Social Inequality in the U.S.

Just watched the latest Fault Lines episode about the wealthiest people in the U.S. and was impressed with it, so I thought I'd mention it in my blog. Fault Lines is a great video series produced by Al Jazeera. It tackles major social and political issues and is mainly concerned with the U.S. and its impact throughout the world.

Here are the program notes for this episode:

"The richest 1% of US Americans earn nearly a quarter of the country’s income and control an astonishing 40% of its wealth. Inequality in the US is more extreme than it’s been in almost a century — and the gap between the super rich and the poor and middle class people has widened drastically over the last 30 years.

Meanwhile, in Washington, a bitter partisan debate over how to cut deficit spending and reduce the US’ 14.3 trillion dollar debt is underway. As low and middle class wages stagnate and unemployment remains above 9%, Republicans and Democrats are tussling over whether to slash funding for the medical and retirement programs that are the backbone of the US’s social safety net, and whether to raise taxes — or to cut them further.

The budget debate and the economy are the battleground on which the 2012 presidential election race will be fought. And the United States has never seemed so divided — both politically and economically.

How did the gap grow so wide, and so quickly? And how are the convictions, campaign contributions and charitable donations of the top 1% impacting the other 99% of Americans? Fault Lines investigates the gap between the rich and the rest."

During the episode, a wide variety of people are interviewed including economist Jeffrey Sachs, sociologist Shamus Khan, representatives of both the Democratic party and the Republican party, as well as a Harvard graduate and a progressive businessman who feels let down by Obama.

For me, the most sickening aspect presented was the self-serving bull-shit ideology of the rich and successful: the American-dream, rags-to-riches, "we're richer because we worked harder and because we're brighter" rubbish that gets spouted a lot. And of course all those cliches that are dragged out constantly: a rising tide lifts all boats and other grossly insulting myths.

One of the most disappointing stories of the last couple of years is Obama, and this program contributes to our understanding of this immensely disappointing figure of contemporary politics. As the show points out, Obama has extended the Bush tax cuts, and has accepted the terms of the debate on cutting the deficit provided by the Republican party. Obama has given a lot away and seems to have gained nothing in return. It seems that Obama is either unable or unwilling to fight. But then as Sachs makes clear in the video, Obama isn't about to upset his Wall Street donors the year before his re-election campaign. [As a side note, I recently learned that the projected total campaign spending for both parties in 2012 will be over $2 billion!]

Another frightening but significant issue which this episode of Fault Lines examines is the huge political power that the wealthy have accrued thanks to their increased incomes. One prominent example which is explored is that of the Koch brothers, whose estimated total wealth is fourth highest in the U.S. The brothers not only support the Tea Party but also many right-wing think tanks including the Tax Foundation, the Cato Institute, and the Heritage Foundation. They have donated large sums of money to many political candidates and are against many current issues such as climate change, financial reform and health care reform. The case of the Koch brothers illustrates rather bluntly and boldly the falsity of the idea of shareholder-democracy since it is clearly the case that the more wealthy you are, the more political influence you have.

The program ends with a rather sobering image of Harvard students celebrating their graduation, alongside an interview with one of them who boasts of his superior intelligence and discipline which have given him access to an elite club of businessmen and entrepeneurs. He argues that the wealthy would be wasting their time in distributing their greater income throughout society, and instead should invest it in order to make yet more money. Once again we see this illusory idea of the rising tide which lifts all boats: if the rich get richer, it helps all society. This is clearly nonsense as many prominent scholars and intellectuals have pointed out time and again. But it makes sense as it serves the ideological needs of the rich and no doubt serves them psychologically too.

There is a nice short video which accompanies this episode of Fault Lines in which the presenter talks about the difficulty of interviewing the wealthy in the U.S. The rich might like to show off their wealth through conspicuous consumption but clearly they are not particularly keen to discuss and debate it!

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Fault Lines: The Top 1% video presented by Zeina Awad for Al Jazeera: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XdVODFombco&feature=relmfu

An extra video with presenter Zeina Awad on the difficulty of interviewing the wealthy: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OFYH4ROPgAo

Fault Lines website: http://english.aljazeera.net/programmes/faultlines/

Freedom of Thought - How Much Is That Then?

I've been reading some material recently on the issue of privatisation of education and decided to blog about it and share some links. The debate is not a new one by any means, but I've come across some new issues which I'd previously not heard of and thought I'd share them in the interest of spreading awareness.

Of course we know about the recent increase in UK tuition fees (£9,000, up from £3,000), and we know that some governmental support services for those from lower income backgrounds have been either decreased or entirely cut. Less well known is that governmental grants for the arts, humanities and social sciences have been entirely cut. This is not true for science, engineering, technology or mathematics however. The National Union of Students reported that at least 24 universities could therefore lose all their funding. This reflects a troubling utiliarian perspective which values institutions in so far as they produce graduates who will directly increase the national economy. Such a move also places a very low value on the arts and on culture more generally. Charlotte Higgins, writing in the Guardian, sums up this state of affairs by declaring that a "dark new philistinism" is now abroad.

As Alan Finlayson has written, the arts, humanities and social sciences "can best contribute to collective understanding of our social, economic and political situation" and "enable citizens to understand what is being done to them, why, and by whom. " As he goes on to say, in cutting funding to these subject areas the government is "seeking to weaken the fields that help people know who they are or what they might be; knowledge that is part of what everyone needs to question authority and become fully human in fast changing times."

And of course these subjects do contribute to industry, namely the "creative industries" as they are called. Paul Thompson, rector of the Royal College of Art, has warned that cutting funding to arts colleges will lead to a lack of supply of talent for the creative industries, and will also force talent abroad. Interestingly, he also talked about the way in which artists often collaborate with engineers and so prioritising the hard sciences over the arts and humanities would lead to less collaborations.

Barry Ife, principle of the Guildhall School of Music and Drama, has also pointed out that as many of the most talented artists come from the postgraduate population, increasing fees will deter more people from postgraduate study and therefore affect the supply of creative talent.

But the biggest and most interesting new development that emerged recently is that of the growth of private universities and colleges. The British philosopher A.C. Grayling has just announced a private for-profit undergraduate college called the New College of the Humanities (NCH), which will open in the autumn of 2012. The college will charge £18,000 per year in tuition fees and offer a liberal arts style education. However, although it is a private for-profit college, backed by private investors, it is in fact parasitic upon the public education sector. The University of London will be awarding the degrees and the NCH will be using their libraries and other facilities. Whilst Grayling and his supporters argue that the college represents a defence of the humanities (saving them from extinction since no one else will fund them), critics accuse Grayling of betraying his humanist values and of throwing in his lot with elitism and venture capitalism.

But whilst some critics, such as Terry Eagleton, accuse Grayling's college of being staffed by "a bunch of prima donnas jumping ship and creaming off the bright and loaded", Priyamvada Gopal argues more interestingly that Grayling's NCH is "at least partly a reflection of how we scholars in the humanities have made or failed to make history in institutional and political circumstances not of our own choosing." She argues that people working in the humanities are divided and have not found a way to resist against and fight back at the government's policies of cutting.

Gopal's article goes on to raise many well known but crucial issues concerning the humanities. One issue is that academics within the humanities have "played" the system too much, accepting the terms of the debate set by the government and the corporate sector. For example, they have too often accepted the idea that the humanities must show that it provides narrowly defined "transferable skills" with applications outside the field.

There is another issue at stake in the idea of private for-profit colleges like NCH. If Grayling is accepted as defending the humanities with this venture, then the question must arise: 'what will the humanities look like from the point of view of private colleges like NCH?' One look at the professor-shareholders who have signed up to NCH and you will see, in Gopal's words, "many of the world’s most renowned votaries of the superiority of Western civilisation, advocates of a narrow and parochial humanism defined as a Western possession, indeed in some cases, specifically, if implicitly, Anglo-Saxon and Protestant." This narrow representation of the humanities is hardly much of a defence of the best the humanities has to offer. It seems more of a return to elitism, class homogeneity, and intolerant rationalism, masked as liberal humanism.

In the face of all these attacks on public education, on the arts and humanities, and on the value of a liberal arts education, what can be done? There are a number of things that must be done. The arts and humanities must be defended as a social and public good in itself. We mustn't accept the terms of the debate from either the government or the corporate sector. There are other systems of value besides pecuniary ones and utiliarian/pragmatic ones. In part this means paying attention to language because it is instructive to notice how the government and the business sector talk. They talk of 'a global knowledge economy', of 'value-for-money education,' and of 'transferable skills.' Whilst this kind of language is arguably useful and appropriate in some areas of society, I don't believe it is appropriate when talking about the arts and humanities. Or, rather, the arts and humanities offer more than just transferable skills and enrich society in more ways than just the economic one. An education in the arts and humanities enriches one's life, helps one to become critical of the structures of society, allows one to appreciate beauty, creativity and other values which transcend the imperative to make profit, and at its best encourages free thought and independent inquiry.

Secondly, public education and the arts and humanities must be defended from within and from without. This means both public demonstrations and protests, and it means academics and intellectuals resisting pressure to conform to business practices and standing up for what they (should) do. The arts and humanities are often seen as either harmless or useless, and this must be shown to be false by engaging in independent and critical thinking. In times of crisis, when governments are lowering the living standard of the majority of people through austerity measures in order to save the banks, and when the rich are lining their pockets thanks to tax breaks, we need educated people more than ever and we need what the arts and humanities give us more than anything. We need the ability to critique existing power structures which will then lay the ground for emancipation. We need artists to both offer artistic portraits of the times and open our minds to new ways of looking at things. And we need intellectuals who can reinvigorate our sense of the past in order to create a different, and hopefully better, present and future.

There are many great articles and videos on this topic. I've posted some below. I hope they prove useful.

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Jane Hardy writing in the Socialist Review on Grayling's NCH: http://www.socialistreview.org.uk/article.php?articlenumber=11712

Noam Chomsky speaking about academic freedom and the corporatisation of universities: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q97tFyqHVLs&feature=feedlik

Here is the UCU's website: http://www.ucu.org.uk/stopprivatisation

Alan Finlayson's piece at OpenDemocracy.net: http://www.opendemocracy.net/ourkingdom/alan-finlayson/britain-greet-age-of-privatised-higher-education

Andy Worthington's article: http://www.andyworthington.co.uk/2010/11/22/did-you-miss-this-100-percent-funding-cuts-to-arts-humanities-and-social-sciences-courses-at-uk-universities/

Charlotte Higgins' piece in the Guardian: http://www.guardian.co.uk/culture/2010/nov/14/arts-funding-cuts-universities

A great myth-busting article in Red Pepper: http://www.redpepper.org.uk/higher-education-the-lie-busting-low-down/

An article on how the cuts affect art colleges and artists: http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/2010/nov/14/arts-cuts-education-designers-musicians-overseas

Priyamvada Gopal's article at New Left Project: http://www.newleftproject.org/index.php/site/article_comments/the_humanities_going_down_without_a_fight

Terry Eagleton's article for The Guardian: http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/jun/06/ac-graylings-new-private-univerity-is-odious

Riots in the Big Society

Having read quite a lot about the recent riots in the UK, I thought I'd collect some of the better pieces that I've read and post links to them here. I won't add my own thoughts here though. This is just a post about what some others have said. I hope it will prove useful and interesting.

Firstly, here is a piece by Nina Power, writing in the Guardian:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/aug/08/context-london-riots

She argues that those condemning the violence should step back and consider the larger picture: that of the rising social inequality, rampart individualism, massive unemployment, the intensification of consumerism based on personal debt, racism, police corruption, systematic crushing of unions and the criminalisation of dissent.

Next is a piece by Tom Fox, writing in Red Pepper:

http://www.redpepper.org.uk/the-riots-a-grim-mirror-image-of-neoliberal-britain/

Fox draws attention to the following: "police incompetence and arrogance, media complicity and callousness, the short-sightedness of the rioters, and the contempt politicians have had for the public over the past year that evidently continued this week." He goes on to say that "Looting and burning is not the virtue of the left, but instead of neo-liberalism, and we now have a grim mirror image of capitalism’s savaging of our society over the last three decades.

The rioters are a microcosm of the ethics that resulted from that savaging: self-indulgence, competition, and violence."

Also writing in Red Pepper, Emma Gallwey:

http://www.redpepper.org.uk/these-riots-are-the-fruits-of-austerity/

Among other things, she draws attention to social policies from both the current coalition government and the previous New Labour government. She also reminds readers of the Conservative ideology which sees the provision of welfare as both a fiscal burden and as creating a "welfare dependent, morally feckless, underclass of single mothers, young black men without fathers, delinquent hooligans, and long term unemployed." It is this moralism and paternalism which explains (in part) the Conservative agenda of using the debt crisis to push through austerity measures which sharply decrease the standards of living for most ordinary people and especially the poor. Gallwey is critical not just of the moralism of the Conservatives but also of the media and the conservative elements of the British public opinion. Moralism leads to speeches of condemnation and discussion about the failure of parenting whilst often ignoring the social causes of the riots.

For an article which concentrates mostly on the issue of race, see this article in Counter Punch by Hal Austin:

http://counterpunch.org/austin08092011.html

Austin draws parallels with the riots in 1980/81 and the Broadwater Farm uprising in 1985, and argues that lessons were not learned and that a number of people, including Diane Abbott, are dangerously peddling a revisionist account of these historical events. Austin also discusses the political impotence of the black community in the UK.

New Left Project have gathered some responses to the riots from groups on the left:

http://www.newleftproject.org/index.php/site/blog_comments/left_groups_respond_to_the_riots

Helpfully, Alex Callinicos' statement from his facebook page is here for those of us not on facebook. Callinicos compares the riots to those of 1980s, and to those in LA in 1992. He makes a number of points: political alienation is greater now than thirty years ago, the looting reflects the increase in commodification of desires in the neo-liberal era, and we now see a greater co-existence of rich and poor in London which explains the acts of class hatred demonstrated for example by the scenes of broom-waving in Clapham and Ealing. Callinicos also recommends Chris Harman's analysis of the 1981 riots, arguing that such an analysis applies to the riots seen this past week. Here is the link to Harman's analysis of the 1980s riots: http://www.marxists.org/archive/harman/1981/xx/riots.html

The Socialist Workers Party has made this statement:

http://www.socialistworker.co.uk/art.php?id=25645

It focuses on a number of key points: police racism and brutality, the Tory attacks on welfare provision and social programs, the growing inequality in Britain (the country is now less equal than at any time since the 1930s: the combined fortunes of the 1,000 richest people in Britain rose £60 billion in 2011), and the failure of the Labour party to offer a proper alternative. They quote Martin Luther King: riots are an expression of anger, "the language of the unheard." The statement ends with a call to demonstrate, strike and protest, as a response to the state of despair which leads to riots.

Tariq Ali, writing in the LRB blog asks "Why here, why now?":

http://www.lrb.co.uk/blog/2011/08/09/tariq-ali/why-here-why-now/

Ali sees one answer to such a question as the build up of grievances over a long period of time, then triggered by a particular event (in this case the police shooting of Mark Duggan). Ali blames the governments of the last three decades (for privileging the wealthy), along with the lacklustre state media and the Murdoch networks, and the business elite. Ali also complains about the lack of a political alternative to seriously challenge the neo-liberal structures which have increased social inequality over the last 30-40 years.

For a slightly different view of the riots, see this article in New Statesman by The Staggers:

http://www.newstatesman.com/blogs/the-staggers/2011/08/british-society-riots

Here it is argued that the riots are not a modern problem and that the explanation of most on the Left, that the riots are the result of contemporary social issues, is misleading. Instead, this article offers a historical look at rioting, arguing that riots have often occurred in Britain, in both urban and rural settings, and that the common thread uniting them all is economic pressure. It ends with a hopeful message that in today's Britain we have progressed beyond the usual response: sending in the army, making arrests, but not addressing the economic situation which leads to riots.

Lastly, David Harvey has just written an article on the riots in Counter Punch:

http://www.counterpunch.com/harvey08122011.html

He begins by noting that the use of animal-terminology to describe the looters - the Daily Mail called them "nihilistic and feral teenagers" - was also used to describe the communards in Paris in 1871. The latter were referred to as wild animals, as hyenas, that deserved to be executed (which they were) in the name of the sanctity of private property, morality, religion, and the family. He then goes on to make the point that we live in a society where capitalism itself is feral:

"Feral politicians cheat on their expenses, feral bankers plunder the public purse for all its worth, CEOs, hedge fund operators and private equity geniuses loot the world of wealth, telephone and credit card companies load mysterious charges on everyone's bills, shopkeepers price gouge, and, at the drop of a hat swindlers and scam artists get to practice three-card monte right up into the highest echelons of the corporate and political world."

Harvey notes that what he is saying sounds shocking, that no politician would dare say it and that the press would only publish it to pour scorn on the sayer. But he believes that some people can see this is the case, particularly the people rioting. As for the rioting and looting, Harvey sees this as a more visible and blatant form of what is going on elsewhere. But he notes that sadly the rioters cannot see that it is capitalism which is feral and which should be put on trial. Nor could they demand it. But Harvey sees hope in the movements in Spain, Greece, and elsewhere. The difficult task is for more people to see feral global capitalism for what it is, and to ask the right questions in order to begin changing our societies.

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That's it for now. Please feel free to recommend other articles by posting links in the comments section below.

The Price of Telling the Truth About Oneself

Drawing by Franz Kafka

It's been a long time since my last post so I thought I'd make an effort to get back to posting more often. Thankfully, I have just read a very stimulating book which I think is worth writing about. The book is a work of philosophy, which is helpful because so far I haven't posted much on this topic (despite it being in my blog title!)

The book in question is Giving an Account of Oneself by Judith Butler. Although Butler is known mostly for her work in gender studies, she has written on other topics including ethics, language, politics and many other philosophical topics. Whilst her style is dry, intellectual and abstract, she grapples expertly with complex and fascinating ideas, concepts and bodies of work, and has produced some impressive works over the last 20 years. Clearly, her notion of the performative character of gender has made a bigger influence on scholarship than anything else she has worked on, but from what I've read I think her other studies deserve more attention than they appear to receive.

In Giving an Account of Oneself, Butler takes up issues in moral philosophy but looks at them from the point of view of social relations. In other words, she looks at the social context in which moral issues arise. From here she moves her discussion quickly to the question of the individual self and how it gives an account of itself. This is important because giving an account of oneself is often what is at stake in moral issues or what often takes place within the moral sphere, for instance in being made accountable to a system of justice. As Butler explains, this is how Nietzsche understands the formation of conscience and memory, of how we become reflective about our actions and how we come to give an account of ourselves. What is important in this for Butler's discussion is the fact that the moral, reflective subject is brought in existence through an address from an other.

It is this issue, the formation of the (moral) subject through the need to be accountable, which is one of the key strands throughout the book. From here Butler looks at various kinds of issues which relate to this key strand: what form does an address take (both an address from an other and an address made to an other), in what context does an address take place, and how full an account can a subject give of itself. For example, although Butler is clearly sympathetic to much of Nietzsche's account, she asks whether fear is the only valence carried by the address of the other. Are there not other reasons and motivations to give an account of oneself besides fear of punishment?

Assuming one is, in one way or another, interpellated by an address from an other, Butler next turns to issues of narration. As she makes clear, being able to narrate one's life requires certain abilities such as being able to link sequential events with plausible transitions, being able to draw on narrative voice and authority, and directing one's account at an audience whom will be persuaded by such an account. Furthermore, these capacities (the capacity for narrative), are a precondition for an account of moral agency. Hence, there is a sense in which the self arrives late. The self is formed from forces and capacities which limit the self's freedom, and therefore it's ability to give an account of itself.

From this examination of the formation of the moral, reflective subject, Butler then examines various intellectual positions which differ in their understanding of this formation and the consequences for giving an account of oneself. For example, she contrasts Nietzsche's view of the formation of the moral subject with Foucault's account. The latter departs from Nietzsche by considering how subjects are constituted through codes of conduct which are not necessarily or always codes of punishment. Butler also shows how Foucault is different to Freud in this matter - the latter arguing that aggression is the basis of morality. Butler seems to prefer Foucault's account because it is less cynical and more subtle. For Foucault, the self forms itself in relation to codes, prescriptions and norms in a more dynamic and critical way. Hence, the self is not reduced to just an effect of those codes, prescriptions and norms.

From here we get to the nub of Butler's argument. Although the self has certain powers, capacities and a certain moral agency, nonetheless this self emerges in a context of unfreedom. The self is formed by conditions and forces it itself did not choose. This is a rather uncontroversial point when one thinks about the fact that we are forced to learn a language we ourselves did not invent or choose, as well as the fact that our whole environment was already up and running before we came along. Hence, it is intuitively clear that the subject emerges into an initial state of unfreedom. The question that has to be asked then is thus: how to we come to exercise freedom? Or rather, how to we acquire to capacity to exercise freedom?

This leads Butler to address a common complaint made against 'post-structuralists' such as Foucault: don't accounts like his undermine moral agency and responsibility? Butler takes up this question in a slightly different way. She wants to see whether a self that is ungrounded, divided and incoherent from the start can be ethically responsible. She does this by turning the issue around. Rather than seeing the limitations of self-knowledge as undermining the project of morality and ethics, she turns this into a virtue. It is because we are formed by primary social relations with others that there is something opaque about ourselves when we reflect on and try to give an account of ourselves. But because this opaqueness stems from a sociality, we are therefore bound to others in important (ethical) ways. Hence, Butler argues that an ethics which acknowledges and is based on this kind of social bond is more attentive to the other(s). For example, if we can acknowledge our own incoherence and opacity, then hopefully we can recognise this in others and hence treat more ethically. Butler thus sees a strength for ethics in acknowledging the limits of self-knowledge and acknowledging the limits of acknowledgement itself.

This is a very brief and partial outline of some of the book. I have largely concentrated on the first chapter of the book. In the other two chapters Butler considers many other issues and bodies of work, including two short stories by Kafka, psychoanalysis's contribution to the issue of self-knowledge and to the issue of otherness, and influential accounts of the self and its relation to the other/others such as those of Levinas, Laplanche and Foucault.

In short, Butler takes the notion of there being a kind of opacity to the self, a limit to self-knowledge, and hence self-narration, and theorises it using various philosophical, psychoanalytic, existential, and historical accounts. But more than this, Butler examines the ethical, moral and social consequences for this and comes out in defence of a highly sensitive ethical philosophy which is attuned to the otherness in oneself and so the otherness outside oneself also.

It is, in my opinion, a brilliant piece of work which will provoke and stimulate, and which deserves repeated reading of, meditation on, and discussion of. There are some great analyses of interesting thinkers and the comparisons make for a fascinating mix of ideas. For those people who are drawn to existential, moral and social questions, this is a worthwhile book to read. There can be few issues as momentous, as pressing, and as at once personal and social, as the issue of giving an account of oneself. However, there is also something terrifying about giving an account of oneself. At what price must we pay for (trying to give) such an account?