poverty. The result is endemic violence which is “the constant, universal, omnipresent core of public life.” While this is painfully accepted as a fact of life in most parts of the third world we’re getting to see more and more of it in the nations of the first world as well.

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Rethinking Newman’s The Idea of a University

Jul 5, ’11 12:20 PM

There is something terribly British about the English Catholic saints and a little of that quaint practicality we see in Thomas More who ironically authored the Utopia. They’re not the kinds of saints who you would expect to intercede with God on your behalf. Nothing of the poetic passion of an Italian Saint Francis who epitomizes Mediterranean madness or the Spanish Saint Teresa of Avila with a golden spear on fire directed towards her breast by the angel as immortalized in Bernini’s Ecstasy. An English saint is frankly incapable of such excesses and would neither go begging and singing naked on streets nor would angels be allowed to throw them into unwarranted states of ecstasies.

The English saints are a bit too English for such high drama. The idealism however is alive both in More and in the eminent Cardinal Newman (1801 – 1890) who is on the way to canonization by the Roman Catholic Church. Just as More’s Utopia is a harsh critique of a classist social order, Newman’s The Idea of a University is an idealistic view of what universities ought to be like and thus could be read as an attack on the existing state of the universities. Its idealism is contained by a sense of practicality. That could just be the Victorian style of writing descriptive prose to a society that depends on writers to offer intense imagery for its visual satisfaction.

There is however something deeply sincere in how Newman talks about “liberal” education which these days like “liberal” everything else has suffered the onslaught of abuse of every kind from poststructuralists, post-colonialists, postmodernists, post-feminists, post-Marxists and liberals themselves too afraid for their own good to be seen as liberals. I wouldn’t go so far as to say that Newman’s understanding of the University is a product of a colonial mindset. That’s not the case. His vision is oriented towards the future and I’m sure he’s more than aware that no university comes remotely close to the one he is imagining.

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American Morality and the Strauss-Kahn Affair

May 30, ’11 8:00 AM

A specified form of death penalty occurs in the following cases:-gibbeting (on the spot where crime was committed) for burglary, later also for encroaching on the king’s highway, for getting a slave-brand obliterated, for procuring husband’s death; burning for incest with own mother, for vestal entering or opening tavern, for theft at fire (on the spot); drowning for adultery, rape of betrothed maiden, bigamy, bad conduct as wife, seduction of daughter-in-law. The Code of Hammurabi (1795-1750 BC)

The stand that World Socialist Web Site took on the Strauss-Kahn affair in an article titled “The serious questions raised by the Dominique Strauss-Kahn affair” has increased my respect for the online news center. The main point in the article is that “As of yet, no one has heard Mr. Strauss-Kahn’s side of the story.” That’s the point. No one knows what the alleged victim went through and no one knows what Strauss-Kahn has to say for himself. The stage is occupied by everyone else except the “victim” and the “victimizer” – I put these two words in quotes because they need to be clarified depending on what emerges from the inquiry.

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Confessions of a Dystopian Marxist

Apr 24, ’11 8:00 AM

“It was foul, and I loved it,” says Saint Augustine for stealing pears along with “some lewd young fellows” adding further “I loved to perish.” With the Roman Empire sacked by the Goths on the verge of collapse, it is hard to believe that Saint Augustine attributed such a strong motive as “perishing” to stealing pears – something that Mark Twain in the 19th century would’ve laughed at as a normal thing that boys do for lack of anything better. In fact most boys do worse than steal pears. Even the self-righteous judges at the International Criminal Tribunal in The Hague whose faces are death-masks and who speak like the God of the Old Testament would not include stealing pears in the list of crimes against humanity. Yet Saint Augustine the Carthaginian, with the poignancy of a true convert and the poetry of the North African sun burning in his veins makes you want to feel with the pain of having stolen pears.

Augustine’s Confessions was meant to be a kind of a spiritual autobiography. Mine is a parody of other confessions. If I were my own biographer this would be the title of the book: Confessions of a Dystopian Marxist. A dystopian I always was. The Marxism came later. To be a dystopian is to have no expectations of the world. Marxism is the antidote to such a feeling because it invents expectations where seemingly there are none. Dystopias make you conscious of time. Marxism rejects time except as a man-made category and recognizes only one time: that of the revolution. Dystopias are about no-worlds or just about the whole universe. Marxism is the rest of the universe seen through the prism of this world. I’m writing about two people in the same book: one is the dystopian and another is the Marxist.

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Neo-Liberalism as Utopia

Feb 19, ’11 12:12 PM

During the ‘Discourses of Dissent’ conference, in response to Ruth Levitas’ presentation about the continuing need for utopias, I observed that Neo-Liberalism is a very potent example of a utopian vision that through what might be reasonably called a ‘conspiracy’ has managed over the course of seven decades to become the dominant ideology in global political economy. It was a vision forged in response to the socialist turn taken in many capitalist nations after the Great Depression that appeared to be vindicating Marx’s view of history.

It all began with the Walter Lippmann Colloquium in Paris in 1938, which after the Second World War was regularly convened (under the guiding influence of FA Hayek) as the ‘Mont Pelerin Society’, named for the Swiss resort location of the first meeting in 1947. A recent book canvasses the vast range of influences that have come from these meetings, which escalated once various welfare state and socialist regimes started to display cracks in the 1970s.

What makes neo-liberalism ‘neo’ is its explicitly positive attitude towards strong but focussed state intervention – namely, to ensure that markets enjoy maximum fluidity. This means, beyond traditional ‘security state’ notions of keeping the peace, the state also provides some minimal social services to the poor (but in much the same spirit) and importantly provides incentives that enable a critical mass of the population (say, 20-25%) to become middle class but in ways that keep their efforts focused on growing the economy (and reaping its benefits) rather than participating in politics (which is left to rather ideologically neutral professional politicians).

From a sociological standpoint, a striking feature of neo-liberalism is its withdrawal of state from the business of nation-building, or even society-building. Thus, today’s so-called ‘Big Society’ initiatives are largely a continuation of the Thatcherite devolution of the sense of ‘the social’ to spontaneously formed networks. However, it would be a mistake to see neo-liberalism as anti-sociological: Rather, it is fairly seen as an elaboration of the sociological vision of Vilfredo Pareto, now rarely taught in social theory courses but arguably deserving a new lease on life to understand the deep structures of neo-liberal thought.

Here it is worth noting that Talcott Parsons included Pareto as providing the bridgehead between neo-classical economics and classical sociology in The Structure of Social Action.

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Lincoln to re-connect the university with its roots

Feb 18, ’11 2:35 PM

Mike Neary, Professor of Teaching and Learning at Lincoln University, has just announced the formation of the Social Science Centre, which promises to be a self-organizing cooperatively owned corporation (with teachers and students as peers) devoted to higher education — very much in the spirit of the original medieval universities. It is refreshing to see this ‘back to basics’ approach at a time when universities have lost their sense of identity by playing in too many fields at once.

It is worth pointing out that the general economic model of cooperative ownership for universities has received some sympathetic media coverage in recent weeks, including here and here.

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Time to Revisit the Port Huron Statement?

Feb 18, ’11 2:14 PM

At the final discussion session of this week’s ‘Discourses of Dissent’ workshop in Birmingham, I raised the need for academics and students concerned about the future of the university to consolidate a positive position — something beyond simply protesting budget cuts and tuition fees. A model for such an activity is the famous Port Huron Statement of 1962, which established Students for a Democratic Society in the US. Inspired by C. Wright Mills, for the following decade the Statement provided the intellectual springboard for co-ordinating university resistance to the military-industrial complex that had colonized American campuses during the Cold War. Even the original rhetoric is worth emulating today. Here is the statement.

You may also find the Google-generated reception history of the Statement of interest.

Perhaps we need a second ‘constitutional convention’ meeting at Birmingham and Midland Institute to draft an updated version of this statement? Given the eloquence and forthrightness of the original Statement, it might be worth paying attention to how it was composed: My general sense is that, like the US Declaration of Independence, the main draft was by one hand (Tom Hayden playing Tom Jefferson) with various editorial inputs.

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Wikileaks and the Nightmare of History

Dec 14, ’10 8:00 AM

“History… is a nightmare from which I am trying to awake” says Stephen Dedalus in Joyce’s Ulysses. Power is central to the nightmare of history. That has always been the case except where land was communally owned and women were empowered to make decisions with respect to their bodies. If Wikileaks was dangerous enough to provoke the powers that be (a phrase coined by William Tyndale, one of the early translators of the Bible into English who eventually was burnt at the stake for “heresy”), Julian Assange’s plight would not be very different from that of Tyndale himself. “Leaks” could be as political as heresies if they threw light on the role of corporations – the powers that be – in manipulating the state machinery to serve private ends at the expense of the masses.

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The book that defined my thirtieth year (The Brothers Karamazov by Dostoevsky)

Nov 18, ’10 8:00 AM

Christ was thirty when he started on his mission of changing the world. Siddhartha Gautama was twenty-nine when he decided to renounce the world and become the Buddha. I was somewhere between my twenty-ninth and thirtieth year when I began reading Dostoevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov. Imagine a bucket of cold water splashed on your face at 3 A.M in the dead of winter somewhere close to the North Pole. That was the experience I had when I reached the final page of Constance Garnett’s translation of Dostoevsky’s last novel. I thought I was dying. I wasn’t. I was merely coming out of one phase of my life in order to enter another. It’s the caterpillar in the pupa stage fully formed and ready to come out as a butterfly. Such is the lightness with which the book filled my heart.

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