“I Had Weird Educational Experiences”: Interview With Noam Chomsky

Posted on 21/05/2013 by Jerome Nikolai Warren

Spirit: Alot of theorists, I think of EJ Hobsbawm in particular, in the book  On History, separate the concept of “biography” from that of “history”. You’ve been more concerned, it is apparent, in your career, with the latter rather than the former, and, is this for a particular reason? Have you  ever, or would you ever consider writing more extensively about your own experiences?

Chomsky: You’re right.  I’ve often been asked to write about my own  experiences.  I do bring them up now and then, when relevant to some  other topic.  But not more than that.  Some day, maybe.  Right now my  judgment is that other things are more important – right or wrong.

Spirit: Like the Russell tribunal?

Chomsky: To mention one.

Spirit: Twenty or thirty years ago, you held a since much circulated debate with Michel Foucault, in which the existence of any overarching human nature arose. You suggested there was such a thing, and yet Mr Foucault was of the belief that “human nature” is always shaped by existing power structures, socio-historical contexts, etc. When pressed to name an aspect or trait of underlying human nature, you were unable to do so, leaving some critics to suggest Foucault “won” the argument (as though that were possible to begin with). In the years since, have you given this question more consideration? Would you answer differently were it posed today?

Chomsky: If human beings are part of the organic world, then they have a genetically-determined nature, and we all know that that is true: they have mammalian rather than insect visual systems, a language capacity that we know a lot about and that is entirely missing in other organisms, and far more. The informal and mostly confused discussions about “human nature” have to do with such matters as tendencies towards violence vs cooperation, etc. About such matters little is understood, just as complex issues about other organisms are little understood. Or for that matter about the inorganic world. But that the answers are heavily conditioned by genetic endowment is not seriously in doubt. Continue reading →

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The Philosophy of Science

Posted on 18/04/2013 by Gavin Mendel-Gleason
Scientific Socialism

Mural of Scientific Inquiry DDR

As we saw in Part I, scientific progress is used by the capitalist class as a tool for the expulsion of labour from the workforce by way of technological improvements, which enables them to increase profits. This fact was immortalised in the conflict between labour and capital in the Luddite rebellions, when textile artisans destroyed machinery in protest of their expulsion from the labour force at the beginning of the 19th century.

It is no wonder then that much of the left, from the 19th and 20th century on, has had some antipathy towards technical progress. Marx, in contrast, made a point of demonstrating clearly the contradiction wherein technical improvements which could reduce human labour end up working counter to the interests of the labourer. The core difference of the Marxist viewpoint was in seeing the technical development as progressive and locating the difficulty instead in the social form: rather than attacking the production of labour saving machinery, it looked towards the root, the organisation of production and not toward the epiphenomena of the exile of labour from remuneration.
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Science and Socialism

Posted on 17/04/2013 by James O'Brien
Mural of Flight Science: Sky Harbor Airport

Mural of Flight Science: Sky Harbor Airport

“Soviets plus electrification,” proclaimed Lenin, “equals communism”.

Even allowing for the simplifications inherent in sloganeering, Lenin’s quip does capture a version of the optimism, even faith, that his generation of socialists had in science and its essential compatibility with the socialist project.

One of the justifications for socialism, apart from its intrinsic ethical superiority, was its claim that it would be a more rational way than capitalism of organising economic life.

It is hardly surprising, therefore, that such a pro-science culture would see leading socialists double up as scientists — Pannekoek was an astronomer, Kropotkin a geographer — while eminent scientists such as Haldane threw their lot in with the radical left.

More importantly, the classical Marxists, in particular, saw themselves as applying a scientific analysis of society: not for them an uninformative litany of the deeds of the great men of history. Rather they looked at the underlining tendencies that governed social life.

However, in recent decades many radicals have adopted a more sceptical stance towards science itself. It is worth looking at why and whether it is a useful approach. The first port of call is the extremely close relationship between research areas and the funding supplied by business and the state, particularly the military.
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Revolution: towards a new approach

Posted on 15/04/2013 by yeksmesh

A stylish Spanish militia member from 1936

The first article I wrote on this Spirit of Contradiction was one on revolution, and more specifically a critique of the radical leftist approach to revolution. In this article I wish to return to this subject and repeat some of my earlier arguments while also bringing up new ones, in essence my goal is to polish my earlier unrefined and isolated ideas and combine them with new insights I have developed since posting them.

My first priority in most of my articles on revolutions was deconstructing and criticising the dominant radical leftist approach to revolutions, in this tradition I will thus begin with a deconstruction of these ideas. The radical leftist approach to revolutions can be described, in a word, as millenarian; it expects one big event to come along and sweep away the rotten capitalist society and institute the glorious future socialist society. This strong focus upon a single moment can often be observed in the language employed by the radical such as the use of the prefix THE before mentions of the word REVOLUTION, such as in the sentences “After the revolution x or y will happen”, “The day the revolution comes x and y will happen” and so on. Another good exercise for any radical leftist that wants to observe this mentality is to search in one of the internet forums dedicated to radical leftists for threads with titles such as “Do you think you will see socialism in your lifetime” or something of that nature, these threads are generally a combination of overly optimistic/desperate comments about how the moment of salvation is drawing nearer and nearer and depressing comments as to how THE revolution will most likely not occur in the writers lifetime.

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An Uncritical Critique of The Critical Net Critic

Posted on 15/04/2013 by Gavin Mendel-Gleason
Upside-down Pyramid on dollar bill.

Novus ordo seclorum

Recently a friend in a reading group suggested that we read The Critical Net Critic. While the piece is somewhat long and meandering it is also very good at helping to answer some of those fundamental questions about what is changing in the present economy and how we should understand (Information Technology) IT in relation to the rest of the productive economy.
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A Call for a Leftist Front a la Mont Pèlerin

Posted on 10/04/2013 by Jerome Nikolai Warren
Mont Pèlerin

Mont Pèlerin , an idyllic Alipne town in Switzerland overlooking lake Geneva, where in 1947 the creation of a “utopian liberal” project was concocted by a number of Austrian, English and American intellectuals, the leader of whom was Hayek.

 

Friedrich Hayek ends his famous essay The Intellectuals and Socialism with the question of whether the intellectual revival of liberalism occurring in some places in the post-WWII world (notably in Germany and the Anglophone countries) was “in time”. It is my argument that it was undoubtedly “in time” (to say such a limit ever existed), and that the intellectual milieu of the subsequent decades is nearly entirely the product of the “radical liberalism” Hayek, and others, advocated. Furthermore, it is going to be my argument here that nowhere is this development more apparent than within the economics profession and its immediate branches. Though the ensuing paragraphs will consider primarily arguments for persuading Left-leaning individuals to choose careers within professional academic circles within the discipline of economics, certainly all of the observations can be read congruently with respect to similar disciplines. The focus, however, will be on economics. Continue reading →

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The Politics of Bioshock Infinite – a review

Posted on 03/04/2013 by Dara McHugh

Bioshock Infinite cover image

“Bring us the girl and wipe away the debt”.

With this instruction, Booker DeWitt is dispatched to Columbia, a sprawling city that floats above the United States after a political and geographic secession. DeWitt is a fomer Pinkerton and veteran of Wounded Knee, compelled by gambling debts to accept this ambiguous reprieve. But he is not the only one in search of a fresh start. Columbia is a city founded on an imagined return to America’s true ideals; racial purity, the message of the Founding Fathers and a divine mission. The Puritan city on the hill has left the face of earth altogether. “What is Columbia but a new ark for a new time?”, the city’s founder, leader and self-styled prophet, Zachary Comstock asks rhetorically. We find out about the flood soon enough.
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Breaking With the Economic Beatitude: Refutations of Some Prevailing Notions Against the Basic Income

Posted on 31/03/2013 by Jerome Nikolai Warren

I’ve written elsewhere on the subject of immaterial hurdles facing the argument for the basic income guarantee [µ]. I want to shortly summarize the sentiments constituting these hurdles, and outline the counter-arguments I’ve given against these views.

Economist Aad Kieboom came up with the idea to introduce black flies into the urinals in the Amsterdam airport's men's room. Studies have found the simple introducion of a black fly into the urinal reduced spillage by 80%. Could the BIG work similarly with respect to human social relations?

Economist Aad Kieboom came up with the idea to introduce black flies into the urinals in the Amsterdam airport’s men’s room. Studies have found the engineering of a black fly etching into the urinal introduced a “virtuous cycle”, which ultimately reduced spillage by 80%. Could engineering a BIG, similarly, introduce a “virtuous cycle,” allowing people to escape the “poverty trap” and improve their general lot?

In my prior paper, I don’t consider more fundamental hardships deriving from political conditions in any nation-state as regards introducing and legislating a basic income, though this problem, that of overarching political conditions in the modern state, poses an additional, equally immaterial, barrier to the introduction of the basic income. I think other commentators on the site, and elsewhere, in books, and on the Internet, have taken up the issue in greater detail, though, than the quick run down I have planned would allow me to give this issue.

I’ve written previously mainly in regards to two particular perceptions which have implications on the movement.

The first of these is that human beings are naturally lazy. This amounts most of the time to an unspoken, though underlying assumption which, in formal terms, would claim to have knowledge of human nature. Most of the theoretical basis of this is founded in the Protestant work ethic, which others have written on, particularly Max Weber, and a number of political historians, like, for instance, Michael Walzer. Let us take this issue on formally. If we look to research, there is significant evidence, based on multiple scientific studies, that suggests that human beings are not, in fact, “idleness-prone”, or “busyness-aversive”. Most research, in fact, points to the opposite conclusion. Continue reading →

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Return to Babel

Posted on 22/03/2013 by Dara McHugh

Detail from The Tower of Babel by Brueghel. Lots of boats.

And the whole earth was of one language, and of one speech. And it came to pass, as they journeyed from the east, that they found a plain in the land of Shinar; and they dwelt there. And they said one to another, Go to, let us make brick, and burn them thoroughly. And they had brick for stone, and slime had they for mortar. And they said, Go to, let us build us a city and a tower, whose top may reach unto heaven; and let us make us a name, lest we be scattered abroad upon the face of the whole earth.

And the Lord came down to see the city and the tower, which the children of men builded. And the Lord said, Behold, the people is one, and they have all one language; and this they begin to do: and now nothing will be restrained from them, which they have imagined to do. Go to, let us go down, and there confound their language, that they may not understand one another’s speech. So the Lord scattered them abroad from thence upon the face of all the earth: and they left off to build the city. Therefore is the name of it called Babel; because the Lord did there confound the language of all the earth: and from thence did the Lord scatter them abroad upon the face of all the earth. – Genesis 11, King James Bible

The people had ideas above their station. United in action, they were to build a city that could stretch to the sky, to take the place of God Himself. For this great presumption, they were scattered, their languages confounded and the city abandoned. But what if the story had a sequel? What if the people of the world decided to return to their old task, to combine their labours and usurp the seat of Heaven?
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How does change happen? A review of John Gaventa’s Power and Powerlessness

Posted on 18/03/2013 by Dara McHugh

Why, in a social relation involving the domination of a non-elite by an elite, does challenge to that domination not occur? What is there in certain situations of social deprivation that prevents issues from arising, grievances from being voiced, or interests from being recognised? Why in an oppressed community where one might intuitively expect upheaval, does one instead find, or appear to find, quiescence? [pp3]

The questions that open Power and Powerlessness, John Gaventa’s investigation of social peace and rebellion in a desperately poor Appalachian valley, remain on the lips of radicals everywhere, some 30 years from publication. The crisis has been a stark demonstration that economic deprivation does not necessarily impel the deprived into conflict with elites. The questions that surround the fraught transition from ‘class in itself’ and ‘class for itself’ deserve to be dominant strands in progressive strategy but are rarely answered coherently. While revolutionists lurch from outlandish overoptimism to dark mutterings of betrayal, the once centre-left has dropped all interest in the issue, preferring positioning to power-building.
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Three types of revolution

Posted on 15/03/2013 by James O'Brien
The Ultra-Orthodox

The Ultra-Orthodox

The issue of revolution looms large in the minds of socialists.

The bewildering array of radical groups, most of whom proclaim their allegiance to revolution as the central feature which defines their existence as radicals, gives the impression of them all being fellow travellers on a common journey.

But what is meant by revolution? Do the Sparticists want the same thing as the syndicalists? Does the Socialist Workers Party want the same thing as Syriza?

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Posted in Politics, Proletarian politics | 4 Comments

Interview with Gael Le Mignot of the Parti communiste français

Posted on 13/03/2013 by James O'Brien

The Parti communiste français or, for us impoverished monoglots, the French Communist Party, was founded in the aftermath of the Russian Revolution and has seen many highs (the anti-fascist struggle) and lows (the decline in the 1990s).

PCF fete

Unlike most of the far left parties in the Anglo-sphere, the communist parties in the western Europe managed to grow and sustain mass support, counted in the millions.

Emerging from World War 2 as the central organisation behind the resistence, the French communists (PCF) reaped the benefits and won nearly 30% in the post war elections. However, it was excluded from power in 1947.

Below, we interview in a personal capacity, the PCF’s Gael Le Mignot on the current situation in France, the PCF and its role in the social struggle. Continue reading →

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Beyond law: towards an alternative to legal regulation under socialism

Posted on 06/03/2013 by modulus
Justice Peeking

Justice Peeking

The law, in its majestic equality, forbids the rich and the poor alike to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal bread.
–Anatole France, Le Lys Rouge

As a Marxist and a lawyer, I often find myself split by conflicting intellectual loyalties. Not that I entered my studies holding to some naïve belief that law and justice are one and the same, but even if I had, I would have soon been disabused of this idea. Legal education in Spain is, like in most of Europe, profoundly positivist, meaning by this, that the morality, fairness or prudence of a law is regarded as entirely separate from its juridical quality, and hence its force to compel. Taking a quick stock of my teachers, all but two were committed positivists, which is perhaps to be expected, given the difficulties in grounding law any other way.

It is however inevitable that, after five years of studies, the mental habits, categories, and conceptual apparatus of the discipline became instilled at an almost unconscious level in my way of thinking. To this day, I can’t read news such as Qatar handing the Syrian embassy to the insurgency without getting a complex chain of concepts activated: Montevideo criteria, premature recognition, the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations (1961), inviolability of diplomatic premises and envoys… all resulting in an automatic inner scream of outrage–illegal! But the most surprising thing I learned about the law in long years of study is how plastic it actually is. It goes beyond Kirchmann’s criticism to those who wanted to found a science of law: three rectifying words from the legislators, and entire libraries become garbage. The problem is that, no matter how much theorists want to ground law on the normative, it is a social process, not a static edifice, and one which is inherently characterised by conflict. There is no law, not in its strongest sense, where there is no dispute.
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Posted in Bourgeois politics, History, Philosophy, Politics, Proletarian politics | 3 Comments

New Age Marxism

Posted on 15/02/2013 by Paul Cockshott

Communist DolphinI have started reading Heinrich’s ‘An Introduction to the Three Volumes of Karl Marx’s Capital’. I decided to read it after I was told that this was probably the most influential work published by what are termed the ‘value form’ theorists. Up until this point I had known of Heinrich only by his participation on the OPE-L mailing list, a list for people interested in Marxian political economy.

There have over the years been a number of debates on that list about value form theory, though Heinrich himself was not one of the main contributors.

During an interview last week I was asked the question:

Currently Heinrich and other value theorists are enjoying a certain popularity in socialist circles. What do you think of value theory as put forward by Heinrich?

My answer1 was criticised as being a rather brief and off the cuff response to a significant and influential writer like Heinrich, so I promised to write a more considered response.
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