Politics – Page 16 – The Dream Café

Surplus and the State: a Parable

Let us imagine a lifeboat, decamped from a sinking ship, with a skilled navigator, charts, and some quantity of fresh water and food. Let us further imagine that the navigator is able to assure us that, if we keep rowing, we will reach the safety of land in a month. Upon examining the supplies, we discover that, with careful rationing, there is food and water for all for this month, although we are all going to be very hungry and very thirsty for the entire trip. Still, we can make it to land, and that is what is important.

We, then, might pick one of our number, based on who is good at numbers, or at bookkeeping, or by drawing straws, or by some other method, to arrange the rationing of supplies so that all arrive safely, and to arrange the schedule of rowing so that all are doing a fair share of work, limited, perhaps, by those who may be ill or infirm are thus unable to work as much as others. This doesn’t excuse him from rowing, of course—we need every hand.

They key in this scenario is “careful rationing.” If any of us are to get there, we must work together, and share what we have. “Everybody rows, everybody eats!” This is not a principle that requires discussion, it is obvious in the situation and no one questions it. It is not impossible that someone in the boat will point to a small child or someone sufficiently disabled as to not be able to row and suggest this person be thrown overboard, but I beg to submit most of us wouldn’t agree to any such thing, at least until the circumstances became desperate, and perhaps not even then.

Now, let us change our scenario. We come across a large crate floating in the ocean, and, lo and behold, it contains a supply of food and several gallons of water! Now our situation has changed: now some subset of the passengers can not only survive, but can survive comfortably, eating and drinking their fill. This is outstanding! There is no need to even consider throwing anyone overboard. Now we can—what?

Who gets the extra? Who decides? We might all have a conversation in which we determine who the best rowers are and give it to them, or we might decide to alternate, or divide the extra up as evenly as possible, or we might decide to draw straws, or any of a number of other options, but one thing is clear: The person who is in charge of handing out the rations is suddenly in a much different position—he’s no longer just “one of the passengers,” now he has something that he not only never had, but didn’t even exist before: power! And, however self-sacrificing he may be inintially, as his hunger grows, the thought will inevitably come to him, “I’m giving out these rations, why am I going hungry?” He might surreptitiously start stealing, he might announce his decision openly and invent a reason why it is ordained by god that he get more, or any of a number of other things depending on his character and the exact circumstance, but it is unlikely that he will go hungry for long. He explains that for all that time he was doing extra work with no extra reward. The extra is now his due. Besides, he has possession, which, ipso facto, makes them his. The rations are his private property, and property rights, as we all know, are sacred.

However, those of us who are still hungry and thirsty start looking at him. Why him, we ask ourselves? Why not me? I’m a good person, I’ve been doing my share of work, why should I be denied extra food and water? If property rights are sacred, well, why can’t it be MY property? Now our rationer has a problem—everyone is looking at him, and he is looking at the cold water outside the boat and thinking that if doesn’t do something, he not only won’t have his entitled position, but he might not even have his life! But, hey, here’s the good news: He still has charge of the rations. “Hey, you–big guy! How’d you like some extra food and water? All you have to do is help keep the rest of them in line, and I’ll give you a little extra. Better than being hungry, right? Oh, and call me “My lord.”

The rest of us are not pleased with this new development. We don’t like the rationer, and we don’t like the big guy any more either, though he was fine yesterday when he wasn’t threatening us, but now he is threatening us, and even slapping us around when we complain about the situation. Boy, it would be nice to take both of them and…but, you know, he is pretty big. And not only that, well, the fact is, if we got rid of those two, someone else would just take their place, and we’d be right back in the same situation.

But then, suddenly….another crate! More food, more water! Let’s look at what we have, count the days, the number of rowers…YES! Victory! We can all eat and drink our fill and know that we will safely arrive, and—

Wait. What is happening here? Why isn’t the rationer simply giving up his position and going back to distributing everything fairly and evenly like he did before? Maybe he’s come to enjoy his privileges. Maybe he’s afraid of us, knowing how he treated us. But for whatever reason, he is hanging onto his position even though there is no longer a need for it.

I’d intended to go on with this parable, but I think I’ll stop here. It is, like any parable, far from perfect; just to begin with, we have neither navigator nor charts but rather have to create them as we go. And the notion of exactly the right number of rowers and exactly the right amount of rations is obviously contrived;the real world doesn’t work that way. And in the real world, the “rowers” are actually producing the food and water.

Nevertheless, for the point I want to make, which is the relationship between surplus, private property, and the development of the State, I think it holds up pretty well. Thoughts?

Patiently Explain

Panic is the product of awareness of the need for immediate action combined with uncertainty about what that action is. Panic seldom results in the best choice.

In previous elections, every election, “You aren’t voting for my candidate so you are letting the other guy win so you are a <insert favorite calumny>” would come up now and then. Of course, the “you are letting the other guy win” is business as usual, but the added insult, or expression of hatred, was rare. One would write the individual off as not worth talking to and move on with one’s life.

This election is different. This is happening a lot. For those of you who, like me, are not voting for either of the two major candidates (I’m voting for the Socialist Equality Party), I’m just writing this to suggest patience. This election is distinguished by a more extreme crisis among the two capitalist parties—indeed, it pits the two most hated candidates in living memory against each other—than I’ve ever seen. More, it is a reflection of an entire society in crisis, and masses of people feeling the increasing need to find a way forward, and less and less understanding of how to do so.

My point is, we need to try not to take the insults and abuse personally. Hell, I’ve felt it myself, the desire to scream, “WHY DON’T YOU PEOPLE GET IT?” This reaction isn’t helpful, but it is understandable. The threat of Trump, who was (in my opinion) produced exactly by the system personified by Clinton, is hitting us hard. Things are scary.

Trotsky’s words describing the activity of the Petrograd Soviet in 1905 were, “patiently explain.” This has never, in my life time, been harder to do, and never been more important.

Inequality and the Police

If we are to combat police violence, racial or otherwise, we must first begin by understanding it.

Social inequality is a reflection and a product of economic inequality. Unless we are to wallow in unscientific claptrap about “human nature” and “tribalism,” we must recognize that the essence of social inequality is that it provides a material and ideological structure that permits some to take things by denying them to others. Racial inequality is a particularly clear example of this. For anyone who hasn’t read it, I recommend MLK’s speech at the end of the Montgomery to Selma march. Whatever disagreements I have with King’s pacifism and reformism, he certainly understood the origins of racial oppression, and gave a beautiful and succinct summary beginning in paragraph 9. I also cannot recommend too highly the book he refers to, The Strange Career of Jim Crow by C. Vann Woodward.

In order for economic and social inequality to exist, three things are necessary: the first is the production of a surplus; you cannot have an argument about who gets the extra apple until there is an extra apple. The second is an ideology that accepts inequality as normal, as just part of life–the idea that we live (or could live, or almost live) in a meritocracy is one, a sense of morality accepted from the oppressors through their control of the media and the academy is another. Any moral code, such as pacifism, that interferes with the fight for equality serves the interests of those who benefit from continued oppression. Reformist ideology by definition treats the object it intends to reform, capitalism, as permanent, and thus plays its part in accepting inequality is normal.

The third is a means of enforcing the inequality through violence and the threat of violence. This is, and always has been, exactly the role of the police. I think, of all the illusions under which many people operate, one of the greatest is that it is possible to fight against police violence without simultaneously fighting for social and economic equality, because violence in defense of economic inequality is why the police exist. The fight for social and economic equality is the fight for socialism.

Independence Day

It is Independence Day and the yabuts are out in force. The reactionaries like to set off fireworks and avoid realizing that the system they believe is the be-all and end-all of human achievement arrived by revolution, by mass action of a people fighting against those who thought their system was the be-all and end-all of human achievement. Meanwhile, the pseudo-lefts dominate the discussion where I am listening: Let anyone dare quote “All men are created equal” and out they charge: “Yeah, but what about the native peoples?” “Yeah, but the founding fathers owned slaves and permitted slavery.” “Yeah, but what about women?” they cry.

To me, the statement “All men are created equal” is a promise, a rallying cry, and an inspiration, and what the yabuts prefer not to look at, is that this promise and inspiration did what it was supposed to: it inspired the Abolition movement, the women’s suffrage movement, the labor movement, the civil rights movement of the 50s and 60s. Over and over, leaders from Frederick Douglass to Lincoln to Eugene Debs to Elizabeth Stanton and Lucretia Mott to Martin Luther King, Jr have referred to this document as an inspiration, as an “unfulfilled promise,” using it as a banner and a sword to further the cause of human equality.

The Declaration of Independence was revolutionary and inspirational at the time it was written, and it is revolutionary and inspirational today. Whatever the yabuts say, the fight for equality is not hindered by an appreciation of those who, earlier, took what steps were available to them, and handed us a torch with which to burn the hands of those who try to lay hold of our revolutionary traditions for the purpose of stopping them.

There is so much more to do in the fight for equality, which now focuses more and more on the inequality between those who must toil in order to live, and those who live on the fruits of others’ toil. To look on the past as if one had achieved such moral perfection as to permit condemnation of the battles others fought does nothing to advance this cause.

Contradictions Inherent in Changing Gun Laws

Gun safety and gun laws in the US are one of the most difficult things to discuss in isolation from other social problems: mass shootings that are the result of combinations of factors such as desperation, anger, inadequate mental health care, living in a country where the government and the police see human life as without value, along with backwardness, intolerance, religious fanaticism, and other signs of a decaying society. This complexity makes it almost impossible to look at gun issues apart from their interaction with everything else. When we see supposed liberals, who up until a month ago railed against the “terrorist watch” no-fly list as racist, arbitrary, and undemocratic (which it is) now cheering wildly to increase the powers of the list, we can get a hint of how inter-related gun issues are with everything else.

Nevertheless, there are some inherent contradictions in gun issues that are worth pointing out:

The easiest targets for modifying gun laws, ie, banning semi-automatic rifles and improving background checks, will do the least to reduce the actual number of gun deaths.

Requiring demonstrated knowledge of gun safety before owning a firearm will do a great deal to reduce the worst sorts of gun violence, (children getting hold of them, or impulse suicide). But there is an inherent conflict between storing a weapon in such a way that is useful for home defense and one that is safe from children. The question of home defense is itself contradictory, simply because, while the fear of home invasion is drastically over-stated by those who make money by peddling fear, nevertheless there is some justification for it.

There are ways around the gun-safety vs gun-access conundrum (quick-release lockboxes keyed to a thumbprint, biometric tirggers, &c), but they’re expensive. This gets into areas where things like insurance and bonding, that some have suggested, end up tying the question “may you own a firearm?” to the question, “how much money do you have?” which, for obvious reasons, I am not at all comfortable with.

Most self-defense uses of handguns are never covered by the news, because most of them never involve discharging a weapon, thus it is very hard to get numbers on them. Part of the reason for this is that the US government won’t permit any of it’s agencies to make such a study.

What might be the biggest contradiction is this: The notion of using personal weapons to defend against a tyrannical government is nonsense, but giving the government authority to prevent personal ownership of weapons is a step toward tyranny.

Other than a complete and drastic restructuring of society, I do not see a way to resolve these contradictions.