Some Desperate Glory

He’s not explicitly calling for going to (another) war, though I guess one cd infer that from his quoting the last stanza of Star Spangled Banner, which is never sung and which I don’t think I was aware of.

That said, Kristol is quite nauseating.

Billy Kristol missed an obvious allusion which is that there were a lot of “froth corrupted lungs” in Damascus 5 months ago that didn’t lead to war. Clearly that wasn’t the war the neocons were looking for.

This, by a sort of Kristol-the-Younger, is prob something someone at CT (Robin? Holbo?) should be all over, as in ripping it to shreds.

Wilfred Owen proved that the pen was mightier than the sword by halting war.

@Substance
“halting” is an overstatement; rather, helping to delegitimize at least a certain kind of war

“War is fought by the children of the poor and working class for the advantage of
the wealthy and the powerful.”

War? That’s what it’s good for? Huh? Say it again?

No less a figure than the literary giant, Thomas Mann, was once selling the elixir of noble war. The disappointingly incongruous ending of the Magic Mountain shows Hans Kastorp finally fully alive as he crosses a WWI battlefield under fire. Mann eventually said goodbye to all that, but it caused his estrangement from his brother for a decade.

War is so deeply encoded in our nature that it animates our language and haunts our dreams. Huge numbers of young males spend countless hours on virtual battlefields, endlessly killing and destroying. The problem isn’t Bill Kristol; it is us.

According to Wikipedia, Kristol has 3 children.

After he talks all of them to signing up and fighting, I’ll listen to him try to convince the rest of us.

His son-in-law, Matthew Continetti, also somehow managed to go from Columbia University to The Weekly Standard without ever hitting boot camp.

Kristol: It’s perhaps fitting and proper that the national anthem of a nation dedicated to the question of whether societies of men can govern themselves by reflection and choice ends not in a boast but in a question.

Just not fitting and proper enough to outweigh, “Then conquer we must!”

Francis Scott Key’s poem, composed within hours of the American victory and set the next day to a popular melody, was within days a popular song and within weeks “The Star-Spangled Banner.”

Because we wouldn’t want to form our vision from rash impulses.

“halting” is an overstatement

Quite right LFC.

The UK Education Secretary, Michael Gove, is also worried that the WW1 centenary will re-ignite old passions:

http://www.politics.co.uk/news/2014/01/03/michael-gove-blasts-blackadder-for-spreading-left-wing-myths

Not astonishing, that is, given the source.

phosphorious at #7:

Good work. Hilarious.

@22
Who doesn’t like black adder?!?

@25
re Napoleon’s defeat: not to be picky but off by a year — Waterloo was 1815.

Somebody will have to help me out; Kristol says that WWI led to the “demoralization” of the West. Did WWII really happen or was it something I just saw in a movie? Did the US fight major ground wars in east Asia over a period of decades? Was there another major ground war in the middle east about a decade ago? Age and alcohol are taking their toll so someone please fill me in on these questions or, barring that, explain what Kristol meant.

Plume,

To be fair, another thing that comes “naturally” to the vast majority is following authority, rationalizing it to themselves, and ostracizing people who don’t accept that rationalization.

Better verbs than “sucker” or “force” in your antepenultimate sentence might be “seduce” or “satisfy”.

@Ben 32,

To be fair, another thing that comes “naturally” to the vast majority is following authority, rationalizing it to themselves, and ostracizing people who don’t accept that rationalization.

I would argue that this isn’t “natural” to most humans in the slightest. It’s beaten into them, socialized, through thousands of years. We’ve been disciplined and punished enough to accept this. We’ve been told for century upon century to obey and ask for more abuse. And in recent years, we’ve been taught that we’re not only supposed to obey, but do so happily.

Again, this is all about socialization. It can just as easily be reversed through alternative socialization, being taught to think critically. The facts are on the side of such a reversal. As in, it’s more than obvious that we all do better when we cooperate with one another (and not the alphas and sociopaths), ignore the words of the Napoleons and the Alexanders, tell them to F off, and live in peace and harmony instead.

There is just no logical counterargument against peace and harmony. Warfare gets you killed. That, alone, is enough to shred it as argument. And all the evidence points to another aspect of warfare totally failing for the vast majority of us:

Economic. There is simply no valid argument that giving massive power to a few financial/political elites helps the vast majority. Following them, doing as they say, letting them wage war on behalf of their own wallets, accepting their vision over us, results in their massive gain and our massive loss. And the planet’s.

We lived for our first 200,000 years on this planet in communal relationships. If anything can be said to be “natural” to humans, it’s that. Cooperation, not competition. Not warfare through traditional or other means, though that warfare happened all too often. But warfare is what the sociopaths get us to do, so they gain power, against our best interests . . .

“Who doesn’t like black adder?!?”

*raises hand* and Monty Phyton

Plume,

I mean . . . what we’re saying isn’t incompatible. Stuff like Hierarchy in the Forest points out that, while there might be innate tendencies to dominate and to submit to domination, egalitarian societies can (and have, for the majority of humans’ time on Earth) exist by, in effect, dominating those who would do the dominating.

But this also means that authoritarian or despotic social structures use the same tendencies to perpetuate themselves.

Anyway this is pretty far afield from the OP. Kristol’s a mealy-mouthed dick.

And Ronan(rf) needs to be slapped in the face with a fish.

“Kristol’s a mealy-mouthed dick”

Maybe so, but he is consistent, and he represents a certain point of view. The clash of civilizations. This point of view is always present, in one form in another. Dangerous stuff.

Of course, Cheney is the real dick. Mealy-mouthed and otherwise.

Gove is upset because teachers in British schools have been showing students the Black Adder WW1 series. The Tories may see an opportunity to jingo their way through this anniversary year–concurrent, as it is, with the run-up to the 2015 election; however, left-wing discourse has shaped public sentiment about the Great War, during the past 5 decades. It’s going to be a difficult job for the Tories to renegotiate it, I suspect. We’re likely to be hearing a lot from Niall Ferguson, this year.

My (limited non expert) understanding is that Gove is more right than wrong on this, at least pushing back against the Lions led by Donkeys narrative. My (limited non expert) understanding is that there really weren’t many alternatives to the way the war was fought (initially) that the learning curve to *this new type of war* was too steep and that alot of the hosility towards the ‘elites’ has largely covered over how much support the war had, at thte time, among the general popualtion.
As I said though, i dont know so Im more than open to being wrong (of course)

Oh Ronan… :-(

Have never seen Black Adder. Is it worth a Netflix viewing?

Yes. I’d say start with Blackadder II first though. The first series is very different from the following three and, whilst it has its own merits, would give a misleading impression of the others.

Re: egalitarian societies can (and have, for the majority of humans’ time on Earth) exist by, in effect, dominating those who would do the dominating.

This is quite correct. The only way you can keep sociopathic capitalists from getting in charge and dominating everyone else, is by having some other power stronger than them, to beat them down when they try it. Either the vanguard party, or the army, or some other force. You don’t overthrow greed and sociopathic economics by holding hands and singing Kum-ba-yah, you overthrow it using men with guns.

This is precisely why the ‘no gods, no masters’ stuff is so silly. In order to resist the power of monied interests, you need a State, and a State much powerful than any liberals are willing to countenance.

@Ben Alpers
I stand corrected. Shd have said that I’d never heard it sung, prob b/c i didn’t grow up in the Bay Area (and don’t know who the Golden State Warriors were/are and am too lazy to look it up).

There are some ideas running here the remind me of one of my favorite books:

Lord of the Flies.

A true classic, one that calls out the civilizing nature of civilization and the brutality that lurks just below the surface, in its absence.

Civilization and government can and does shave off the rough edges of human nature. It is foolish of little-government types and libertarians to want to do away with it. I always say, those folks ought to vacation in Somalia. With no government and lots of guns and ammo, it must be paradise!

@Straightwood 53,

The archeol0gical evidence is not very supportive of the advocates of man’s peaceful nature. The presence of fortifications, such as palisades and ditches, in many early settlements indicates a serious concern for security.

The evidence of wars, fortifications, etc. etc. proves nothing about “man” in general. Who ordered the attacks? Who started the wars? Who created the need for defensive fortifications? All of humankind? No. Not hardly. Again, sociopaths, alphas and ultras attempting to seize power and wealth for themselves. A tiny percentage of humankind with oversized impact to the nth degree.

No one is trying to say there haven’t been umpteen wars, genocides and other atrocities galore, or that this isn’t an essential part of the human story. What I’m saying is that there was never any consensus about this. It’s never been driven by all of humankind. Far, far from it. People were ordered, forced or persuaded to do these unconscionable things by a few, at the top, for their benefit. They were socialized into doing this and falsely accepted the notion that it’s “natural,” so just shut up and clap louder.

The powers that be in the south, for instance, the slaveholders, held local populations in their thrall for all too long using the notion that their way was “natural” and the “natural order of things.” That is, of course, until the Civil War and abolition, in which case we had a new “natural order of things.” Jim Crow, another form of slavery, which was called the natural order of things, too. And then that was abolished and so on.

It’s pretty obvious, at least to me, that we’d have few (if any) wars if we had true democracy, within an egalitarian structure across the globe. And by “true” I mean including the economy. If the people most directly in the line of fire had a choice in the matter, for once, we’d see a massive reduction in violence all across the planet. And if the .01% and the upper classes in general didn’t hoard like they do, we wouldn’t have a scarcity issue, either. Scarcity then ceases to be a rationale (or excuse).

The richest 20% of the world consumed 85% of the earth’s resources. We don’t have a scarcity problem. We have an economic apartheid problem.

In short, you can’t deduce anything about “humanity” overall from things like wars and our long, disgusting history of genocide and oppression, etc. etc. In pretty much every case, orders for this were top down.

Wow: that Ruskin quote is more evidence for my belief that Britain and Germany are sisters under the skin, and we missed out on fascism with arts & crafts stylings by fifty or so sailors at Jutland actually following the explosives handling procedures.

In short, you can’t deduce anything about “humanity” overall from things like wars and our long, disgusting history of genocide and oppression, etc. etc. In pretty much every case, orders for this were top down.

This is dangerously delusional. That is all.

Maybe we should turn it around. The only wars we should deem to fight are glorious ones. Glorious wars in the old fashioned sense, were primarily fought for the glory of the participants -particularly of the generals/kings, and were not fought for territory or plunder so much, as to prove the worthiness of the fighters. In a “glorious” war, once it is determined that both sides have fought well, the battle ends, and both sides can celebrate each others manly qualities together. Today we have strategic wars, and wars fought because of the incompatibilities of different cultures/religions/commercial or colonial-endeavours Or even pre-emptive wars, fought because we think total war with oponent X is inevitable, and we’d rather control the time and place of the inception of hostilities. In these “nonGlorious” war, there is no prospect as quitting as soon as your opponent demonstrates his worthiness.

The biggest reason for wars today is to protect or expand markets. Capitalism is the core reason why we fight so often. Threats to capitalism are invented, so we can go to war and take over markets. Or real threats arise, like other nations refusing to allow our capitalists in, so we go to war in the name of “freedom.” And since capitalists in America managed to forever link our economic system with the idea of “freedom,” it’s a lethal package.

Outside of religion, no combination is more lethal. Americans are led to believe they go to war to “protect their way of life” which actually means protecting the bottom line of capitalists. What a truly amazing triumph for PR and propaganda!

Glorious indeed.

I appreciate the point of John’s sarcasm, but it’s actually off target. Kristol’s point isn’t that we should glorify war, but that the further conclusion from the damage of WW1 – that civilization, government, country, something along those lines (according to Kristol) – isn’t worth believing in or fighting for. Whether that actually was a conclusion widely drawn from WW1 is open to question, of course.

Plume – that 15-20% number is SLA Marshall’s claim about units in WW2, no? That most soldiers in combat either did not fire their weapons or purposefully aimed to miss when they did fire? My understanding is that his research has been discredited. And since we’re discussing WW1, let’s remember that crowds cheered the announcement of war in cities across Europe, though certainly they had no better insight than the key generals into what the next few years would hold. I think that violence in human societies is strongly influenced by norms, but that pacifism is very rarely one of them.

In reality, the biggest threat we face to “our way of life” is from within: the right’s insatiable desire to create a Social Darwinist udopia, no matter the cost.

That’s the irreconcilable difference they’re talking about. They want to be as god-kings over all humanity, and I’d really rather they didn’t.

I’m not sure what Kristol’s point is, because I don’t know what he denotes by “demoralization of the West” or “civilizational decline”. John Ruskin may express the gist, but there’s precious little textual evidence. Probably, Kristol knows his intended audience better than I, and his piece’s very emptiness will provoke grunts of pleasurable projection from many of his readers. It is not about evidence, because it is not about anything, but vague sentiment.

Kristol is too easy a target.

War is not just violence – it’s organised violence. Apart from manufacturing, it’s the most organised thing people do. The capacity for war goes hand in hand with the capacity for organisation. As such, it always remains a choice for any organised group of people, just as resort to violence is always a possibility for any person. Some will take that choice more readily, but most will take it in some circumstance.

Some misconceptions: war is the elites sending the masses to die. In fact, in most functioning armies, officers have higher casualty rates then enlisted men (around 50% higher in World War I). And officers are mostly the sons/brothers of the elite.

Wars are about capitalism: check the wars in Afghanistan and Syria (neither the Taliban nor the Syrian combatants are motivated by anything resembling capitalism). Ditto Bosnia, Chechnya and so on. Ordinary people will fight if they see that as the only road to some large goal. When they will not, wars mostly don’t happen (as in, the elites check the mood, discover that if they give a party no-one will come, and cancel). Ordinary peoples’ involvement is negotiated, often with propaganda, sometimes bought, rarely coerced.

The Somme is now counted as a solid allied victory – albeit one bought at high cost. A battle that had to be fought to keep the Germans from concentrating on the exhausted French. It consumed the German strategic reserve, set back their plans for at least a year and gave the French a desperately needed respite. Sort of like Stalingrad in the second war – it had to be fought if the Germans were to be defeated. Before John Quiggin again accuses me of war-mongering, I’ll add that this is not to defend the war as such, or even the Somme.

I see that Andrew F. Uckwit, perpetual war apologiser, has shown up all dulce et decorum est, while neglecting to note that Bloody Bill’s status as a dodger of both military service and an electoral mandate suggests there ain’t much pro patria about him.

We’re likely to be hearing a lot from Niall Ferguson, this year.

Other Great War historians are available, as the cliché goes. Sorry, make that: other actual Great War historians are available.

Peter T ,

Getting rid of capitalism, historically, didn’t get rid of war. As the conflicts between the Soviet Union and Hungary , the Soviet Union and Czechoslovakia, Vietnam and China, Ethiopia and Somalia, and the innumerable civil conflicts *within* socialist countries prove.

I’m all for abolishing capitalism , but while that might somewhat suppress the frequency and intensity of wars , there will be war as long as there is a human species. Plume’s anarchist utopia merely replaces the authority of the ruling class with the authority of the mob, which has the potential to be even worse, as we saw in Spain (the last time his ideas were put into practice on a large scale).

The only thing worse than organized violence is utterly disorganized violence.

http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2014/01/05/brian-schweitzer-hammers-bill-kristol-perpetual-war-in-the-middle-east-has-failed/

So BS, playing Everyman, takes a run at Kristol, and Cokie bails him out.

@75

The Crown of Wild Olive. Entire text here:

http://ebooks.adelaide.edu.au/r/ruskin/john/crown/lecture3.html

Italian nationalist and later fascist author Giovanni Papini, writing on October 1, 1914:

Finally the day of wrath has arrived after a long twilight of fear. Finally we are paying the tithe of souls necessary to cleanse the world.

What was needed in the end was a warm bath of black blood after all the humid and lukewarm showers of mother’s milk and fraternal tears … The long sleep of cowardice, diplomacy, hypocrisy, and peacefulness is over. Brothers are always prepared to kill brothers, and the civilized to turn back to savagery; men do not renounce the wild beasts who gave birth to them …

We are too many. The war is a Malthusian operation. There is one too many here and one too many there who jostle each other. War equalizes all parties. It makes room so that we can breathe more easily. It leaves less mouths to feed around the same table …

After the passage of the barbarians a new art will be born from the ruins and all wars of extermination lead to a new fashion. There will always be much to do for everyone if the will to create is, as always, excited and emboldened by destruction.

We love war and imbibe it like a gourmet as long as it lasts. War is frightening — and precisely because it is frightening and tremendous and terrible and destructive, we ought to love it with every bit of our masculine hearts.

To put Kristol’s comments in further context…

Max Scheler’s Der Genius des Krieges und der Deutsche Krieg (The Genius of War and the German War), written in a frenzy of enthusiasm immediately after the outbreak of the war and dedicated to “my friends in the field”[26], was published in the early days of 1915. It is a significant tome of almost 450 pages. In the “passionate activity of the heart” that enraptured him, Scheler admits, more than once did he have to set aside the pen; so much was he given over to this ecstatic mood in the early days of the war.[27] Although Scheler’s book is composed in a passionate and high-spirited style, it is nevertheless intended as a philosophical work and heavily draws from elements of his philosophy laid out in publications prior to 1914, most importantly his efforts to establish a material value ethics. Before I go on to discuss Scheler’s views on war, I will briefly summarize Scheler’s philosophical standpoint.[28]

Scheler was a phenomenologist. As such, he utilized the defining trait of phenomenology, namely, its method. The phenomenological method as it was presented first by Husserl in his ground-breaking Logical Investigations (1900/01) can be characterized as a methodology of “seeing essences.” Scheler in principle took over this method but applied it to regions beyond the scope that Husserl had envisioned, most importantly moral philosophy. Husserl’s basic idea was that with the method of “eidetic intuition” one could “see” the essence of a specific object, and phenomenology’s task is to describe this essence thoroughly and in an unprejudiced way. The specific exemplar which one sees before one’s (material or mental) eyes is merely an exemplar of this essence. Although Husserl denied this, his phenomenology was oftentimes identified as a modern form of Platonism.[29] Phenomenology is hence an eidetic science of how things appear to human beings when we experience the world. It is a descriptive doctrine of essences, hence a method of description.[30] Scheler took this method to the realm of moral behavior and ethics, utilizing the methodological tools of phenomenology to describe the essences of morality, i.e., values. Scheler’s material ethics of value strived to describe values as those essences that govern moral life. Moral actions are exemplary instantiations of values as the essences of certain acts (e.g., “goodness”). The goal of his ethics is to furnish a compendium of these values and describe their essence and their respective hierarchies.[31] For Scheler, opposed to Kant’s ethics, only describing values in their actual validity for us can be a just rendering of how we actually make moral decisions and judge actions in our daily life. The philosopher is not himself supposed to make value judgments; rather, his stance must remain distanced and unprejudiced, thereby remaining, in a basic manner, committed to phenomenology’s method of description.

Judging from this background, it is natural that Scheler’s “obsession” with essences becomes utilized in his discussion of war as an element of life. War is not itself an issue of moral philosophy, yet it is “an event in the moral world,”[32] that is, it is an event, not of nature’s brute force, but of human life. In order to arrive at the essence of things warlike, thus, one needs to apply the phenomenological method to war as well. To treat the war and the issues belonging to it philosophically, then, means describing the essence of war as well as the essence of concomitant phenomena, such as peace, honor, life, spirit, nation, death, etc.[33] The main target of these discussions is at all times the “British Mind” that dissolves these essences into empirical phenomena. Only a “metaphysics of war”[34] can grasp the war’s essence. The “British Mind,” by contrast, since it is entirely grounded on empirical explanations, does not see the difference between facts and essences. This is why the British can preposterously declare facts for essences. The “British Mind” is entirely given over to its “cant” to which Scheler devotes a whole concluding “appendix”[35] and he tops it off with a list of concepts that show how the British equivocate certain “essential” terms with its degenerate factical (British) versions thereof: When the Englishman says “culture” he means “comfort”; he confounds “truths” with “facts,” “the good” with “the useful,” “loyalty” with “exactitude in keeping one’s contracts,” “morality” with “right,” “person” with “gentleman,” “love” with “solidarity in interests,” and, most revealingly: “human nature” with “Englishman.”[36] Tersely put, since the Englishman cannot transcend his nationalistic boundaries he generalizes that which goes for themselves for everyone. The British commit, hence, a classical category mistake. Obviously now, Scheler cannot be so foolish as to simply lapse into the same chauvinism with regard to the German mind. And yet, his discussions are drenched in nationalistic rhetoric. So how does he go about squaring the generality of war, its essence, with “the German war”?

As mentioned, Scheler is non-judgmental with regard to the goodness or badness of the war; any such value judgment would be un-phenomenological. Instead, a just description of the war reveals the fact that the war is a metaphysical event in the life of Western civilization.[37] Contrary to Kant’s famous vision of “eternal peace” as a hopeful state of mankind’s future, war is a “natural occurrence in the world [Welteinrichtung]”[38] and as such a “miracle”[39] in that one cannot explain it empirically. Rather, it must be embraced by those, “who experience this war, not as a bad dream or nightmare, but as an almost metaphysical awakening from the dull state of a heavy slumber.”[40] Scheler’s alleged irrationalism comes most clearly to the fore in his celebration of the “genius of the war” and in his vigorous attacks on naïve Enlightenment thought which he sees most clearly represented in Kant.[41] War is an unquenchable element of life itself. Moreover, truly experiencing the presence of war calls us forth to awake and finally come into our own—as a nation. War first of all molds peoples into nations and calls on them to make a decision as to who they really are or want to be. War is a moment of decision. Yet, although the war is part of human life, Scheler goes through pains to emphasize that it is not part of organic life. Life can only truly be explained metaphysically, not physically (or positivistically, vitalistically or economically). Life is a spiritual category[42]; it can neither be good nor bad, this would be applying inadequate categories to a basic phenomenon of life. War is, a fortiori, part of the essence of life. Any explanation that applies empirical or value judgments to this phenomenon would be skewed from the very start.

As part of life itself—life in the spiritual sense—war is “the dynamic principle kat’exochen of history […]. Every war is a return to the creative origin from which the state as such arose”[43]. Life itself has the trait of living itself out according to the law of its own inner nature, but the motor of this movement is war. Heraclitus’ famous fragment and Nietzsche’s “will to power” loom large, although neither is mentioned.[44] War as life’s motor expands nations and peoples according to their inner law of development. As such, neighboring peoples, cultures, nations etc., if they have an active life with its own distinct character, by necessity must clash, for life’s essence is to assert itself, to bring itself to fullest fruition, not sparing the weaker. “Indeed, the state waging war is the state in the highest actuality of its existence.”[45] War is thus the necessary result of different nations’ lives. Peace is nothing but a lazy compromise, an insulting ignorance of the other’s and one’s own essence. War is asserting oneself and one’s unique identity. That is to say, nobody can nor ought to be blamed for going to war. Waging war is merely a nation’s healthy way of letting its inner truth roam free. “The true root of the war lies therein that in all life—independent of all its specific and changing surroundings and its sensations—inheres a tendency towards increase, towards growth and towards an unfolding of its manifold types.”[46] The more a country or nation let their inner life roam freely, and not merely follow empirical (military, economical etc.) interests, the more it can be said to be acting according to its own essence. “Meaning and existence of nations and national states thus rest entirely on supra-utilitaristic concepts, it rests on the values of life and culture, power, honor, spirit.”[47] These latter concepts adumbrate essences that do not belong to any specific nation; yet there are countries that instantiate these essences better than others—and there are nations that do not even care for these essences, like the British.

Concerning the victory in the war, it relies entirely upon the power of the nations at war. The stronger nation will by necessity win, and what makes it stronger than others is the power of its inner life, its adhering to the true essences of greatness, spirit, power, etc. In other words, it is not nations per se that win, it is their truthfulness to the spirit of life to which they owe their victory. In the end, all wars are spiritual battles, and that country wins by necessity which is the most spiritual. Although the war might bring factual and material suffering to individual peoples, it also has a spiritual side: “War always carries within itself these two opposite traits: the character of a basic, spiritual-vital event of nature […] and a conscious purposeful activity of the statesperson with more or less clearly defined ‘demands’ upon an alien state.”[48] Thus, the war is a useful thing in that it sorts out better from worse nations (worse, that is, in adhering to essences). War is the final arbiter over superior spiritual systems and a form of God’s judgment day on earth: “The more valuable ‘state’ ‘ought to’ reign and war makes decisions according to the ‘higher justice’ of a divine council in active deeds […]. Precisely in this way is the ‘just war’ the vehicle through which expand in the maximally optimal way the respective higher justice and the mediating systems of its instantiation, i.e., the higher-valued and ‘more just’ systems of rights and laws on earth.”[49] By severing the just from the unjust, the war is also the “most powerful creator of unity,”[50] insofar as it firstly has the capacity to give unity to a people in its becoming of a nation, a culture, instead of merely a federal union or a civilization. War frees people from their unhealthy self-centeredness and egotism[51] and creates the new unity of a genuine “we.” If this unity is achieved in the waging of the war itself, then war is “just”[52]: “In the ‘just war’ even the bloodiest defeat will not lead to permanent hatred but solely to the spiritual-moral inwardness [Einkehr] of a given people […].”[53] War is not an act of hatred but of love.[54] In war, one can risk one’s life and only in war can one truly gain it, even in death. Only in dying does one have the opportunity to become a hero in gaining the essence of one’s life (even in losing one’s existence!). In war, “everyone becomes a metaphysician.”[55] War brings us before the threshold of transcendence, the “threshold of religious immortality”[56] and “tears down the masks that have been furnished by peace”[57]. As such, war has the capacity of a metaphysical “critique” in that it reduces the existence of people to its “essential content.”[58] It is clear what Scheler alludes to with the term “critique”; only the war can provide, not a critique of pure, but of “metaphysical reason.” The war is thus beneficial for philosophy itself, it motivates philosophers to step back from “splitting hairs” in purely academic questions to again attempt to gain an “autonomous, original intuition of the world”[59].

To summarize Scheler’s overall argument: War as an essential element of life ought to be embraced, not shunned. It brings out the best in any nation. Thus, one ought to seek it out, experience it to the fullest, in order to purify one’s essence and be unified into a nation that knows what it wants because it has made the effort to rise above national, individual particularities. When a nation does this, it is no longer German, French or English. What one reaches in this “metaphysical move” is the realm of “absolute realities.”[60] Thus, one needs these extreme circumstances to have the disposition in the first place to experience these absolute realities. Thus, Scheler asserts, whoever thinks that only an aloof, unparticipating stance will enable one to reach philosophical heights is tragically mislead; he rhetorically asks: “What does reality care about the conditions of knowledge that the scholars want to impose upon reality? … Such a meaning that enables cognition to experience absolute realities only belongs to war, only belongs to the peculiar upward soaring of the spirit that is called for by war to an extraordinary degree.”[61] In simpler terms: Insofar as other nations, such as the British, ignore and disregard the importance of these “absolute realities” they do not even qualify to be a “chosen nation.” The Germans, on the other hand, due to their inborn metaphysical propensity, embrace these absolute realities. This is why this war is decidedly a “German war,” as the title of Scheler’s book asserts.

Thus, Scheler’s philosophical “trick” is this: It is not because they are Germans that they are a chosen people, but it is because they, more than all others, embrace the metaphysical dimension of the war. War produces special dispositions that enable a nation to become true to absolute realities. It is, hence, up to the respective nations to open themselves up to these higher spheres. The Germans, as a profoundly philosophy-friendly nation, do this quasi-automatically as they are a metaphysical nation already. This is why “this great mission” of establishing true greatness and “universal love” is Germany’s alone.[62] Plainly put: Germany’s war is great, not because it is Germany’s but because the Germans better than any other nation have the capacity to comprehend and realize the war’s essence, an essence which lies above any particular nation or culture.

http://epublications.marquette.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1037&context=phil_fac

Peter T,

Your description of military officers coming from the upper classes is about a century dead. At least. It reminds me of some of the great novels by Joseph Roth, who wrote largely about the Austro-Hungarian Empire, WWI and its aftermath. Yes, for a few centuries in Europe, the aristocracy provided a good bit of the officer corp, but in America, that never really caught on to any great degree. And with each new war there was less and less of anything resembling noblesse oblige.

In short, our military is made up of the sons and daughters of the poor, working class and middle class, with most of it coming from the working class. There is no evidence that the children of the rich are choosing the military over, say, Wall Street. And when we discuss who is sending whom to war, we’re not talking about military officers anyway. We are talking about politicians, and the people who pull their strings. The average net worth for Congress is roughly 5 million now. Congress is almost exclusively filled with One percenters and above, and our presidents have been traditionally very wealthy.

Here’s a list of the 50 richest:

http://www.rollcall.com/50richest/the-50-richest-members-of-congress-112th.html

As for the war in Afghanistan. The Taliban were not all about religious fundamentalism. They also wanted full control over opium production, distribution and sales. But that was and is an internal conflict, and none of our business. We went to war there because of oil and proximity to oil. Future oil pipelines and present control of oil in neighboring states. It was our chance to secure present and future markets by attempting to prevent disruptions for whatever reasons — nationalist, religious, ethnic, whatever.

Do you really think our powers that be cared who ruled in Afghanistan? Or Korea? Cuba? Or Vietnam? Other than its impact on the wealthy? Not to mention all of those covert wars started by Reagan to make sure Central and South America remained completely open to our capitalists.

If the new rulers would guarantee open markets, we never would have gone to war in any of those countries. It was all about threats to the continued expansion of global capitalism, with America’s stamp of approval and at least indirect control.

Right now, if you’re some crazed James Bond villain, and you want to see America start another war, find a way to spook its billionaires into believing X country is cutting off those billionaires, nationalizing this or that.

War is guaranteed.

Pace Orson Wells, Italy was attacked by the French and Spanish because it was rich. Not because of the Borgias.

Not war but banking produced the artistic treasures of the Renaissance, and they were largely produced in Florence, which was nominally a republic and not part of the papal states. Venice, which took the cultural lead after the decline of Florence was also a republic, albeit an oligarchical one.

Pace Orson Wells, Italy was attacked by the French and Spanish because it was rich. Not because of the Borgias.

Not war but banking produced the artistic treasures of the Renaissance, and they were largely produced in Florence, which was nominally an independent republic (like Switzerland) and not part of the Papal states. Venice, which took the cultural lead after the decline of Florence, was also a republic, albeit an oligarchical one. Interestingly, the Swiss also took up banking later on. But I think the cuckoo clock was a product of Bavaria, no?

LFC,

America is nominally a democracy. It needs excuses and PR victories to go to war. It has always attempted to justify its invasions and win public support before going overseas and into battle. Even dictators do that. Hitler, for example, pretty much invented the modern PR blitz to justify his attempt to conquer the world — and he was absolute ruler of Germany. One would think he didn’t need to win public support, but he continuously tried to and tried to keep it.

9-11 was just such a pretext.

Of course, I’m not limiting Afghanistan to just oil or just capitalism, at least as far as the political decision went. I think Bush also had family dramas to attend to that influenced his attack on Iraq, especially. But oil and capitalism and markets were certainly the biggest provocations and the “subtext” as it were. The chance to demonstrate power and help out military contractors and oil magnates at the same time. A twofer. More than a twofer. And not just power per se. Power to keep the shipping lanes open — especially for oil. But also for the idea of American supremacy and hegemony, which really means the hegemony of global capitalism.

(The people keeping those shipping lanes open, our military, is part of the global capitalist nexus)

And the way it looks now, Afghanistan was just the opening gambit for Iraq. The appetizer, not the main course. That we remain there is no real counter to the argument about oil and contractors and the defense of the shipping lanes. It actually makes my point for me. Trillions of dollars spent on these indefensible, unconscionable wars. Trillions going into the pockets of capitalists in the MIC and in the oil industry which has seen much higher prices because of the wars.

When you look closely, it’s not “reductive.” It’s appalling, but it’s not reductive.

Wars, they seem to be mostly about power. To grab power, to hold on to it, to expand it, to weaken and destroy potential contenders. Power over people, markets, land, and other resources. In a tribal, feudal, capitalist, or any other kind of environment where individuals or groups have a possibility to control something.

That’s why Kristol&Co. talk about the New American Century: dominating the world, shaping it according to “American principles and interests”, whatever the hell that is. At least on the surface, it seems to pertain more to nationalism than capitalism, although of course capitalism is probably one of the most (if not the most) important principles there.

Given America’s total military dominance, it never has to fear any other culture doing any imposing. And we start most of the wars in this world.

This isn’t really the case. 40 wars started in the last decade. The US started, generously, two of them (Iraq and NW Pakistan) and you can add in Afghanistan, though really that started in 1978 or so, with the US joining in the civil war in 2001.

ajay, its Britain that starts most wars. Or at least gets involved early on. By quite a long way I think, many times as many as the USA, orders of magnitude more if you look at the whole century since the Great War. France is probably second, but I’d think a distant second. (They are in at least two wars in Africa right now)

As for Fitzgerald, I don’t think he was saying there could not be another European war, with or without Germany, but that if there was it could not take the peculiar form that the Western Front had between 1915 and 1917. Armies would be incapable of fighting such a war. He was right. The Germans didn’t fight that kind of war when they invaded Poland and France, they did it differently. The Poles and French avoided that kind of war by losing quickly – had they not lost in 39 and 40 could they have sustained three or four or five years of continual trench warfare? Would their armies or their politics or their economies have stood it? The British avoided that kind of war by going back to their roots and relying on the old Royal Navy and the new RAF to keep them out of major land fighting till they were ready. They did commit armies to North Africa and the Middle East, and later to Burma and Italy, but these were sideshows compared to what was going on on the Eastern Front, or what had happened in 1915/16, or what came later after D-day. Huge sideshows, especially the Italian campaign which was bigger than most previous wars Britain had ever fought, but still sideshows.

And talking about sideshows, from Britains point of view the war in America in 1812-14 was a sideshow of a sideshow, and a minor victory. All war aims achieved. The main ones were allowing the Royal Navy to operate unhindered in the Atlantic and Caribbean, and keeping the US out of Canada. Secondary ones might include allowing Americans to volunteer for British service (the initial cause of the war) and suppressing the slave trade. 100% success. Burning the White House and freeing those 4000 slaves were icing on the cake. The real war was against Napoleon. America was a mildly irrelevant distraction, and one that was dealt with quite successfully given the tiny fraction of the Royal Navy that was sent to it. They posted stronger fleets to Madagascar and Mozambique.

They had no desire to fight America and no wish to reconquer it. As far as I can tell by 1812 no-0ne in Britain really worried about US independence at all. Everyone accepted it as given, most people were probably in favour of it. But then that seems to have been the case as soon as the Brits recognised the USA back in 178-whenever. You could hardly find a politician who would own up to having opposed independence. “America? Of course it should be independent. Said so all along. I never voted for the war! Must have been the Tories. Or the Whigs. Or the Jacobites. Or someone. Not me guv. Honest.”

No sensitive person can fail to be moved by Owen’s powerful lament, and no intelligent person can ignore his chastening rebuke.

Standards that by no means preclude Mr Kristol from being ignorant and unmoved.

@ ajay, 10:09 am. It’s a relic of the feudal system, isn’t it? You’ll find it in the Navy too. I’ve read that there’s less of a class divide between officers and other ranks in the RAF. One explanation being that when the RAF was formed in 1918 it was much more technically demanding than the other services, and the need for talent rather than the right sort of schooling and pedigree led to a more egalitarian service.

Thanatos tarted up as Eros has never lacked for pimps. Kristol isn’t the first, and won’t be the last, to see a business opportunity where less intrepid souls see folly.

The line between officers and men runs very deep in the British Army, and I’d be surprised if the same wasn’t true of the Senior Service;

It may well be for all I know – I haven’t had much contact with the Navy.

its Britain that starts most wars. Or at least gets involved early on. By quite a long way I think, many times as many as the USA, orders of magnitude more if you look at the whole century since the Great War.

I very much doubt it. Orders of magnitude? You realise that means “at least ten or a hundred times as many”, don’t you? There’s a list here of wars since WW2
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_wars_1945%E2%80%9389
and you notice that most of those don’t even involve the UK at all.

Katherine ,

Some of us actually give a **** about civilizational decline, and don’t share your airy dismissiveness. Civilisation is generally at its best when passions are raised against some common enemy, whether internal or external. Only the threat of an enemy can get people to think out of their selfish little boxes and sacrifice for the common good. This is what Ruskin was getting at, and I don’t see where you’ve disproved him.

To repeat what I said @89 (a comment which had been caught in moderation for a while), the sorts of discussions prompted by a column like Kristol’s are not likely to address the most prevalent forms of contemp. armed conflict.

@Ken Brown 102
its Britain that starts most wars. Or at least gets involved early on… France is probably second, but I’d think a distant second. (They are in at least two wars in Africa right now)
France has soldiers now in Central African Rep., a war it did not start. It may also still have some soldiers in Mali, again a war it did not start. At least in the latter case, it’s probably a good thing that France intervened. Unless you like the idea of half or three-quarters of Mali being under the control of people who, inter alia, go into the national archives, dismiss the staff, and start scattering and/or ripping up and burning the old manuscripts, while imposing some form of sharia law.

@ajay 111: I agree w some of that, but I don’t want to get into a causes-of-WW1 discussion. Others can, obvs., but I’m not going to.

This is a nice link in terms of layout, and Margaret Macmillan is always interesting, even if it’s a little overdetermined and hyperbolic, though that’s built into the essay’s premise I guess

http://www.brookings.edu/research/essays/2013/rhyme-of-history?rssid=global+development

“…. and actually do something meaningful with their lives,”

Like dying in Iraq? Or in whatever the next godawful, stupid, pointless war are idiot governments get us involved in?

MPAVictoria @120:

Everyone knows that a truly meaningful life can only be achieved through heroic sacrifice for the Fuhrer.

No doubt Hector is just waiting for the Pope to call the next crusade – there could scarcely be anything more heroic than that.

Perhaps the Templar Knights will bring home the Grail this time – They’ve learned the run-and-shoot from the NFL gladiators.

There are 7 billion people on the planet and less than a million are directly involved in combat, perhaps a few millions more in support capacities. Much of that is about foreign policy issues and resources. So war and violence are not ingrained in the human condition, far from it.

If you want to step outside your selfish little box and sacrifice for the common good, you could fall in love, improve a science, or look for spiritual enlightenment. The rest of us will send our congratulations. We will be happy you awoke.

Ronan,

Look at the facts. When the Cubans set about to build Socialism and cultivate a New Man, they were able to get people to overcome selfishness and sacrifice for the common good largely by building up fear of the great colossus to the north (and also, to some extent, domestic subversion).

What would discussion of civilizational decline be without Oswald Spengler, author of the Untergang? Here are some choice quotes:

The common man wants nothing of life but health, longevity, amusement, comfort — “happiness.” He who does not despise this should turn his eyes from world history, for it contains nothing of the sort. The best that history has created is great suffering.

The animal of prey is the highest form of mobile life. It implies a maximum of freedom for self against others, of responsibility to self, of singleness of self, an extreme of necessity where that self can hold its own only by fighting and winning and destroying. It imparts a high dignity to Man, as a type, that he is a beast of prey.

What is the opposite of the soul of a lion? The soul of a cow. For strength of individual soul the herbivores
substitute numbers, the herd, the common feeling and doing of masses. But the less one needs others, the more powerful one is. A beast of prey is everyone’s foe. Never does he tolerate an equal in his den. Here we are at the root of the truly royal idea of property. Property is the domain in which one exercises unlimited power, the power that one has gained in battling, defended against one’s peers, victoriously upheld. It is not a right to mere having, but the sovereign right to do as one will with one’s own.

All the would-be moralists and social-ethics people who claim or hope to be “beyond all that” are only beasts of prey with their teeth broken, who hate others on account of the attacks which they themselves are wise enough to avoid. Only look at them. They are too weak to read a book on war, but they herd together in the street to see an accident, letting the blood and the screams play on their nerves. And if even that is too much for them, they enjoy it on the film and in the illustrated papers. If I call man a beast of prey, which do I insult: man or beast? For remember, the larger beasts of prey are noble creatures, perfect of their kind, and without the hypocrisy of human moral due to weakness.

They shout: “No more war” – but they desire class war. They are indignant when a murderer is executed for a crime of passion, but they feel a secret pleasure in hearing of the murder of a political opponent. What objection have they ever raised to the Bolshevist slaughters? There is no getting away from it: conflict is the original fact of life, is life itself, and not the most pitiful pacifist is able entirely to uproot the pleasure it gives his inmost soul. Theoretically, at least, he would like to fight and destroy all opponents of pacifism.

We are born into this time and must bravely follow the path to the destined end. There is no other way. Our duty is to hold on to the lost position, without hope, without rescue, like that Roman soldier whose bones were found in front of a door in Pompeii, who, during the eruption of Vesuvius, died at his post because they forgot to relieve him. That is greatness. That is what it means to be a thoroughbred. The honorable end is the one thing that cannot be taken from a man.

The fucking Star Spangled Banner? Please, Bill, if you’re gonna say this kind of stuff, do it with some class-e.g., Rupert Brooke’s “Peace,” written in celebration of the outbreak of WWI:

Now, God be thanked Who has watched us with His hour,
And caught our youth, and wakened us from sleeping,
With hand made sure, clear eye, and sharpened power,
To turn, as swimmers into cleanness leaping,
Glad from a world grown old and cold and weary,
Leave the sick hearts that honour could not move,
And half-men, and their dirty songs and dreary,
And all the little emptiness of love!

Oh! we, who have known shame, we have found release there,
Where there’s no ill, no grief, but sleep has mending,
Naught broken save this body, lost but breath;
Nothing to shake the laughing heart’s long peace there
But only agony, and that has ending;
And the worst friend and enemy is but Death.

Now as it turned out, he died of dysentery before he could get into combat, but anyway.

Couple errors there-serves me right for copy-and-pasting from a site without a thorough check.

Hector sez: “If you want to get people to think about the common good, rather than how to get a nicer pair of sneakers and a high-class bottle of brandy, you need to convince them they’re under threat.”

In other words, you need to convince them that someone is trying to take away the decent pair of sneakers and the mid-priced bottle of brandy they already have. You’ll forgive me if I find this unconvincing.

It’s amazing that anyone could even, for a second, believe that war can renew civilization.

War destroys civilization. It’s a sign that civilization is gasping for air and believes it has nowhere else to go but down.

If you think “art” is the highest expression of civilization — as I do — then you’d have to say war is its greatest enemy. Think of all of the great paintings destroyed in WWII bombing campaigns. Think of the museums blown up, the priceless treasures destroyed.

Our invasion of Iraq resulted in the destruction of countless treasures from the Sumerian civilization — the first — going back roughly 6000 years.

Not to mention the artists themselves. Countless poets, novelists, painters, sculptors, composers, etc. etc. In every war. And from the 20th century onward, when technology brought war “home” to millions of civilians that once could have escaped it, even if artists managed to avoid fighting, they couldn’t avoid capture, execution or “collateral damage.”

If we just look at WWII and just the Nazis: Bruno Schulz, Robert Desnos, Ann Frank, Max Jacob, Walter Benjamin (suicide, to escape the Nazis) and on and on. An incomplete list here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_victims_of_Nazism

Dozens of books have been written about the horrific loss of genius due to war. This, of course, includes great scientists, doctors, mathematicians, social workers, teachers, etc. etc. Tens of millions of non-combatants were slaughtered in the wars of the 20th century, including those who added priceless and profound things to our “civilization.” Wars of the 21st century will inflict even more damage. The tech for death and destruction has gotten so much better.

War doesn’t re-energize “declining civilization.” It’s proof of that decline.

The talk about glory, and especially the poem that Peter Hovde cut and pasted reminded me of this ditty, which I recall from my late 1960s childhood, and which I had forgotten, if I ever knew, was a wobbly standard from the WW1 era:

I Love My Flag
I love my flag, I do, I do,
Which floats upon the breeze.
I also love my arms and legs,
And neck and nose and knees.
One little shell might spoil them all
Or give them such a twist,
They would be of no use to me;
I guess I won’t enlist.

I love my country, yes, I do,
I hope her folks do well.
Without our arms and legs and things,
I think we’d look like hell.
Young men with faces half shot off
Are unfit to be kissed,
I’ve read in books it spoils their look;
I guess I won’t enlist.

Kristol thinks our problem is that we are too timid to believe in our own superiority.

That’s what he says, but what he’s thinking is worse than that. He’s not proclaiming the virtues of science, rationality, liberty, democracy or progress. He’s calling for “patriotism”, “piety”, “heritage”, “schools”. “And this be our motto: ‘In God is our trust.'”.

He pretends to ask for courage, but, like Hector, what he’s really demanding is faith, trust, and obedience. He wants students to trust their schools, and he wants schools that tell students to trust our leaders, and he wants leaders that trust our past. It’s not selfishness that’s his problem, it’s the fact that my higher public goals are basically the exact opposite of his higher public goals, and what I call progress he calls decline.

I’m definitely not too timid to believe in my superiority to scumbags like them. They, themselves, represent the best argument against foreign intervention: so long as we have so many influential people working to reverse everything that is good about our own civilization, we have no business interfering with anyone else’s.

dn 01.06.14 at 7:14 pm

“Plume – Of course. Notice that although Kristol is careful to point out that we should learn from the mistakes that gave us WWI, he nowhere mentions what he thinks the mistakes were.”

Demanding that even the sons of the elites fight and die would probably be #1 on his (secret) list.

.

breath.

Well, what Hector seems to be trying to convey is that people need to feel like they are a part of some big cause. One may or may not agree, but if you accept it, I don’t think this cause needs to center around a common threat or enemy necessarily.

Since Brooke has been mentioned too: Pat Barker’s Regeneration has something about officer/NCO class issues, though it’s a long time since I read it. It’s a bit hard on Bertrand Russell.

@148

“The difference between left and right collectivism is what counts. The left’s version means the collective works on behalf of the collective, not masters. The right’s version means the collective works for the masters only.”

I agree that there is a difference between left and right collectivism; however, a purely economic analysis misses it. I think the real divide emerging in the next century is between those who wish to transcend and overcome our biological hard-wiring and tribal instincts (universalists/cosmopolitans) and those who wish to embrace and strengthen them (ethno-nationalists/racialists). People in the latter camp can have as little use for their economic “masters” as those in the former, but their concern for the “collective” doesn’t extend beyond their own clearly demarcated tribe.

I thought there might be more to Ruskin’s address than appeared in Jacob’s excerpt, since Ruskin is one of the finest writers and noblest spirits in modern history. There is indeed, a great deal more. The Crown of Wild Olives>/I> is a passionate, supremely eloquent (naturally, being Ruskin) protest against modern war, on behalf of his own version of the chivalric ideal. It is echoed in two later, also highly idiosyncratic and very great works: D.H. Lawrence’s long essay “Education of the People” and Ernest Callenbach’s marvelous utopian novel Ecotopia.

Do read The Crown of Wild Olives if you’d like to savor incomparable prose and exquisitely subtle argument: http://ebooks.adelaide.edu.au/r/ruskin/john/crown/lecture3.html.
And thanks to Jacob for this and all his other fascinating citations.

No need for a vanguard party.

Re: It means setting up a system that makes consensus, democracy, equality, horizontal structures and cooperation the norm.

Then you’re going to get rolled over by your enemies who believe in order, discipline, regimentation, and authority. Just like your anarchist buddies in Spain got rolled over by the Communists. And good riddance. Your anarchist dystopia is remarkably unappealing.

Pkume @154
You were doing fine until this post. The happy-happy-joy-joy utopianism of equality and brotherhood for all is nice to think about and even to aspire to in ones general actions, but the likelihood of it emerging from the global systems of government in place is vanishingly close to nil and as such doesn’t really provide much prescription for what a nation or a society ought to do when faced with encroachment by less enlightened neighbors.

I don’t regard every transgression as the seeds of war, but as every kid learns on some playground, at some point a person has to stand up for themselves. If the utopia described in 154 is really your solution for “just say no to war” its as far off the reservation (albeit a nicer reservation) than Hector’s survival of the fittest.

but the likelihood of it emerging from the global systems of government in place is vanishingly close to nil

So are we closer to barbarism than barbarians?

Plume, we’ve had too many revolutions already go to ground, because idealists were too busy masturbating to their fantasies to be bothered figuring out how anything works.

“I realize that it’s next to impossible to achieve.”

That ‘next to’ is doing a lot of work ; )

@160 plume
I understand your perspective.

The difficulty is when some hypothetical Japan bombs your hypothetical Pearl Harbor one has to make an actual decision about whether the correct response is to answer force with force with all the Guns of Navarone glory you can muster (as per the OP) or whether these little islands really aren’t all that imporant afterall and wait for some more eggregious assult.

As you noted from your own experience, some times the bullies need a pop in the nose but its dang hard to tell which bullies deserve a pop and which can be talked down with threats. The stereotypical Southern Republican Hawk professes the need to deliver a stout pop to every guy that looks at him sideways, your stereotypical berkenstok liberal won’t lift a finger to the bully that steals his lunch money – reality lives between these two poles and its hard to know a priori which causes merit a ‘warlike’ response and which should be dealt with in the spirit of equality and brotherhood to all.

“Plume, we’ve had too many revolutions already go to ground, because idealists were too busy masturbating to their fantasies to be bothered figuring out how anything works.”

I amazed that the above was posted by Bruce Wilder. I mean many people would say that you are an idealist Bruce.

Plume,

Don’t flatter yourself. You aren’t just seeking to do away with capitalism (a goal which I endorse) you’re seeking to do away with all authority structures, and usher in an anarchist dystopia. If we ever have a revolution in this country, I would fight to my last breath to exclude you and your buddies from any part in it.

Well I guess Hector’s waging a revolution in opposition to sneakers and brandy, so causes come in all shapes and sizes

I blame the capitalists for God.

Ronan,

No, I’m waging a revolution against capitalism (or rather, hoping that someday one will be waged). Just like him. The difference is, I’m thinking about revolutions based off a prototype that has already happened. (Something close to Tito’s Yugoslavia, ideally: regulated market economy with mostly public or cooperatively owned, worker-managed enterprises). Plume’s ideas are based off a prototype that exists nowhere but in the fever-dreams of some 19th century Russian and early 20th century Spanish thinkers, and never existed as facts on the ground.

Re: And the pièce de résistance, the End Times will result in the slaughter and eternal torment of billions of humans, just for not worshiping the god of the NT.

Christians have (and always have had) a wide range of opinion on how eternal the torments are, and what sorts of things merit them, Plume. As for the slaughter, when the earth gets destroyed, people die, that’s sort of the nature of the beast.

Hector, fair enough I was just being a but smart.
But more seriously, there’sa huge gulf here, afaict, between the revolutionary rhetoric, the pronouncements that we need ‘hard men with guns’, the idealism of self sacrifice etc and the aspired to end point, which is to be Tito’s Yugoslavia. I don’t see why such rhetoric and action is needed to achieve such a middling outcome?

The only war is class war.

I’m for it.

Odd. I posted two youtube links, but in one it’s embedded, in one it’s not.

Oh, well.

Might be SSL or lack thereof.

dn @ 170

You make a good point, about the audience.

The neoliberal — libertarian axis rotates at an angle, which is oddly uncomfortable for the neo-cons, I think. Neo-cons like Kristol provide a rhetoric of grand and noble purpose for wars, which have been conducted for corrupt profit by commercial rent-seekers. The neoliberals and some (but not all) of the libertarians are perfectly at home with that conduct — fostering it is their common politics: privatize war, social welfare, prisons, everything. And, the neoliberal – libertarian axis has little real use for the communitarianism, nationalism or racism — take your pick — which in previous eras animated public purpose in peace as well as wars of grand ambition. There’s got to be dissonance for the neo-cons, there. The one element of the neoliberal – conservative libertarian program, which pleases the fading ghost of liberalism — the decline of nationalism, racialisms, hostility to homosexuality, etc — is also the element that deprives the neo-cons of the foundation for the society dedicated to ideals of blood culture.

@ 188

Fwiw, I’m as much of an idealist as anyone (well, if you ask me!) I just don’t see the utility of indulging in wishful thinking. It doesn’t lead anywhere we’d want to go. Plume is the antithesis of a rational observer.

I must confess that I think it was WWII that really discredited militarism and the Party of War among the educated rather than WWI. While anti-war sentiment certainly received a strong boost after WWI, there were still many intellectuals, artists, and mandarins championing the virtues of war, heroism, and sacrifice for the fatherland during the interbellum period. Those fascist movements didn’t just appear in a vacuum. After WWII, even people like Ernst Jünger realized that militarism and nationalism were dead ends.

So why does WWI receive so much attention from people like Kristol? My guess is that both the quality and quantity of the anti-war art and writing which appeared in the wake of WWI far surpasses that which followed WWII. Despite all the drama and fascination surrounding the Nazis, WWII just didn’t inspire the same cultural output that the Great War did. Perhaps people were just burnt out by then?

Bruce,

Is it your contention that idealists not only failed to think up and enact the practical, but they also prevented others from doing so?

I agree with the first part, but the second part is absurd. And I also think you’re throwing the word around with some reckless abandon. Robbespierre, the lawyer? He seems to have acted quite pragmatically throughout most of his life, and it might even be argued that it was “pragmatics” not idealism that drove the reign of terror and the loss of heads. Killing your enemies before they kill you is much closer to “realpolitik” than to any sort of “idealism” I’ve ever heard of. In fact, when he did speak in idealistic terms, it was all about direct democracy, human rights, protecting the poor, the fight against oppression and the like. Steeped in the Enlightenment, his ideals were in direct opposition to his “practice.” Note how close that word is to “practical.”

There is nothing “idealistic” about chopping off heads. It is far more likely to be seen as the “practical” thing to do in the heat of battle, in the heat of existential crisis, while being appalling at the same time. The true “idealist” would be the person who condemns such things and refuses to “practice” such abhorrent acts.

No “ideals” outside those of Sade, perhaps, come into play.

@Ronan,

No problem. If you can find them, I’d also recommend youtube videos of the others I mentioned:

Gar Alperovitz, David Harvey, John Bellamy Foster and Richard Woolf.

Along with their websites and books, etc. etc.

A propos of Ruskin, there’s a brief discussion in Daniel Pick’s War Machine (1993, pb. 1996), ch.7, “Ruskin and the Degradation of True War”.

In a subsequent chapter, “1914: ‘The Deep Sources,'” there is this passage (p.153):

It would be difficult to overestimate the centrality of the notion of ‘civilisation’ in the language of the First World War. A broad distinction between ‘civilisation’ and ‘barbarism’ was used to distinguish the European imperial powers from their colonies; at other times to differentiate sections of the domestic population within a specific state; alternatively ‘civilisation’ was deployed to contrast the behaviour and genealogy of one European nation with another. But the differentiation of the civilised and the uncivilised so often turned specifically on nineteenth-century conceptions of evolutionary advance and backwardness.

Pick observes that some anti-war writers, though deploring “racial posturing” and “crude appeals to bellicosity as ‘human nature,'” sometimes used the “same racial anthropological and evolutionist language” (p.151) as their opponents. For instance Bertrand Russell, in an undated pamphlet “War: The Offspring of Fear,” referred to “[Germany’s] attempt to preserve Central Europe for a type of civilization indubitably higher and of more value to mankind than that of any Slav State” (quoted, pp.151-52). Of course Russell opposed Britain’s involvement in the war and courageously went to jail for it, so he might have been trying to use any argument that lay to hand in an effort to reach a wide audience; I don’t know. Anyway, Pick’s book, of which I’ve only read parts, is full of revealing quotations.

It occurs to me the word which Kristol might be reaching for, but is unaware of, is “asabiya”.

@LFC

Yes, thanks — ‘Civilization’ was seen to have failed. And that we can hardly say word now without irony is an indication that something more than imperial hubris was affected. And continues to be. So that Cormac McCsrthy can still touch the same exposed nerve:

If the rule you followed brought you to this, of what use was the rule?

“Liberals and socialists in the 21st century have lost their feel for the national community as a political foundation for the state”

I dont know how this is true in any meaningful sense, at least for any significant number of people. Perhaps some ‘cosmopolitan minded liberals’ are more aware of global inequality, and perhaps less willing to object to policies that might begin to eleviate it. But that’s a personal moral decision and these aren’t exactley ideas that animate anything but a tiny minority. And perhaps that brings it’s own negative consequences domestically (though exaggerated) or further enriches those at the top(likely), but that’s a tradeoff specific people (rather than broad homogenous ideological groups) have decided is justified.
The nation state hasn’t withered, it still overwhelmingly forms the impetus for the majority of political action, and the ‘national community’ hasn’t been forgotten. Things change, historical forces upset old systems, and identities, norms and preferences etc evolve. That’s life, it’s never been a reasonable expectation that everything stay forever frozen in a treasured past, and that’s good, imo.
My own take would be that sections of the left need to stop living in the past and romanticising a set of circumstances which were very specific to a particular time and place – which were positive in some respects but not in many many more. The social changes so much derided by *certain* factions of the left, (which allowed people to live their own lives, have relationships with who they choose, become financially independent etc) are not minor irrelevant changes. They are every bit as important as the right to organise at work, and far more important than marginal changes in the domestic rate of inequality, or whatever.
Life continues by its own, some things are better, some things are worse. This is not the stuff of dystopia.

Coming to all this way late (in every sense — I need to bed), but I am so tired of that pro patria mori bit. I wonder what Horace would have thought (that’s his design — he’s always at least ten steps ahead of anyone and everyone, but in a way that is way beyond cute and clever, however much he invites the cute and clever acolytes). Let’s just say that Horace only speaks assuming that the Iliad and Odyssey and even Aeneid (before it actually is fully written) are there, too. Tears for things.

Omega Centauri WW1 was largely pointless, blocks of countries whose internal cultures and principles were broadly similar, following the dynamic of alliances and the dynamic of the spiral of increasing violence to its logical conclusion.

The Hapsburg Empire was broadly similar to Republican France? The Ottoman Sultan was just King George in a funnier hat and more interesting marital relations (– a harem would make great reality teevee)? The Autocrat of the All the Russias and his Duma were direct parallels to Woodrow Wilson and the U.S. Congress?

I’m not sure how to penetrate the alleged “pointlessness” of World War I. Was it distinctly more or less “pointless” than most wars? What information, if any, about the specific character of WWI is being conveyed? What is the meaning of the implied, or explicit contrast with WWII? How does that contrast interact with the thesis that the two wars form a continuum — two phases of the same war?

For Americans, Woodrow Wilson made ideological claims about America’s purpose in entering the war, an entry that was decisive in ending the war, and those ideological claims had a major, though not decisive influence in shaping the peace. Those ideological claims were recast for WWII, and largely accepted by Britain and its half-American Prime Minister. The Soviets, of course, had their own ideological claims, and own realpolitik. (The role of the Russian Empire / Soviet Union in the two world wars presents significant challenges to western interpretations of allied purposes.)

Is the pointlessness of the First World War compared to the Second World War related to those ideological claims of Wilson (and Roosevelt)?

I’m suspicious of accounts that wish to exonerate Germany of its aggressive militarism, remake Kaiser Willy into a jolly constitutional monarch and Imperial Germany into just another normal country doing what countries do — no one to blame here, nothing to see, move on, please.

Re #99,103 and 106, I’m reminded of that old saying “The British Army is full of gentlemen trying to be officers, the RN full of officers trying to be gentlemen and the FAF full of neither trying to be both.”

To say nothing of his taste in poetry. Without the melody, it’s doggerel.

The Ottoman Sultan was just King George in a funnier hat

I resent the implication that King George was inadequately supplied with funny hats. A quick Google Image search will show you the late King-Emperor wearing some absolute stinkers.

Of course Russell opposed Britain’s involvement in the war and courageously went to jail for it, so he might have been trying to use any argument that lay to hand in an effort to reach a wide audience; I don’t know.

Or ‘race’ might just have been one of the frames within which just about everyone from Marx to Mill to Russell to Rosa Luxemburg saw the world – so deploring bellicose appeals to race but using a racialised vocabulary of civilisation would be about as contradictory as deploring bellicose appeals to the national interest (say) but maintaining that the national interest was better served by demonstrative adherence to international law.

Anyway, Pick’s book, of which I’ve only read parts, is full of revealing quotations.

I haven’t read any of his mature work, but I do remember Danny Pick (as he then was) from college. He was very good at finding revealing quotations and putting them together in persuasive ways, even then.

“Despite all the drama and fascination surrounding the Nazis, WWII just didn’t inspire the same cultural output that the Great War did.”

In the USA at least, this is simply not true. And culturally it permanently altered the USA.

The only way to really understand Kristol is to, for a moment, imagine that the narrative context embraced by himself and his intended audience is true. Otherwise the column is a mysterious mix of hints and half-stated assumptions that reveal themselves only partially in vague conclusions.

That is, imagine that since WW1 caustic critics of the cause of civilization (liberal bastards, more colloquially, in that narrative) have habitually invoked the despairing, bitter irony of Owen in their repudiation of everything – good or bad – involving community, tradition, or government.

Now imagine that Kristol and his intended audience – the community embracing this narrative – noting the arrival of the centennial of the start of WW1, and grimacing at the thought of the many “liberal pieties” that will be invoked by way of reference to Owen and other poets of that time.

And so Kristol pens off a little column to say, “yes, WW1 was terrible, and war for war’s sake shouldn’t be glorified, but patriotism is still good and we shouldn’t forget that! Here’s the Star Spangled Banner as an answer to Dulce et Decorum est,” where the latter poem stands not for the repudiation of war but of a rejection of one’s government as a legitimate vehicle of community. And his audience cheers.

In some ways it’s actually a less harmful message once you understand the narrative which the column imagines and assumes to exist. But in other ways, like so much partisan writing, the lack of balance in the piece only muddles matters, transforming any reference to the vast butchery of WW1 into a coded endorsement for Kristol’s view of “the liberal narrative.” Doing so makes it cognitively difficult for Kristol, or his audience, to fully understand and process the meaning and importance of such references.

That said, this type of thing is done by partisans on other sides as well. Some of the essays and articles published on the occasion of November 11, and Memorial Day, come to mind, where for those partisans any reference to sacrifice and honor comes to be understood as code for the simple glorification of war. Their access to a realm of important information becomes more difficult much in the way that it does for Kristol and his audience.

Sidenote: This is why reading charitably is not merely a tactical exercise in bad faith. Reading charitably is the only way to overcome the obstacle to understanding posed, possibly, by one’s instinctive opposition to another’s argument, and to imaginatively enter the argument and narrative being put forth. Doing so moves one beyond caricaturing the other’s arguments, and is what truly enables one to engage with those arguments and to find out their real flaws and strengths. Everything else is a noise of words fired from distant ships in a twilight battle.

As to WW1… John Keegan, among others, wrote that in 1914 war came (paraphrasing here at best) “out of a cloudless sky, to populations which knew almost nothing of it and had come to doubt that it could never again trouble their continent.” Or something along those lines.

To me though, it always seemed firmly in the tradition of European war, with the disastrous strategies (from a vantage of efficacy) largely the product of a still inchoate grasp of the implications of technology available for viable tactics and strategy. Perceptive students of the American Civil War, and of the Russo-Japanese War, knew what awaited Europe.

Andrew F @222 — I don’t see the value of charitable reading in this case. True, you’ve made Kristol seem less insane. But the nicer sentiment you’ve extracted is still a bad one, in that it recognizes community, tradition, government, patriotism, sacrifice, honor, etc., only in the context of mutual mass slaughter.

‘what he’s really demanding is faith, trust, and obedience’ (Consumatopia, 142)
Credere, obbedire, combattere!

@lurker 226

Credere, obbedire, combattere!

But unfortunately, post-WW1 wimpy liberals blamed war so much, that nobody in the interwar period could have tought of such a wise motto.

Re: Questionable, and I’d like to see your working on this

Russia was less ‘liberal’ than Germany or Austria were.

Though Plume, I’d like to see how you respond to my remark above that 1) war predates capitalism by a long shot, and 2) war postdates capitalism as well (i.e. twentieth century communist states continued fighting wars, both international wars and civil ones).

You can, of course, take the line that 20th and 21st century socialist states aren’t or weren’t really socialist, or you can take the Trotskyist line that the era of socialist peace only begins after socialism has conquered most of the world, but I’m interested to see how you’d respond.

Hector,

I have Baran and Sweezy’s Monopoly Capitalism at home, but have not gotten around to it, yet. I also frequent the site carrying on their torch, among a great many other things.

http://monthlyreview.org/

As for war predating capitalism. Of course. Wars are primarily fought to enrich the ruling classes — or some mad members of them. There is seldom any other reason. And wars have obviously been going on for thousands of years, long before capitalism was even a twinkle in Adam Smith’s eye.

I said that today we fight because of capitalism. Not that we have always done so throughout history. We do so today because capitalism creates our current ruling classes, so we go to war to sustain it, expand it, defend it and jam it down the throats of everyone, whether they like it or not.

As for “post-capitalism.” We aren’t there yet. I view all the so-called “socialist” or “communist” countries as State Capitalism, and follow the thinking of Chomsky along those the lines in the video I posted. There have actually never been “socialist” countries, and one can’t have a “communist state.” That is an oxmoron, as communism is the absence of the state.

In short, pre- or post-, capitalist or not, wars are fought to enrich the ruling classes, and whatever economic system is at hand will always be central. What makes capitalism unique historically, however, is that it is the first economic system to be completely severed from the land, “use-value” and local production relations. It is the first economic system to float (virtually) free of all of that, thereby making it the perfect vehicle for global war, and the perfect rationale for said war. And, because it is the first to be based primarily on employer/employee relations, it has a unique incentive to get rid of that surplus you speak of. No other system before it necessitated the increase of surplus workers to drive wages down and increase profit margins. So the destruction of someone else’s economy, markets, infrastructure or system aids in the overall profitability of the ruling classes. And the twofer is always there:

The trillions spent to rebuild what was destroyed during those wars — along with the trillions spent to wreak the destruction in the first place.

Prior to capitalism, there was no global economic benefit (at the top) to massive destruction via war in one area. When Alexander or Genghis Khan waged war and left a trail of misery, death and destruction across their various zones of conquest, there was no glee from non-existent corporations thinking about “shock doctrine” or “disaster capitalism” profits. None were there to be had. Aristocrats could control their own domains. But they didn’t have global pull or global stock investments to make profits off the misery and death or others. They had to content themselves with creating misery in their own domain, etc. etc.

We fight wars today because of capitalism.

You forgot about Belgium.

235: When we can (again) separate “liberalism” and democracy, we may start getting somewhere. Maybe even understanding the causes of the World Wars.

Plume has Sweezy (and umm the co-author) to read and so do I. But some more Jonathan Israel before, I think.

@ajay
The only measure of how liberal a country is is what proportion of its subjects can vote for something? Well, in that case, you’re absolutely right. Germany was more liberal than Britain in 1914. In fact, Nazi Germany was more liberal than Britain.

According to this, the act of 1928 resulted in universal 21-and-over suffrage in Britain. So your last sentence must refer to a lower voting age in Germany (?). (Otherwise I don’t get it.)

Hemingway wrote novels about WWI and the Spanish Civil War. Not WWII. He did reporting on WWII.

“Closely Watched Trains” is based on a novel by Bohumil Hrabal, one of my favorite authors, especially for his I Served the King of England, which was also made into a movie.

Nazi Germany had no actual elections. Once in power, Hitler made all other political parties illegal, wiped out, jailed or exiled all of his political opponents, and instituted a totalitarian state.

Now, it is true that nations generally put “democracy” on hold during war, or at least key parts of it. So, if you’re comparing relative liberalism among combatants, and only during the period of war, then you might have a case — to a degree. But liberal democracies outside war time and a totalitarian regime such as Hitler’s are not comparable when it comes to degrees of “liberalism,” if that’s the measure, etc.

most of the great WWII films — Closely Watched Trains, Cross of Iron, Come and See, The Thin Red Line — didn’t get made until decades after the war was over, so they can hardly be said to follow in its wake.

This is simply not true: Roberto Rossellini filmed “Rome, Open City” (1945), Paisà (1946) and “Germania Anno Zero” (1948) in the ruins of Italy and Germany – they are classics, as is Wolfgang Staudte’s “Murderers Among Us” (1946) among others. There is actually a mini-genre called “Trümmerfilm” describing films made in the immediate wake of WW2. The rubble is till very present in “The Third Man” (1949) And there are tons of classics made in the 50s: “Kanal”, “Cranes are Flying”, “Ashes and Diamonds”, “Hiroshima mon Amour”, “River Kwai”, “The Bridge”.

To add to those film mentioned above, the American “A Walk in the Sun” was made in 1945. And there were several others about the war in Italy made in the 1950s.

The Soviet movie, “The Fall of Berlin” was made in 1949
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Fall_of_Berlin_(film)

as was
Battle for Stalingrad 1949 (released in 1950)
See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_World_War_II_films

Both of these Soviet films were rather adulatory (to understate) of Stalin

See for a fuller list of film dealing with the fighting see:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_World_War_II_films#1945

Some great films of the period were about the war but somewhat indirectly, such as Forbidden Games (1952).

Night and Fog, the first film about the Holocaust, came out in 1955.

Re: Had they actually listened to Marx and other leftist thinkers, they would have done all they could to go back to the soil, to use-value, teach self-provisioning and real independence, creating as much leisure time as possible away from the daily grind. Working enough to live, not living to work, etc

If Soviet Russia had focused on providing as much leisure time as possible away from the daily grind, they would promptly have gotten rolled over by the Nazis. (Or, twenty years earlier, by Kolchak and his boys, which would have been much less terrible, but still pretty bad). And they would never have become a modern, industrialized society with great universities, hospitals, factories, academic achievements, etc. I have no desire to defend the actual way in which Soviet Russia industrialized, in the event. We all know that they achieved rapid industrialization by turning the country into a horrific charnel house and starving the peasantry into submission. But the problem they faced was a real one, and you can’t brush it under the rug by quoting Marx.

My problem with Plume’s comments here, as in that other thread (I assume you mean The Great Oil Fallacy) is that it doesn’t pay any attention to the comfortable routine chosen and reinforced by the people, because the explanation is apparently that the appearance of any vote by the people is actually an illusion based on manipulations by the owning classes. That seems not only anti-democratic but begs the question of whether technocrats would be able to identify a markedly different new way of doing things without forcing people to give up things they have taken for granted.

To be sure there is an element where I think the comfortable routine is a problem – but the style of analysis being offered here doesn’t seem to sufficiently separate the important from the phantasmagorical.

Hector,

Industrialization isn’t necessary, at all, to achieve cultural greatness. It’s not necessary before having great universities, hospitals, the arts, etc. It is necessary in order to build a war machine in the modern world. But, given the fact that Russia’s arming itself cost tens of millions of its citizens their lives, I see nothing to recommend it.

And it’s not the case that you can’t build a strong economy unless you go through a shock and awe campaign of industrialization. Russia could have been the bread basket for the world, for example, with high exports and low imports, thus enriching itself enough to build the great culture in question. By creating an environment wherein “consumption” isn’t the goal, the norm, the dream, by instead inculcating the importance of having “enough” to live instead of enough to blow a consumer’s gasket, they could have grown their culture, their economy, their society in the right way.

Work to live. Produce to order. Produce what is needed, not enough to make sure all the shelves appear overflowing with wonder — with most of that ending up unsold and thrown into landfills, as is the case with capitalism.

Use-value, not exchange-value. Russia failed because it tried to keep up with the Joneses, when it should have tried to flow with the Tao.

Ed Herdman,

Mattski has never attempted to have a good faith conversation with me here. Instead, he likes to pounce when he thinks he’s found those inconsistencies you speak of. If he really wanted to engage in adult conversation, he wouldn’t pounce. He’d ask serious questions, seek further explanations and attempt to understand his discussant.

Even Hector, who clearly doesn’t agree with me, asks questions and seeks elaboration and clarification. Mattski? He doesn’t bother, because he already knows what he knows.

But I’m used to this. Whenever someone even questions our capitalist system, it seems to really piss people off. Even supposed liberals.

Oh, well.

Hector, well, in a way. I was being flippant.

That said, I have practiced Zen Buddhism though am lapsed at present. Zen takes a lot from Taoism, which I also like.

I was basically trying to come up with a way to express back to basics, living in harmony with the environment, living “naturally” to the degree possible, instead of artificially, stoked up on marketing campaigns and too much sugar.

Again, producing enough for a decent life, not enough for a pasha. etc.

Meaning “more than a century” after Marx died.

Mao Cheng Ji:
“I have the impression that WW1 was all about colonies, dividing the world”
I don’t think I’d heard that theory before. Hitler on the other hand that he wanted Germany to be a “great” country, and since Britain & France had already gobbled up the third world as colonies (in addition to dangers of racial mixing raised by overseas colonialism) that left the east as his manifest destiny.

Phil:
“Or ‘race’ might just have been one of the frames within which just about everyone from Marx to Mill to Russell to Rosa Luxemburg saw the world”
I made a similar point about Charles Lindbergh. His thinking was indisputably racialist, but despite his fears of the Japanese race he was disgusted by the hatred toward them displayed by many of his comrades.

Plume writes: Industrialization isn’t necessary, at all, to achieve cultural greatness.

Indeed, the Ancient Romans and Greeks clearly achieved cultural greatness without industrialization. Slavery is cool.

@Mao Cheng Ji 207
States (or coalition of states) want to take control over some other states. That’s what war is.
That’s not “what war is.” Better to define war broadly, as organized lethal violence among groups (of one kind or another), and observe that it takes different forms in different times and places. Most wars today are not about states wanting “to take control over some other states.” (As for what MCJ says in the same comment about WW1 and WW2, that’s not worth responding to, imo.)

ajay @237
the implication might be that looking at the last sixty years – with lots of crises that almost but not quite led to nuclear war – shouldn’t give you a sense of security that nuclear deterrence will inevitably mean peace

I don’t think there were lots of crises over the last sixty years that “almost but not quite led to nuclear war.” There was, of course, the Cuban missile crisis, and there may have been a couple of others that presented the possibility in the early part of the Cold War, and I’m under the impression there were one or two close-call cases of mistakes, e.g. when the U.S. thought the Soviets had launched when they hadn’t. And that’s it. More than zero, but not “a lot.”

More broadly, the they-were-lucky-until-they-weren’t theme doesn’t seem to me to be very compelling as a guide to contemp. int’l politics. But don’t have time to elaborate now.

@Watson Ladd
Forgive me for thinking that pacifism has some limitations around now.

Since virtually no one on this thread is advocating pacifism (maybe one or two commenters, at most?), I’m not sure what the point of this remark is.

Pacifism is “opposition to the use of force under any circumstances.” It has basically no bearing whatsoever on discussion of: (1) Kristol’s column, (2) the merits or lack thereof of particular wars, (3) nuclear weapons, (4) the nature of contemporary conflicts, or on eighty/ninety percent of the other matters that have come up here.

@MPAV
Well, yes, but I was responding — and I shd have been clearer on this — to ajay’s implicit suggestion that the absence of a nuclear war during the Cold War was mostly a matter of luck, and that nuclear deterrence often came close to breaking down. My impression is that, despite a few close calls, nuclear deterrence betw the superpowers worked pretty well. More fundamentally the US and the USSR did not want to fight a nuclear war, w the exception of a few nuts in the US and maybe on their side, b/c: (a) they knew it wd prob be suicidal and (b) they were OK for a long time w the arrangement in which the Soviets had their sphere of influence, the US and the NATO countries had theirs, and they wd compete in the 3rd world and engage in ideological blustering but the whole set-up actually suited some powerful interests on both sides, so there was little incentive to blow it up. Repubs in the US routinely criticized containment — Nixon in the ’52 campaign called it “cowardly” — but once in office they pursued it. Exception to that generalization might be Reagan, but that’s another story.

@Ed Herdman 264:

Oh, I definitely “accommodate” the views of others. If I didn’t, I couldn’t hold any discussions in places like this, because, as you noted, my viewpoint is a minority viewpoint, and one you seldom will ever find in any mainstream publication.

As for those rebuttals:

Did you mean this one, from Niall?

Indeed, the Ancient Romans and Greeks clearly achieved cultural greatness without industrialization. Slavery is cool.

A few things here. First of all, if I read it correctly, Niall is presenting an either/or when no such limit is logical. Either industrialization or slavery, if one wants to achieve cultural greatness? Who knew? Who knew we only had those two choices in the past, present or future, over the course of roughly 6000 years since the dawn of the first “higher civilization”? Especially when “industrialization” takes up just two hundred of those years, give or take. And, given the fact that capitalism itself was the first economic system in history to use both.

In fact, industrialization gave slavery in America its second wind, especially with the invention of the cotton gin. Some historians argue that without the industrial revolution, slavery would have collapsed under the weight of its internal contradictions, if not its unconscionable immorality. As in, some historians believe it was too costly and did not yield enough return for plantation owners in its later phase. King Cotton changed all of that.

As for 262, I honestly haven’t the faintest idea what the poster means.

. . . .

@dn 268,

Perhaps LA smog is a poor example. How about two hundreds years’ destruction of the rain forests, coral reefs, fish stocks, species life, ecosystems galore, the ozone layer, climate change, the melting of the ice caps, etc. etc. ? Rivers catching on fire? Trash heaped to the heavens in slums across the globe? Kids literally playing in human waste? And smog in LA.

Is it your belief that Marx, if he lived today, wouldn’t have been tremendously impacted by all of that, by the massive pollution and poisoning of our land, oceans, waterways and air? No difference between 1883 and today? Not even a cumulative effect?

. . .

G’night to all, one more time.

Florence achieved cultural greatness because the Church considered money-lending a sin, which the bankers felt they had to expiate by sponsoring artworks and cultural activity.

Would any literate person seriously argue that Hemingway (!), Solzhenitsyn, Golding, Singer, et al. are primarily known for their writings on WWII or that those works rank among their best?

Shifting the goalposts slightly there. The original question was not “did all great authors produce their best work when dealing with WW2?” It was “does WW2 compare with WW1 in cultural output?”
And you also shift the goalposts a bit more by selectively editing my list. No, Hemingway’s best novels weren’t about WW2. (Though his journalism might be a different story.) But Churchill’s best work was! Singer’s surely best known for his writing about the Holocaust and its aftermath. Gunther Grass? “The Tin Drum”. etc, etc.
(Come to that, Robert Graves’ best work wasn’t his WW1 writing. We should take him out of the list too.)

According to this, the act of 1928 resulted in universal 21-and-over suffrage in Britain. So your last sentence must refer to a lower voting age in Germany (?). (Otherwise I don’t get it.)

The voting age in Germany was indeed lower – 20, not 21. And don’t forget that the vast majority of British subjects in the 1930s didn’t live in Britain. Only seven million British subjects in India had the vote in 1933, out of a population of over 300 million. (Even post 1937 it was only about 30 million.)

@LFC 268

“Better to define war broadly, as organized lethal violence among groups (of one kind or another), and observe that it takes different forms in different times and places.”

I think that this is an excessively broad definition of “war”; I don’t think that, for example, mafia wars, or piracy, or terrorism, should really be counted as wars.

I think the concept of “war” implies either a conflict between two state-like entities, or a conflict to control one state-like entity (as a revolution or a civil war), or the deliberate aggression from a state-like entity.

The problem is that if you define war as “violence between groups”, the definition is so broad that almost everything falls into it, and as a consequence “war” defined as such is as old as humanity itself, but then you can say nothing interesting about the more circumscribed concept of “war” we use commonly (or, if you do, you commit a fallacy when you attribute the same arguments to the broader concept of “war”).

281 “Or if 60% of Europe’s bridges, roads, and factories collapsed.”

Hmm, I suspect it would make business (in aggregate) very-very happy. Excess of capacity is what makes it sad. At least some bridges and factories will need to be rebuilt, and that’s a great opportunity, good times. In contrast: an excess of bridges and factories means recession.

@ajay 279
my list of close calls would be shorter; as you say, there is a subjective element here.

@Random Lurker 280
Disputes over definitions are perhaps not that productive, but one can have a broad definition and still make arguments that apply only to a narrower category w/in that broad definition. (In the interests of time, I’ll leave it at that.)

p.s. @ajay
Anyway I assume you’d agree that in the — quite unlikely, IMO — event of a direct great-power ‘militarized dispute’/war in the foreseeable future, the venue would be Asia, not Europe.

Churchill?

Prominent English author and politician. Wrote quite a lot about the Second World War, both while it was going on and afterwards; won the Nobel Prize for Literature for it.

I think I agree with you (if I understand your point) that World War I coincided with a golden age of poetry and novel writing (and readership). Whether it caused such an age is more debatable.

That’s not actually my point – my point is that the cultural output of WW2 is not obviously inferior to that of WW1.

if 60% of Europe’s bridges, roads, and factories collapsed.”
Hmm, I suspect it would make business (in aggregate) very-very happy

Good news, Mr Businessman! 60% of your suppliers no longer exist. Most of the rest are now unable to function, because they can’t get to you because the bridges and roads have disappeared; or because their suppliers no longer exist. Your employees can’t drive to work for the same reason. You won’t be able to ship your goods to your customers because, see above, lots of roads and bridges have disappeared. The industrial output of your entire continent has just dropped by an unprecedented amount; you’re now in the middle of the biggest economic downturn in history.

You must be very happy…

Yes, but even on your own territory destruction is good for the general business climate, for obvious reasons. Window-glass replacement company owner dreams about a hurricane.

And if the issue is something like GE losing its factories, it’s not too clear if that would be bad for them either, provided they still have their government connections. They might spring right back quickly, and more dominant than ever.

I really start to worry, when people start imagining that massive destruction of life and property is “good for the economy”.

I like paradox as much as the next guy, but, unless you can explicate the paradox, you are selling stupid.

Plume, you jumped the shark in this manic series of posts quite a while back. You didn’t make a lot of sense to begin with, and now . . . it is just embarrassing to read.

Bruce Wilder 294,

You, of course, can’t demonstrate that I’m wrong. Which is why you don’t try. Little, unfounded insults is all you have. It’s what you do best.

As the young used to say, whatever.

@Ajay 288,

Good news, Mr Businessman! 60% of your suppliers no longer exist. Most of the rest are now unable to function, because they can’t get to you because the bridges and roads have disappeared; or because their suppliers no longer exist. Your employees can’t drive to work for the same reason. You won’t be able to ship your goods to your customers because, see above, lots of roads and bridges have disappeared. The industrial output of your entire continent has just dropped by an unprecedented amount; you’re now in the middle of the biggest economic downturn in history.

You must be very happy…

I think their is a bit of confusion between the wants and needs of “businessmen” and the wants and needs of major capitalists who make up the ruling class.

That massive destruction obviously hurts your average Joe or Jane business owner. But those with a surfeit of capital can weather such storms, and they can swoop in, corner markets, use government money to rebuild, and consolidate their power and wealth even more. And if the destruction hits their few remaining competitors, so much the better. If, as mentioned above, this happens in the so-called “third world” as most of our recent wars are located . . . . they’re going to say, “Who cares? No shirt off my back.”

Again, there is no such thing as “the economy.” And capitalists have never done their thing to benefit the system, their workers, consumers or the planet overall. They’ve done it to make themselves rich, which capitalism is set up to do. It plods on, primarily because governments keep bailing it out, thinking there is no other alternative.

Unfortunately, liberals agree. They agree with putting filters on those cigarettes (cigarettes as capitalism), instead of getting rid of cigarettes altogether.

Plume – if you’re living under a specific socio-economic system then of course *everything* can on some level be reduced to being caused by that system (in this case capitalism, or what have you) For your argument to hold even at this level of generality then it has to be the case that under different systems (pre capitalists societies, communism etc) war ceases to exist. But of course it doesnt, as has been laid out consistently above

@Ronan 300,

See #234.

Plume @274 –

It may be the case that Marx would be more deeply affected by our environmental plight if he lived today, but that’s ultimately speculation and besides the point. My secondhand understanding is that Marx thought about the environment mainly as “the soil”, i.e. in direct relation to production. Obviously we need a more comprehensive foundation today, but I don’t think we’re going to find it by trying to guess what the socialist heroes of yore would have thought.

Plume – I still think your 234 (with geunine respect) is so general to be meaningless. We have always fought because of elites, our elites are now capitalist so we fight because of capitalist elites, but there will come a time when we dont fight. b/c…..?
Anyway the idea that we always fight because of elites’ isn’t correct – even if you’re willing to have a very, very complicated definition of elites that accepts the fact that not all elites are driven by profit margins.

@Ronan 306,

Never said “all elites are driven by profit margins.” But, again, in order to start wars, promote them, keep them going, you don’t need all elites on board. In order to do so to protect, defend, expand markets, you don’t need all elites on board. You can even have elites pushing for peace.

I think, in a sense, the critique of what I’m saying as being too general and sweeping is too general and sweeping. It assumes a far more inclusive (and all or nothing) stance than I’ve ever presented. As in, “all X do this.” Or “this happens only because of X, which must mean every X possible.”

No. That’s a poor assumption, based on anything I’ve written. It’s just not there. It’s not even between the lines.

@bob mcmanus,

Thanks for the link.

A very interesting set of suggestions here.

http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/five-economic-reforms-millennials-should-be-fighting-for-20140103

The hatred and invective against these ideas is illuminating. Take a look at the comments.

In a way, the comments here, at CT, by supposed liberals, aren’t that far afield when it comes to attacking alternative visions. They aren’t as crude and are sometimes even subtle. But they amount to the same thing, basically:

A defense of capitalism, and mostly through the tearing down of alternatives, not through an actual defense of what capitalist itself does. Defense through a strong offense — a deflection, IOW.

Liberals probably know they can’t really defend their chosen economic system. They, in fact, often seem to realize why it’s so immoral. But they just can’t bring themselves to follow the logic of their own critique. So, they lash out at people to their left and attempt to mock or trash alternatives.

So, just for once, please mount am honest defense of capitalism. That would mean a defense, not a deflection. Actually demonstrate why this system is legitimate and should continue. Tell us how it is the best at allocating resources in the fairest manner, while proving this via the historic record. Defend its waste, its pollution, its massive inequality.

Given the fact that capitalism has absolutely no history of allocating resources even remotely well, this ought to be quite entertaining. Given the fact that it, as a system, creates economic apartheid naturally, I can’t wait to see the liberal defense.

MPAV,

My request isn’t any bigger an “ask” than the one expected of me.

As for allocation of resources, etc.

The richest 20% of the world consumes 85% of its resources. It’s even worse if you look at the percentage of control and consumption at the very top.

The richest 400 Americans hold as much wealth as the bottom 60% of the country combined. The top 1% grabs up 20-25% of all income and holds 42% of all wealth. Just the Walton heirs alone hold more wealth than the bottom 40% of the nation.

For starters.

Plume,

Are you living off disability? What gives?

I have limited time & energy. I choose to poke fun at what I see as instances of egregious inconsistency in your delivery. I readily confess that your brand of phantasmagoria really pushes my buttons. Your feet are nowhere in the vicinity of the ground.

In my mind it is NOT absurd to contemplate utopian societies. But those thoughts need to be tempered by a fact-based attempt to visualize the path leading to those lovely places. If you ask me, that path probably has much more to do with self-realization and inner development and much less to do with pointing ones finger at other people for failing to live up to principles which you espouse but–in point of fact–do not demonstrate.

(Nor would I deny that there needs to be a political element on the road to utopia. That is important, but it could take many forms, and it is perhaps less important than the quest for inner development and the cultural shifts induced by such.)

Plume – ok, reading back on your (first batch) of comments apologies for simplifying your initial argument.
I take your point to be something along the lines of, and correct me if I’m wrong – War is not natural to our species or human societies (Luke mentions Fergusons work but my impression is that it has been pushed back against and is still subject to debate) but is rather the result of a small group of alphas, sociopaths and ultras of one kind or another’ who push ‘selfishness and indifference to the pain and misery of others.’ The problem with our current economic order is that it rewards these alphas, with the rest of the population having been ‘beaten .. socialized, through thousands of years. .disciplined and punished enough to accept this’ state of affairs.
So there is some ideal point in the past where society was built to a greater extent around cooperation and you want to return to that place, or recreate it, by isolating the alphas and creating structures that bring out the majorities desire for cooperation rather than conflict.
I’m not saying anything one way or the other on that, but is that the argument, more or less?

@Ronan 318,

That’s the ticket. Yes. A very good and fair summation.

Donald,

What’s the quest for inner development?

Try this for example.

My previous comment applied to comment 172 by Jacob McM — it is a bit hard to keep track — which I basically agree with, though I think the phenomenon may not have been due to solely to the impact of the war. But really, ajay, Churchill was awarded the Nobel Prize for his oratory and for his History of the English Speaking People, which was neither a war novel nor about World War 2. I read this (in high school) and recall it as more a period piece than a contribution to culture, but I suppose that is a matter of opinion. His history of WW 2 was not finished until long after the prize had been awarded.

In any case, some historians view the two wars as one big war separated by a 20-year pause.

@Harold

“But really, ajay, Churchill was awarded the Nobel Prize for his oratory and for his History of the English Speaking People, which was neither a war novel nor about World War 2.”

I’m not sure how you can single out just one Churchill historical work given the citation:

Prize motivation: “for his mastery of historical and biographical description as well as for brilliant oratory in defending exalted human values”

http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/literature/laureates/1953/churchill-facts.html

@320 “But, that doesn’t suggest that we can solve problems by burning down factories; it suggests we can solve problems by transferring ownership and control and political power”

Who said anything about ‘solving problems’? Andrew 281 said that businesses don’t like destruction (to be fair, he qualified it). But they might.

Here, for example:
http://theadvocate.com/news/business/4726082-123/new-orleans-stays-no-1
“Unlike most other U.S. metros, which bottomed out during the recession in 2009, the low point for the Crescent City economy came after Hurricane Katrina in 2005. The massive ongoing hurricane recovery and rebuilding efforts provided a boost to the city during the national recession.”

This is rather trivial, innit?

320:In the present day U.S., the capital stock is shrinking.

Excuse me while I go massively short the equity indexes. Dow under 500 yet?

Last paragraph of the piece linked at 307 (You apparently didn’t get that far. Try it again.)

The argument, simply, is that as overaccumulation begins to set in, as structural bottlenecks emerge, and as profit rates fall in the productive sectors of an economy, capitalists begin to shift their investable funds out of reinvestment in plant, equipment and labour power, and instead seek refuge in financial assets. To fulfil their new role as not only store of value but as investment outlet for overaccumulated capital, those financial assets must be increasingly capable of generating their own self-expansion, and also be protected (at least temporarily) against devaluation in the form of both financial crashes and inflation. Such emerging needs mean that financiers, who are after all competing against other profit-seeking capitalists for resources, induce a shift in the function of finance away from merely accommodating the circulation of capital through production, and increasingly towards both speculative and control functions. The speculative function attracts further flows of productive capital, and the control function expands to ensure the protection and the reproduction of financial markets. Where inflation may be a threat, the control functions of finance often result in high real interest rates and a reduction in the value of labour- power (and hence lower effective demand). Where bankruptcies threaten to spread as a result of overenthusiastic speculation, the control functions attempt to shift those costs elsewhere. In sum, what we have sketched out above is a story of how crises are generated through the logical internal functioning of modern market economies, whether in national or global settings. A good amount of the world’s systematic unevenness and inequality–not to mention its various geopolitical tensions– follows directly from the ebb and flow of capital, both geographically and from productive to financial circuits.

I suspect you are being deliberately obtuse and tendentious, but if not, I can’t teach you economics (classical, Marxist, neo-Kaleckian, or Schumpeterian) in a blog comment section. The Varoufakis Modern Political Economics is a decent if challenging introduction to Marxian thought, and there is always the encyclopedia at Marxist.org. Also highly recommended is Competing Economic Theories by Resnick and Wolff.

bob mcmanus @ 328

I don’t think I am being obtuse or tendentious at all. I’d just like analysis to make some sort of mechanical or logical sense and to refer to things I can observe. If I pretend I’m in a Far Side cartoon as a dog, and only listen to the parts that make some sort of sense, I can filter out a fairly persuasive narrative. (Reading the paragraph you quoted) I certainly think that U.S. economy is suffering from an excess of finance and financial assets funded from disinvestment, rent-extraction, predation, etc. There’s not much you can do with money wealth, but sell insurance, and no better way to sell insurance at a premium than frighten people and make them desperate. But, that’s a story of usury, not “overproduction”. Where’s this excess production? What is meant by “bottleneck” in that paragraph?

My problem is that the mechanics are not there as mechanics.

Capital accumulation refers to the generation of wealth in the form of “capital.” It is capital because it is employed by capitalists not to produce with specific social uses in mind, but instead to produce commodities for the purpose of exchange, for profit, and hence for the self-expansion of capital. Such an emphasis by individual capitalists on continually expanding the “exchange-value” of output, with secondary concern for the social and physical limits of expansion (size of the market, environmental, political and labour problems, etc.), gives rise to enormous contradictions. These are built into the very laws of motion of the system.

This is the lead, the definition of terms, for christ’s sake, and it’s gibberish held together by the glue of glib moral judgments.

Well, it looks like my two posts are still being held up in moderation limbo, and ooooh the loss to the board! Matchless, deathless prose and profound ideas, too.

;>)

Bob McManus, 331

The paragraph cited seems unassailable to me. A concise statement of capitalist mechanics and the limits of that particular system.

All systems have limits, of course. Apparently, all too many Americans believe capitalism doesn’t. It stands alone and above all of that, supposedly, having worked everything out with its invisible hand. It’s always some other reason for our endless crises — the routine repetition of which didn’t occur under previous economic systems. It just couldn’t be the system itself!!!

Eagleton’s intro. Is that Why Marx was Right? Own it, read it. It’s quite good. My only quibble is that I wish Eagleton did more citations throughout the book. That would help arm those of us who wish to debunk false things said about old Karl and his progeny.

“a good case can be made that both wars resulted from the inability of the non-liberal powers to accommodate the industrial working class into their politics”
I’d like to hear that case, since I have not heard a detailed version of it. My view of the world wars is implicitly more “realist” (in the international relations sense), since there was a radical change in regime types after the first, yet war nevertheless recurred.

I don’t know about Kristol but his mentor Leo Strauss definitely seems to have been among those who felt the wrong side won WW1. Academics had it pretty good under the Kaiser.

@Peter T 335
national and international issues were so closely entwined that any analysis that makes a sharp distinction between the two does not really get very far.

Yes. For example Mearsheimer’s argument that one can explain Germany’s going to war in 1914 without much (or any) reference to its domestic politics is very unconvincing. If the working class had had more political power in Wilhelmine Germany, the Weltpolitik/big navy/high tariffs program would have been more contested. But that alternative may well presuppose a different kind of regime and different structural conditions (e.g., earlier industrialization, less cartelized industry: cf. that J. Snyder quote that we had some discussion of on my blog several months ago).

I did say upthread that I wasn’t going to get into WW1. So much for that resolve.

Looks like my posts made it out of moderation.

Mattski, a response for you @319

@343
I guess is this is the cryptic telegram hour on CT

Bruce Wilder 343,

“Basic” Marxian analysis would be more like it. And basic, when it comes to Marxian thought, is head and shoulders above pretty much any other economic analysis currently. In rigor, depth, logic, etc. No other “school” tackles the internal contradictions of capitalism like Marxian analysis. None comes close to its accuracy.

If for no other reason than it doesn’t feel the need to cheer lead, excuse, obfuscate for, deflect. And there are many reasons beyond that to look for its take on things.

Analogy: An NFL scandal breaks out. We hear reports from people in the league office, and we hear from excellent reporters with no ties whatsoever to that office, or to any team in the league, or to any source of revenue coming from that league or its teams. Those independent reporters also cover other sports and other topics beyond sports. No axe to grind, or golden goose to kill, etc.

The latter is what you get from the Marxians.

P.S. Personally, I think Marx might have admired capitalism a bit more than it deserved. To me, there is nothing to admire at all about it. No reason to be even ambivalent, which Marx was, though he leaned toward scorching critique. Many of his intellectual descendents don’t seem to have that ambivalence, which is a good thing. And they see where Marx got things wrong, like his belief that primitive accumulation all but ended once capitalism finally took command. It didn’t. It was and still is ongoing, especially in so-called third world countries.

I like how you go from “no axe to grind” to “Marx might have admired capitalism a bit more than it deserved.”

@Hector 347,

I think it’s clear that capitalism actually retards innovation and “growth” beyond growth for the top of the pyramid. Capitalism sets up a dynamic wherein investment is allocated on the basis of potential profit, not on the basis of the public good. That delays or destroys innovation. And with its tendency to create monopoly and cartels, the big companies often swallow up the smaller, more “innovative” businesses, building up even more layers between profit and public good.

The vast majority of innovations in the last two centuries, in fact, came about because of public sector investment and R and D, not via capitalism. There is, in fact, no major tech development in the past two centuries that got its start without public funding and/or R and D.

The computer, GPS, satellite tech, the Internet, touch screens, etc. etc. all were public sector inventions. And in the medical sector? NIH and its peers around the world have come up with the vast majority of medical discoveries, innovations and even pharma. But in the American system, we, criminally, turn over public sector patents, discoveries and research to the private sector for their profits and our loss. The human genome project, for instance, was entirely the brainchild of the public sector, but already private companies have stepped in and are trying to actually patent human biology.

If they get their way, we may have to pay royalties to procreate. etc.

In short, people tend to give sole credit to capitalism and forget all about the public sector without which is would be dead in the water.

LFC,

Point taken.

I guess I’m too used to it being used in a political manner, as a way to completely dismiss one’s opponent in a political discussion:

“Your defense of food stamp cuts was pure Republican boilerplate.”

etc.

I use it in that way when it seems apt.

I missed that part about Africa and Asia.

Yes, that’s what Perelman and others talk about when they discuss primitive accumulation and how Marx was wrong to say it had run its course.

Capitalists destroyed traditional societies. Definitely. But we have no right to call them backwards. That terminology was used to excuse disgusting, deeply immoral practices such as slavery and near slavery. See Vargas Llosa’s Dream of the Celt, about Roger Casement and his attempts to fight the obscenely brutal destruction of native peoples in Africa and South America — for profit. In this case, primarily by the rubber (and robber) barons.

Or, of course, non-fiction books, essays and studies of that subject.

Re: I think it’s clear that capitalism actually retards innovation and “growth” beyond growth for the top of the pyramid. Capitalism sets up a dynamic wherein investment is allocated on the basis of potential profit, not on the basis of the public good

I’m not saying capitalism is more innovative than socialism, Plume. I’m saying it’s more innovative than feudalism. (Some feudalist societies were, actually, probably less *oppressive* than capitalism, e.g. in Latin America. I’m not arguing capitalism is *better* than feudalism. I’m saying that it is more innovative, and more productive, and that the increased innovation and productivity were things Marx admired. They came at a big human cost, of course, the same way that socialist industrialization in Russia exacted a big human cost).

You’re failing to get this because of what you mention up thread, that you don’t see why industrialization is a good thing. And then you go on to talk about cancer drugs. Which society do you think had a better chance of making progress on the oncological front? Socialist Russia, or socialist Tanzania? How about semi-industrialized socialist Cuba, compared to socialist Tanzania?

Without industrialization, socialism just amounts to evenly distributing misery.

@LFC 353,

Different forms, same obscene mechanics and core.

There is no way around the fact that it rests on a permanent conflict between worker and owner, between owner and consumer, and between owner and the health of the planet.

An owner’s profit is directly tied to getting the most out of his or her workers for the least amount of cost. He or she makes more when they pay workers less. He or she makes more when they reduce costs for production in other ways, too, which means they have an incentive to make low quality products and lie about it. He or she makes more when they produce products that must be replaced, often. And they make more when they can offload (externalize) costs onto the public sector — wage subsidies, pollution clean up, waste disposal, retirement support, R and D, infrastructure, etc. etc.

I see the entire thing as monstrous, and I am baffled that anyone outside the 1% would even remotely defend it. It is set up to maximize wealth and power at the very top, among a tiny fraction of the population, and maximizing that wealth and power requires stripping everyone else of their share of production. As in, math. As in, math tells us they can not accumulate capital without subtracting it from others. The more they seek, the greater the subtraction. There is no other way around it. Not to mention no other economic system in the history of the world produces even a fraction of its waste or pollution, and no other economic system in world history has actually depended on endless growth to survive.

It is a ecological train wreck, speeding down the track, taking us to our destruction.

To the watchers: I too now have a comment stuck in moderation. Although the thread may be nearing an end, it’d be nice to get it pried loose while it’s still somewhere in the vicinity of the other comments that prompted it….

Bruce Wilder @ 361

Well, they can’t say that Burke didn’t warn them. Revolutionaries do tend to get ahead of themselves, or at least ahead of the rest of us. It’s part of their charm, but as you so often point out, not at all part of the competence that, in a better world, we might have a right to expect of them.

Yikes this thread has gone to some weird places.

I for one like living in a developed 21st century country. I like having access to advanced health care, clean water, plentiful inexpensive food, amazing travel opportunities, endless entertainment/educational opportunities, functioning legal system, protective services like fire/police/ambulances etc., etc.

I have no urge to go and make my living as a medieval peasant, scratching in the dirt and one bad harvest away from starving to death.

Now can we do better than we are? Of course! Let us look to the Scandinavian social democracies and build from there.

Plume @ 323: we have a system that requires massive amounts of vigilance, maintenance and bailouts. Logically, we should want a system that doesn’t, one that has “social justice” built in. In our current system, we constantly have to fight against this economic system’s natural tendencies and impulses — to prevent disaster. This, to me, is insane.

So, do you have any idea how to build “social justice” into a system, any system? Because it is not simple to achieve anything like “social justice” even for a moment, let alone “build it into The System”. What do you even imagine constitutes a social system, other than mortal, fallible people that we could have such automaticity, such magic?

Quis custodiet ipsos custodes? Who will guard the guardians? It is the age-old problem of government. A conundrum.

You haven’t begun to think about it.

@Bruce Wilder 365,

I see you ran from offering your own set of practical reforms, which you’ve demanded from others.

Hmmm.

As for not even beginning to think about. Well, I have. I’ve thought about it in detail, and have come up with my own system, which has some similarities to Parecon, but is quite different in other ways.

To begin with, the capitalist system puts power into the hands of the few, over the many. Again, there is no way around this. First off, businesses themselves, if privately held, will start out as ownership by a tiny minority over the vast majority. Most people do not choose to start or run a business. They have other goals and dreams. And within that subset of business owners, the system itself will select for triumph and defeat, thus narrowing ownership (along with wealth and power) even more. The growth of the population, meanwhile, increases, while viable ownership at the top decreases as a percentage of the whole. Thus is the nature of “competition” within the capitalist system. And, as mentioned already, ownership makes more as workers make less, thus increasing that gap of wealth and power again and again through time.

So, we can never have “social justice” as long as we have private ownership of the means of production. The only way to make it even possible is to transfer ownership to the people and start fresh with new production commonly held. And by that I don’t mean representatives of the people, a political party, a junta, a group of any kind. I mean, literally everyone. All production would be held in common.

To prevent an overlong post, will end this as Part One and continue the explication of this new society later.

You really think these problems– France needed a legal code and rational administration of justice. France needed a modern relationship with its Catholic faith and the Catholic Church. These problems were recognized universally by the time Louis XVI called the états généraux.–were not addressed by the Revolution, and that their “idealism” is what prevented them from fixing them? (I’m assuming you’re not including under “idealism” people who thought Paris needed bread and France needed rational administration, or Napoleon’s voluntaristic strong-arm-ism, because this would not make sense.)

What you’ve said so far was compatible with the idea that the only possibility that would make sense in 1789 would be for the members of the Estates General to quietly work for reform without disrupting the system; and the idea that nobody had any ideas before the revolution but “let’s declare Rights of Man” and “let’s overthrow the monarchy,” which IIRC is not the case. Rather there were ideas building up that nobody in power could act on. Those people were presumably “idealists” to, to the extent they were writing and not acting.

Meta, on housestyle

I was just about to paste a couple thousand words from Giovanni Arrighi in Adam Smith in Beijing discussing William McNeill, The Pursuit of Power: Technology, Armed Force, and Society since A.D. 1000 (Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 1982) basically on “military Keynesianism” through the ages. I though it relevant and on point to at least part of the thread.

Argument from authority?

Well, sorry I don’t quite yet have my own unique complete comprehensive analysis of Everything and the benign solutions to all problems including institutional structures along with the painless and victimless process of getting to Utopia. Still got work to on that. Awaiting Plume’s breathlessly.

But you know, I hesitated on pasting the Arrighi/McNeil because this place as Henry said is all abouts original insights and argument and anyway since Professor Arrighi in his book quotes constantly so much Harvey and McNeil and Brenner how good can he be anyway? How good can any of these authors and thinkers be with all their cites and quotes and references and footnotes? Jeez, can’t they think for themselves like the Crooked Timber geniuses?

Y’all are just way too good for me. Wilder demolished Marx and two centuries of Marxian academics with an exclamation mark. I am rendered speechless.

bob mcmanus: Wilder demolished Marx and two centuries of Marxian academics with an exclamation mark.

When you are good, you’re good. What can I say? ;-)

(Not quite two centuries, yet, I think, and it’s a bit of an overripe target, unfortunately.)

Plume: here’s my idea. Do nothing. No revolution. Put up with the current system, and work to have wealth and inheritance taxes level the field a bit within it.

Your turn.

bianca steele @ 369

Honestly, I don’t know how to account for your reading of my remarks. You are finding views I don’t have.

bs: the only possibility that would make sense in 1789 would be for the members of the Estates General to quietly work for reform without disrupting the system

I don’t know how you got that out of what I said. It is not what I think.

There was nothing to reform in 1789 France. The old regime had collapsed, in many parts.

bs: I’m assuming you’re not including under “idealism” people who thought Paris needed bread

I’m including the great many people, including majorities in the National Assembly subscribing to the consensus of Enlightened Opinion, who thought that the people of Paris would be best served bread by removing all controls on the grain trade and prices. The laissez faire of Turgot et alia was an idea “building up” as you put it, long before the Revolution. It had gotten nodding approval from the philosophes in the previous generation, and it was “rational” — definitely a kind of idealism. A corporatist attempt to administer a system to marshal grain and of public rationing would have made more practical sense, imo, in a time of continuing famine or near-famine. That the sansculottes were deeply afraid of starving, and for good reason, was an important dynamic, interacting with the idealism of the lawyers (aka bourgeois revolutionaries) in the Assembly, whose idealism seemed to require a practical indifference to their fate. In the event, the Law of the Maximum and similar were poorly thought out and often less than effective programs, and enacted only under threat of bodily harm.

I’m an economist, and so I notice the problem of a currency and payments system, which troubled the economy of Revolutionary France. The ancien regime did not borrow in its own currency, as the MMT folks would say, because the ancien regime did not have its own currency or central bank; in a sense, that’s among the reasons (not the only reason) the government of Louis XVI could find itself near bankruptcy, unable to pay its bills and facing high rates of interest. The Revolutionaries invented assignats, but it was very badly done, and inflation would be terrible. They also discovered plunder, and the need for coins drove some early adventures in Italy.

Again, the idealism of Enlightened thinking shaped and limited monetary policy. There were the usual of hard money types, who feared the establishment of the Central Bank, for example, and the stories of Law and the Mississippi Bubble early in the reign of Louis XV formed a kind of instructive mythology, unfortunately the wrong instruction.

I could go on about the problems in the administration of justice. A plurality if not most of the revolutionaries in the Assembly and the Convention were lawyers. Ancien regime France was lousy with lawyers trying to navigate the medieval system of Parlements and feudal courts, where the grants of particular rights in charters, etc. governed everything — it was a nightmare rooted in the lack of a uniform law code, based on rational principles. The Code Napoleon would eventually resolve the problem, and brilliantly, but it took Napoleon to do it.

The story of the Revolution and the Catholic faith in France is among the most horrific sequences. I won’t repeat the story.

The job of a Revolution is to bring a revolution to an end, by creating new, and hopefully better institutions. The French Revolution wasn’t good enough at this job, and, consequently, deliberative and democratic institutions were a long time getting firmly established in France, though, eventually, with the Third Republic they managed.

It is easy to say, we are going to have a revolution and simply abolish “the system” — we won’t have money and its evils, or religion and its evils, or hierarchy and its evils, and don’t ask what we will have, because it will just be better, so shut up. Observing such ease, and looking upon historical examples of its consequences in action, is not an argument against revolution; it is an argument against immoderate and empty-headed revolutionaries.

Thanks to the moderators for freeing my comment, now debuting at number 355. Since we’re now at 379 by my count, maybe it isn’t worth the backtrack, but thanks anyway.

Bruce Wilder is a mechanic; one with a very old soul and a very young mind. More like him, please….

Plume,

Thanks for responding. I will have more in the next 24 hrs or so. You’re a gamer, I respect and admire that. As is probably pretty clear I’m closely aligned with Bruce Wilder in this thread.

Oh! I have one little thought experiment before crashing for the night:

Three schooners are set to sail across the Atlantic. On the first the crew shall be made up entirely of professional sailors, with a duly credentialed captain. On the second the crew shall be made up entirely of social democrats, “liberals” if you will. On the third the crew shall be composed entirely of bob mcmanus clones- that is to say, doctrinaire Leftists reeking of disdain for hierarchy.

What odds do you give each ship of reaching the other shore?

bianca steele @ 383

I’m sorry, but I honestly did not understand

at what points in the narrative you describe does idealism come into play? In the decision to take power away from a single authoritarian ruler (it isn’t clear whether Napoleon is counting as an idealist in your argument, either)? In the wish for a rationalized relationship between the state and religion? Just in the idea of “revolution”?

and that confusion about where you were coming from carried down further in the thread.

My view on Marx (fwiw) is that even if one doesn’t esp. like his economics (and I am far from competent to judge or pronounce on a lot of the intricacies there), much of his work (e.g. the Eighteenth Brumaire, the Communist Manifesto, and Capital v.1 to name three) has lasting importance as literature, social theory, polemic, critique of 19th-cent. pol. economy, and historical sociology. So while I might be in the social-democratic rather than the Mcmanus boat, I’m definitely not in the Bruce Wilder dismiss-Marx-with-an-exclamation-mark boat. (Btw @385, Scotch on the rocks pls. Thks.)

@Hector
Hey Hector when you’re not speaking of feminism I like your point of view a lot.

Regarding capitalism and the war (WW1):
Vladimir Ilyich Lenin (1916), Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism – reduced in soundbites by RL!!!

The enormous growth of industry and the remarkably rapid concentration of production in ever-larger enterprises are one of the most characteristic features of capitalism.
[…]
Competition becomes transformed into monopoly. The result is immense progress in the socialisation of production.[…]Production becomes social, but appropriation remains private.
[…]
the concentration of capital and the growth of bank turnover are radically changing the significance of the banks.
[…]
the result is that the industrial capitalist becomes more completely dependent on the bank.
[…]
The German economist, Heymann, probably the first to call attention to this matter, describes the essence of it in this way: “The head of the concern controls the principal company (literally: the “mother company”); the latter reigns over the subsidiary companies (“daughter companies”) which in their turn control still other subsidiaries (“grandchild companies”), etc. In this way, it is possible with a comparatively small capital to dominate immense spheres of production. Indeed, if holding 50 per cent of the capital is always sufficient to control a company, the head of the concern needs only one million to control eight million in the second subsidiaries. And if this ‘interlocking’ is extended, it is possible with one million to control sixteen million, thirty-two million, etc.”
[goes on discussing the “chinese boxes” system ant the “head I win, tail you lose” dynamic]
[…]
Finance capital, concentrated in a few hands and exercising a virtual monopoly, exacts enormous and ever-increasing profits from the floating of companies, issue of stock, state loans, etc., strengthens the domination of the financial oligarchy and levies tribute upon the whole of society for the benefit of monopolists.
[…]
During periods of industrial boom, the profits of finance capital are immense, but during periods of depression, small and unsound businesses go out of existence, and the big banks acquire “holdings” in them by buying them up for a mere song, or participate in profitable schemes for their “reconstruction” and “reorganisation”.
[…]
Speculation in land situated in the suburbs of rapidly growing big towns is a particularly profitable operation for finance capital.
[…]
It is particularly important to examine the part which the export of capital plays in creating the international network of dependence on and connections of finance capital.
[…]
As long as capitalism remains what it is, surplus capital will be utilised not for the purpose of raising the standard of living of the masses in a given country, for this would mean a decline in profits for the capitalists, but for the purpose of increasing profits by exporting capital abroad to the backward countries. In these backward countries profits are usually high, for capital is scarce, the price of land is relatively low, wages are low, raw materials are cheap.
…]
As the export of capital increased, and as the foreign and colonial connections and “spheres of influence” of the big monopolist associations expanded in all ways, things “naturally” gravitated towards an international agreement among these associations, and towards the formation of international cartels.
[…]
The epoch of the latest stage of capitalism shows us that certain relations between capitalist associations grow up, based on the economic division of the world; while parallel to and in connection with it, certain relations grow up between political alliances, between states, on the basis of the territorial division of the world, of the struggle for colonies, of the “struggle for spheres of influence”.
[…]
“The characteristic feature of this period,” he concludes, “is, therefore, the division of Africa and Polynesia.” As there are no unoccupied territories—that is, territories that do not belong to any state in Asia and America, it is necessary to amplify Supan’s conclusion and say that the characteristic feature of the period under review [end of the 19th century] is the final partitioning of the globe
[…]
We saw above that the development of premonopoly capitalism, of capitalism in which free competition was predominant, reached its limit in the 1860s and 1870s. We now see that it is precisely after that period that the tremendous “boom” in colonial conquests begins, and that the struggle for the territorial division of the world becomes extraordinarily sharp. It is beyond doubt, therefore, that capitalism’s transition to the stage of monopoly capitalism, to finance capital, is connected with the intensification of the struggle for the partitioning of the world.
[…]
“The Empire, as I have always said, is a bread and butter question. If you want to avoid civil war, you must become imperialists” [cit. from Cecil Rhodes]
[…]
Colonial policy and imperialism existed before the latest stage of capitalism, and even before capitalism. Rome, founded on slavery, pursued a colonial policy and practised imperialism. But “general” disquisitions on imperialism, which ignore, or put into the background, the fundamental difference between socio-economic formations, inevitably turn into the most vapid banality or bragging, like the comparison: “Greater Rome and Greater Britain.” Even the capitalist colonial policy of previous stages of capitalism is essentially different from the colonial policy of finance capital. [now it is Rome vs. USA]
[…]
The principal feature of the latest stage of capitalism is the domination of monopolist associations of big employers. These monopolies are most firmly established when all the sources of raw materials are captured by one group, and we have seen with what zeal the international capitalist associations exert every effort to deprive their rivals of all opportunity of competing, to buy up, for example, ironfields, oilfields, etc. Colonial possession alone gives the monopolies complete guarantee against all contingencies in the struggle against competitors, including the case of the adversary wanting to be protected by a law establishing a state monopoly. The more capitalism is developed, the more strongly the shortage of raw materials is felt, the more intense the competition and the hunt for sources of raw materials throughout the whole world, the more desperate the struggle for the acquisition of colonies.
[…]
The interests pursued in exporting capital also give an impetus to the conquest of colonies, for in the colonial market it is easier to employ monopoly methods (and sometimes they are the only methods that can be employed) to eliminate competition, to ensure supplies, to secure the necessary “connections”, etc.
[…]
Imperialism is capitalism at that stage of development at which the dominance of monopolies and finance capital is established; in which the export of capital has acquired pronounced importance; in which the division of the world among the international trusts has begun, in which the division of all territories of the globe among the biggest capitalist powers has been completed.
[…]
Further, imperialism is an immense accumulation of money capital in a few countries, amounting, as we have seen, to 100,000-50,000 million francs in securities. Hence the extraordinary growth of a class, or rather, of a stratum of rentiers, i.e., people who live by “clipping coupons”, who take no part in any enterprise whatever, whose profession is idleness. The export of capital, one of the most essential economic bases of imperialism, still more completely isolates the rentiers from production and sets the seal of parasitism on the whole country that lives by exploiting the labour of several overseas countries and colonies. [the superclass!]
[…]
We have seen that in its economic essence imperialism is monopoly capitalism.
[…]
But when nine-tenths of Africa had been seized (by 1900), when the whole world had been divided up,there was inevitably ushered in the era of monopoly possession of colonies and, consequently, of particularly intense struggle for the division and the redivision of the world.

http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1916/imp-hsc/ch01.htm

It’s frustrating to see yet another flame break out between idealists and pragmatists. You need each other and we all need both.

“It’s frustrating to see yet another flame break out between idealists and pragmatists. You need each other and we all need both.”

I agree. Aren’t we all a little of both anyway?

It is easy to say, we are going to have a revolution and simply abolish “the system” — we won’t have money and its evils, or religion and its evils, or hierarchy and its evils, and don’t ask what we will have, because it will just be better, so shut up. Observing such ease, and looking upon historical examples of its consequences in action, is not an argument against revolution; it is an argument against immoderate and empty-headed revolutionaries.

Actually, when you completely leave out the forces arrayed against “successful” revolution, yes, you are arguing against them. But I think it’s even worse than that. Because you concentrate so much on “idealism” you seem to be arguing against even thinking out loud about changing the status quo. Oh, because, it will all end up like the French Revolution, or something.

Again, that leaves all the people who fought against those ideals and idealists off the hook.

For instance: America has waged a series of bloody wars and skirmishes to prevent or overturn revolutions overseas — for several decades now. The results make the French “Reign of terror” look like a Sunday picnic in contrast. In South and Central America, in Korea, in *Iran, in Vietnam, to name just a few locales. And its wars and skirmishes have resulted in at least 8 million civilian deaths, if we just talk about the above cases. Practical men, pragmatic Americans, judged it best to make sure those “empty-headed” idealists, with their silly thoughts about ending poverty, creating real democracy, keeping and controlling their own natural resources, demanding autonomy for themselves and their nation, could never achieve their goals.

*The peaceful, democratic revolution in Iran, which elected Mosaddegh, violently overturned by those practical Americans and Brits, because Iran had the absolute nerve to want control over its own natural resources — in this case, oil.

And even when those practical Americans aren’t directly involved in coup attempts, like the one that ousted Allende in Chile, they make it much easier for right-wing forces, friendly to American goals and capitalists, to crush those “empty-headed” idealists.

Clearly, the problem isn’t too much idealism. It’s too much force going up against that idealism, or the loss of it by those who once held ideals. On both sides. On all sides. Take away that force, and you likely gain a great benefit:

No more need for closing ranks, circling the wagons, going full on autocratic, dumping democracy in the name of survival, etc. As in, ironically, so-called “practical” forces, when arrayed against so-called “empty-headed” idealists, often provoke them into being “practical.” To treat existential threats in bloody practical terms. A great example of this was the Russian Revolution, which likely would have sustained real democracy without western attempts to crush it, instigate civil wars, embargo it for decades, etc. etc.

Imagine, just imagine, if the west had embraced that revolution, instead of trying to crush it. Same with Cuba. What if the west had welcomed them into the family of nations, aided them, if asked, left them alone, otherwise? I think it’s safe to say you’d have far better results than we ended up with, due to all of those eminently practical men in Washington.

“In South and Central America, in Korea, in *Iran, in Vietnam, to name just a few locales.”
I agree with you on most of those but Korea turned out pretty well in the end. At least for South Korea.

“It turned out horribly for North Korea, and millions of Koreans overall.”

Sure but it is hard to blame the US for that.

No, MPAVictoria, you are wrong, because capitalism.

Ronan, thanks. Will take a look. Picketty’s done great work on inequality, especially.

Plume – a lot of these were domestic conflicts that the US inserted themselves into, though, not ones they manafactued. Not that Im excusing what the US did, but they would have existed without US intervention (dont know enough about Korea but thats my impression of Vietnam and Central America – certainly there was enough domestic opposition to Mosaddegh that his position wasn’t tenable in the long term, and so the US response was dependant on domestic circumstances, which were becoming more hostile – in terms of protests etc – to him iirc)

In short, his long-term prospects were fine, if we hadn’t butted in, using the CIA, etc. etc. And our butting in set the stage for the Iranian revolution of 1979.

Pretty much everything we do, when we stick our noses in the business of others, results in terrible blowback.

“The North Koreans believe they had reason to invade. Regardless, it was none of our business. The right thing to have done was to have prevented civil war in the first place, by not dividing up that country after WWII . . . or, after that mistake had gone through, by working for peace and reunification, even if it meant a leftist government in charge, instead of the unpopular right-wing government we support”

Okay sure a given that a referendum should have been held after WW2 but it wasn’t for a variety of reasons. And it seems to me that South Korean’s are probably very happy that they didn’t end up being controlled by the crazy Kim family. So maybe it worked out for the best.

Kim Il Sung was president of North Korea before the war started with a strong grip on the apparatus of power in politics, military affairs, and propaganda.

Plume, afaicr the US intervention itself was reactive ie there were protests already forming and opposition to Mossadegh domestically, independently of the US/British position.
I agree that the intervention was wrongheaded, and my sympathies would be with supporting democracy rather than oil interests – but the US and Britain arent the only actors here and the assumption that everything would be substantially better in Iran if x didnt happen I think is arguable

“The above seems pretty accurate. I am pretty much will to agree with Plume that western military actions/wars over the last 60 years have pretty much been mistakes but there are a couple exceptions and I think the Korean war may have been one of them.”

Yikes. I am embarrassed by the number of mistakes in that. Please don’t judge me too harshly.

“Banging on about Capitalism is sandlot radicalism, juvenile and cartoonish.”

…as is proposing false dichotomies in which people can either be liberal or practical.

“The US effort in Korea is an accidental good though. It’s hard to believe that fond feelings for the people of Korea were a motivator and nobody at that time understood how insane NK would get. Such a tragic disaster.”

Totally agree.

@mattski 415,

What is “juvenile and cartoonish” is your rendering of what I’ve written.

And I don’t concede that private ownership of business is a societal good. Not at all. Far, far from it. In fact, it’s the basis for the ills that follow. In miniature, it’s the basis for the tyranny of the markets in general. And it is the model for top down, “do as I say or you’re fired” tyranny overall. Add up all of those private dictatorships, and you have capitalism as a system of dictatorships. The few over the many.

The “cartoonish and juvenile” thing is to expect that private ownership of business, with its motivations for self-accumulation, for the enrichment of the business owner him or herself, could possibly, ever coincide with societal good. That has been one of the wonders of the ages, that adults would think such a thing in the face of all the logic and evidence against it.

Again, the purpose of a business is to enrich the business owner. If he or she has a workforce, that immediately pits the interests of ownership against the interests of workers. The more the owner wishes to make for him or herself, the less they can pay their workers as a share of what those workers produce. As mentioned, this also pits the interests of ownership and consumer against one another. In order for the owner to make a profit, the buyer must receive less in value than they pay for — every time. Plus, in order for the owner to continue to sell their wares, there must be demand, obviously. If the product is built to last, then that demand will fade away over time (or quickly) so they can not build something that is one and done. They must build in “obsolescence.”

And the environment? To reduce costs, to enhance profit and ownership pay, they can’t spend too much on harmonizing with that environment, and they have no incentive to be good stewards. Now, they need resources now! Think about where industrialists set up shop. Primarily next to rivers. Yes, this was to utilize the transportation aspects of said waterways, but it was also for the convenience of dumping their waste — and they produced a ton of it.

Waste. Our system also creates more waste than any previous economic system and to the nth degree. We don’t produce to order, or what we need. We produce to fill shelves with the look of endless plenty and create the illusion of need through marketing. What is not sold is tossed and fills up landfills and slums across the globe. And the cost of those unsold goods is added on to our purchases, so we pay for something we did not want and did not buy.

In short, mattski, the people defending this system, especially on the basis that it somehow is good for society — they are the real dreamers and idealists. Those who actually take Adam Smith at his word and believe in his fairy tale — they are the wide-eyed true believers in utopias. Rather, udopias.

Those of us who understand the system and how it screws people over? We’re the realists, the people grounded in reality and we want a better reality, a more rational, just, fair and logical system to shape that reality.

Of course, there are exceptions. There are “good” owners, who do right by their employees. So I’m speaking in the aggregate there.

And, I’m not including the sole proprietor in the above. If I build, say, custom chairs, and I sell them directly, and they are the work of my own hands, my own sweat, then that’s a world apart from the business owner who hires people to build those chairs, but makes his/her money off of them, not his own sweat, etc.

A world apart.

In that case, obviously, there is not pitting ownership against worker, and I make the chair to last. I don’t make it with the expectation that you’ll be back in a few months to buy another. I make it so that you can hand it down generations, with my good name on it, etc. etc.

Exceptions. But the system isn’t based on those exceptions. Capitalism is based on employer/employee production relations, and capital going toward buying labor, and then capital making more capital.

We’ve always had what some historians call “petty commodity” production. That’s not what I’m talking about . . . Capitalism, in fact, through the process of primitive accumulation, did its best to crush that, and that continues on to this day with the Walmarts of this world, et al.

Anyway, gotta run.

Plume at 396, it’s curious to read about the many evils of the United States during the Cold War, without once reading about the role played by the Soviet Union in starting the Cold War and perpetuating it. It’s curious to read condemnations of the US role in the Korean War without any acknowledgement that perhaps sending hugs and food drops would have been insufficient to stop a North Korean invasion. It’s curious to read about inevitable blowback of US involvement in foreign affairs when considering the nations of Germany, Japan, and South Korea. It’s curious to read about the horrors of capitalism when considering the relative well-being of West and East Germany, South and North Korea.

It’s impossible to understand the military and political decisions you reference without an understanding of how the Soviet Union, and the threat it was believed to pose, shaped American concerns and interests. The US didn’t lack for an understanding of the horror of war when the Cold War began, and when it was quite aggressive in its use of covert operations. Indeed it was its (internally contested) conception of the Soviet Union, and its understanding of war, that led to its very active, costly, but overall perhaps successful, foreign policy. Yet reading your comments here, I would almost suppose that the US simply wanted to crush indigenous governments because capitalism.

@Andrew F.

“without once reading about the role played by the Soviet Union in starting the Cold War and perpetuating it.”

While I have to agree that the discussion here is ignoring all the faults of the soviet union,
(a) Plume isn’t saying that the soviet union was better than capitalism, since he is in the utopist/hippie camp (sorry Plume), so I don’t see your point;
(b) It seems to me that it was the USA to start the cold war, not the USSR.

Layman,

No, it’s not meaningless without that assumption. Not at all. The professional sailors are just that, their politics are irrelevant. In my mind, the cleavage in the thought experiment is between the 2nd & 3rd boats. IOW, a boat full of professionals is not terribly dissimilar from a boat full of liberals (social democrats). Because liberals–as we commonly use the term–tend to be practical sorts. It is the “doctrinaire leftists” who stand out from the other two for their adherence to dogma at the expense of practical knowledge.

This is quite interesting for anyone interested though completely irrelevant to anything above (more or less)

http://www.thestraddler.com/201412/piece9.php

Mattski, 430,

“Doctrinaire” is not something that just goes along with Leftists, anymore than it just goes along with being a “liberal.” You sound like one of those “centrists” who thinks they avoid the crazy on both the left and the right, and “keep it real” all the time.

Thing is, “centrists” have their own orthodoxy, as do you and your fellow liberals. I should know. I used to be one.

It’s probably safe to say that most people, regardless of their place on the political spectrum, view their own beliefs as logical, rational, even practical, and might just see everyone else as crazy. Unlike you, I see that, I realize that, I even admit to my own biased position. It seems you haven’t worked your way clear of that delusion yet. The one that says, “I’m the real center here. My views, unlike everyone else, are practical, normal, natural. The practical, normal, natural starting point for all things!! Everything else is just a deviation from my brilliance and god’s eye view!!”

SK wasn’t much better than the north until the last few decades though, was it ? wasnt it a pretty brutal dictatorship?

“On the first the crew shall be made up entirely of professional sailors, with a duly credentialed captain. On the second the crew shall be made up entirely of social democrats, “liberals” if you will. On the third the crew shall be composed entirely of bob mcmanus clones- that is to say, doctrinaire Leftists reeking of disdain for hierarchy.”

What an obviously biased thought experiment. It makes no sense at all. People with strong ideological beliefs can be competent or incompetent at sailing ships and there could be a wide range of political beliefs among the crew of the professional sailors. The competent sailors on the sea could be utterly incompetent at managing their lives on land (that’s one of the sub-themes of the Aubrey-Maturin books–Jack is a genius at sea and a moron on land).

I agree with Katherine upthread–a flame war between idealists and pragmatists is a huge waste of time.

I have to admit, though, Plume, that I’m a social democrat, because I’d like to see a functioning obviously humane and successful example of pure socialism before I’d sign up.
Not that I’m not sympathetic to what you say about the flaws of capitalism.

G’day, all. Heading out and about. Of course, it’s going to be tough for me to find my way, being a leftist, and all. We’re not practical enough to tie our own shoes, etc.

;>)

@Mao Cheng Ji
How isn’t the Korean war just another garden-variety imperial conflict, between the US and the Sino-Soviet bloc? And how is it possible to have two global empires without a conflict between them? Look at all the Roman-Persian wars, century after century.

Because, of course, nothing varies with historical context. The Korean war is “just another garden-variety imperial conflict,” just like, according to Mao upthread, WW1 and WW2. Ye gods. The stupid.

Layman,

and the doctrinaire leftists could be doctrinaire anything – since your definition of ‘doctrinaire’ in this case encompasses ‘impractical’.

So, from my perspective you’re determined to make a hostile reading of my words. But what I am talking about is not definitions of words, OK? That’s you. I’m looking at the ideas & arguments put forth by various commenters at this site, I’m seeing what I regard as dogmatic positions that–in my opinion–undermine progressive politics precisely because of their impracticality. I’m not interested in tautologies. I’m interested in getting the boat to its destination.

” In my mind, the cleavage in the thought experiment is between the 2nd & 3rd boats. IOW, a boat full of professionals is not terribly dissimilar from a boat full of liberals (social democrats). Because liberals–as we commonly use the term–tend to be practical sorts. It is the “doctrinaire leftists” who stand out from the other two for their adherence to dogma at the expense of practical knowledge.”

This says quite a bit about your mind and very little about “liberals” and “leftists.”

And what Katherine said at 392/393.

IOW, a boat full of professionals is not terribly dissimilar from a boat full of liberals (social democrats)

The what, now? Look, if you want to defend liberalism along technocratic lines (which is what the liberalism/professionalism equivalence suggests), there’s just no way that you can reasonably predict that the policies enacted by technocratic liberals will in any way be recognizably social-democratic. I mean you’re US based, right? You know something about the history of American liberalism (nominally speaking) in the last 30 years? Yeah, that pretty much settles it. On the other hand, if you want to defend social democracy as such, you have to do it on ideological grounds just as much as someone wanting to defend true socialism/a classless society or whatever (ok, maybe not just as much, but structurally, you’ll still have to provide an ideological justification). There’s no conceivable way in which you’ll get a backdoor defense of social democracy out of “professionalism”. To state the claim is to refute it.

js. 452,

Good points.

Under America’s current power structure, as the world’s most powerful reactionary society, it’s no more of a stretch to shoot for the moon and socialism than it is to go for Social Democracy. Which is to the left of American liberalism, and even slightly to the left of FDR’s New Deal.

Right now, we can’t even get unemployment comp extended, and five billion was recently lopped off of food stamps in the middle of increasing poverty and hunger. The House wants to cut 40 billion more from food stamps, and it won’t make any adjustments to any of this if it means one dollar of extra revenue. Even closing corporate tax loopholes, which could net the Treasury hundreds of billions a year, are out of bounds. Nothing that could even remotely appear as a tax increase can get to the floor.

All of this back-slapping and self-congratulations from people like Mattski and Bruce Wilder would make it seem like their oh so practical liberalism is doing the job. In reality, for thirty to forty years, liberals have lost ground steadily in America, throwing the New Deal overboard, bit by bit, year by year, hoping the marauding right-wing pirates will finally be satisfied with the sacrifices to date and at least leave the ship itself intact.

It’s not working. Inequality has never been higher. Corporate profits have never been higher. The rich have steadily gotten richer and richer while the rank and file falls. Corporate control over government has never been greater. Wealth hasn’t bought elections like this since the days of Tammany Hall.

What, exactly, have liberals done to stop this decimation?

I would like a bit more specificity in exactly what people are supposed to be doing, for the sake of observers at least.

For example, Plume (sorry for pulling you out of the bunch, my friend, I think my comment probably actually trawls deep waters, and I don’t think that you are a ringleader or anything): At one point you make an analogy about training for a 4 minute mile and a 6 minute mile (a good analogy for the importance of not selling oneself short) – but elsewhere you have shifted gears to talking more like a “politics is the art of the possible” insider pol, when you say “it’s no more of a stretch to shoot for the moon and socialism than it is to go for Social Democracy.” And then stranger still you attempt to invert the argument – it’s practically impossible, but it is only incrementally more impossible – yet still (therefore? Surely not!) a more desirable program. I think this is a clear sign something has gone horribly wrong.

The difference is subtle but important: In your runners analogy, you’re talking about a program set with complete acceptance by 100% of the “electorate,” i.e., the one person training for their own benefit. The simple goal is “run as fast as possible.” (The more complex goal, of course, is “as much as possible in the context of other factors like not injuring yourself in training, and pursuing other good aims concurrently – like holding down gainful employment if you are starting as an amateur runner” – it seems tedious to list such competing goals but realizing their importance makes the analogy closer to what is real.) Contrast that with the argument that apparently the chances of European-style social democracy are about equivalent to some stronger form of socialism, so both are therefore just as desirable – and it seems to me that what’s actually happened is that the focus shifts to present a false image of a group with totally similar aims, while ignoring the shifting landscape and shifting set of issues.

The goal for modern leftists / progressives / socialists / moderates is not “be as left as possible,” but we can say that the current system suggests and provokes specific issues to be interested in. And a boilerplate, ultimately doctrinaire “let’s go as far left as possible” argument seems to ignore the real method of change (both in terms of small pressure groups which actually can focus profitably on issues of impact, without the larger consensus – and also in terms of trying to find a broad consensus for those cases where you want as large a bloc of like-minded individuals (voters) as possible.

When you disentangle these things, you see that the group of dedicated socialists (or members of any group) will have no problem setting and pursuing an ambitious goal, as a matter of internal discipline – but neither do the more centrist-leaning leftists. The problem isn’t commitment, it’s policy details; not a story about how other people really need to work harder for goals they ultimately don’t and won’t share. The problem is, from the stance of somebody who is quite far to the left of the mainstream, in trying to organize those groups to exert outsize influence.

External and internal conditions are not solved by being more serious about being more willing to be radical (i.e., flattening the issues down to an overly simple model). That aspect of the discussion is what I think has been picked out by the back-and-forth with mattski; just as important is the possibility that many on the left simply do not want to go “further left” (because the utility of the left-center-right continuum as a model breaks down).

If you feel that you have been goaded into these arguments (I have tried to follow along a little, but this comment thread has gotten far too bloated) then I would just suggest ignoring that and iterating (or reiterating) in what cases you think that the moderate left-leaning program preferences aren’t good, as a thing itself – in the appropriate places, of course. Then you should surely discover, and we also, whether your prescriptions really seem feasible, palatable, and topical to other liberals. Of course, that seems outside the scope of this comment thread, so perhaps the only wise course of action is to shut down the argument that impracticality can be construed in any way as a virtue or that the spectrum of commitments stands as a proxy for individual thoughtful consideration of the issues, where the better belief is always the more left one.

@Mao Cheng Ji
So, should I interpret your sarcasm as the sign that you believe that every war is unique, and no common thread, no pattern can be found?

Short answer: no (although of course every war is unique in some respects).

Longer answer:
Some patterns or common threads prob. can be found but wars do have specific features and I wd push back against claims that war X is “just another garden-variety [emph. added] imperial conflict” or that war Y “was all about colonies, dividing the world. More or less the same as [war Z]. And like any other war, I suppose” (quoting MCJ upthread).

You want to homogenize, to say that all wars are basically the same. To do that requires operating at a level of generality so high it doesn’t get v. far in terms of explanation. I don’t have an answer to the general question “what causes war?” partly b/c I’m skeptical that analyzing war at that level of generality is going to produce a v. useful answer. I do not find Plume’s “wars occur because of capitalism” view esp. useful or accurate (though of course I acknowledge the existence of the mil/ind complex); your (Mao’s) “all wars are the same” line is equally if not more provoking (partly b.c it is delivered in somewhat dismissive comments which implicitly consign to the dustbin enormous amts of research on the ’causes of war’ in general and specific).

Traditional interstate wars, which don’t exist much any more though they still occur from time to time, are quite different, as a rule, from civil wars or internationalized civil wars. The latter also come in different varieties. One answer will almost certainly not fit them all, unless it’s couched at too high a level of abstraction to mean a whole lot. Research suggests that, for example, in the past states have gone to war more often over territorial disputes than over other kinds of disputes and that countries closer to one another are more likely to fight than those farther away. Neither of these generalizations is surprising and neither is all that useful currently given that traditional interstate wars have become rare (though the decline in extant ‘live’ territorial disputes, except over some now well-known islands and a rel. few land borders, is one reason such wars have become rare).

As to this:
Because it seems to me “imperial conflict” is exactly the context. Two global empires fighting over spheres of influence. Other things mentioned: capitalism, cold war, etc. are the details, specific circumstances.
The Cold War is not “a detail” but a label applied to indicate among other things that the conflict betw the US and USSR was marked by a tacit mutual agreement that the principals themselves wd not come to *direct* blows. Unlike, say, Athens and Sparta the US and USSR did not directly fight.

Part of what makes the Korean War not “garden-variety” is that it is a case of an arguable great power — namely China c. 1950 — directly fighting with another great power, the US. Great-power war as a distinct category or phenomenon is either dormant or effectively extinct, depending on one’s view. The Korean War was the last time two great powers directly fought each other, unless you count e.g. the Chinese-Russian border clash on the Ussuri River in 1969 (which certainly didn’t rise to the level of a sustained armed conflict). “Two global empires” if you want to use that terminology can contest over spheres of influence in various ways. During the CW the principals did it mainly by way of so-called proxy wars in the third world. In Vietnam the US was directly involved, of course, but that was a departure from the more usu. situation.

(Btw I don’t know why I’m here this late in the thread. I think this will be my last comment. I know some people will disagree with some or all of what I’ve just said. That’s fine.)

“Which implies that the Korean War was started with a US invasion and that there were ways of stopping North Korea’s invasion other than war.”

War to repel the invasion was justified–an aerial campaign that flattened North Korean cities wasn’t and it might have been nice to know that South Korean forces were massacring tens of thousands of people (possibly over 100,000, which is still smaller than the number killed by the bombing). link on South Korean investigation

I think I’m somewhere in-between Plume and those who say the Korean War was justified. Repelling the North Korean invasion was justified–it was a vicious communist dictatorship attacking a vicious fascist dictatorship, but it was an invasion and therefore illegal– and yes, decades later South Korea became a democracy, though still (like the US) a democracy that is currently unwilling to investigate its own war crimes. But the brutality of America and its ally went far beyond what was necessary or justified and its interesting how much of that brutality went down the memory hole for several decades. After reading Bruce Cumings, I went to a couple of local libraries and examined the books on the Korean War and most of the American ones said nothing about US bombing of cities or South Korean massacres. I found a couple of British authors (forgot one name, but the other was Phillip Knightley, who wrote a book on war correspondents) who were honest about the war.