Dilemmas of Violence

Reading Jane Addams’ essays in my on-going exploration of reflections on violence and non-violence. Two (fairly) quick observations.

First, Addams writes that “an ideal government is merely an adjustment between men concerning their mutual relations toward those general matters which concern them all” (3). To that end, “organization is [our] only hope, but it must be kept distinct from militarism, which can never be made a democratic instrument” (3).

Politics, in short, is a consequence of humans being social animals. We must find modus vivendi, ways of managing to live together that foster, at the minimum, survival of the species and, at the maximum, the flourishing of members of the species. Ideally, flourishing will be available to all—but that can only be achieved through collective action, through cooperation.

Thus, politics requires organization, making arrangements and then striving to maintain them. In the usual formulation, it is assumed that there will always be outliers who threaten any particular arrangement, people against whom that arrangement will have to be defended. There is also the problem of blood feuds. Classically, the origin of the state is attributed to one of these two motives: protection of social arrangements (particularly property) against threats internal and external—or the establishment of a legal system that takes vengeance out of the hands of private citizens. The argument then goes that the establishment of the state leads to a reduction in violence because the state acts to suppress violent actions through deterrence and punishment. Certainly, Steven Pinker takes this view in his book on violence.

The nay-sayers to that view, however, point out that organization as represented by the state greatly increases the scope and effectiveness of violence perpetuated by state actors as contrasted to isolated individuals. Armies are far more violent than criminals; wars far more devastating than family feuds. “War is the health of the state,” writes Randolph Bourne. Even if there is pre-state violence, the formation of states to restrain it introduces a cure that is worse than the disease. Damned if you do, damned if you don’t. Violence is just baked in. And we don’t even get to pick our poison since the state has become (just about everywhere) triumphant.

Back to Addams then: one way to express the problem is to say: how do we get the benefits of organization and cooperation without the militarism?

Worth mentioning, I guess, that there is a school of anthropologists and primatologists (I am just beginning to read their work) who say violence isn’t baked in and that the archaeological record does not indicate much violence among humans prior to the Neolithic Age (about 10,000 years ago, a mere blip in the evolutionary time scale), while studies of our primate cousins also suggest violence is rare. For these writers, the state is the culprit, not human nature. But not clear how that helps, since it is hard to imagine a return to a pre-state human condition.

Second thing in Addams. In her attempts to broker a peace during the First World War, she advocated the charming idea of convening an international tribunal that would hear the claims of each nation in the conflict. In other words, each nation would come to the table and say (for example): that we, the British, are at war with Germany because we need this or we object to the Germans doing that. And then the tribunal would judge which claims were legitimate needs or grievances, and which were not. There would follow an international effort to satisfy the legitimate claims.

What is so charming about the idea is that it slyly (I don’t in fact think this was Addams’ intent) reveals how many “war aims” cannot stand the Kantian publicity test, that is could not be acknowledged openly with any faith that others would admit their justice.

But, less charming, is the fact that, by the end of 1915, few of the nations involved in the war would have even been able to articulate what the war was about. As Addams discovered in her many conversations with belligerents on both sides of the contest, the war continued because to end it would be to admit or accept defeat—which was unacceptable not because of any dire consequences that would follow from defeat, but simply because of the humiliation of defeat. In short, the tribunal idea, precisely because it is so irrelevant to the actual causes of the conflict’s perpetuation, indicates just how irrational violence is. The violence is not the means to some end. It does not partake of means/ends rationality at all. It exists in some entirely different register, which we can conveniently call “madness.” But that designation gets us nowhere in trying to explain what is going on.

So my other dilemma concerning violence (in addition to how states both prevent and cause violence) is how to “think” violence when it seems essentially irrational. I want some satisfactory account of the dynamics, motives, and trajectories of that irrationalism.

The Right-Wing Attack on the Universities

Chris Newfield has a response (lifted from Facebook) to my previous post. Here it is (in quotes) followed by my reactions to his comments:

“I’m reposting this because I meant to comment on this before. Thank you John McGowan for raising so pointedly both the Right’s systematic attacks on public universities and the question of their end game. To amplify what you’ve written, I think there are two big things going on.

One is a struggle for political control: 40 years of culture wars has convinced the Right that universities are a block arrayed against them, and with few exceptions it favors their political enemies. The university seems to them to have powers of deep cultural change and not just of truth-claims that generate policy and lawsuits, though those are also a major threat.

The second thing is their real economic plan, one that I detail in Stage 8 of the book. That is to cut capitalism’s dependence on knowledge and knowledge workers–to move it “past the knowledge economy,” though no one ever uses that phrase. This involves reducing brain workers’ independence from management, shrinking the middle class, particularly its politically troublesome “liberal professions” (in the French sense), freeing employers of any obligations to their direct employees (health care, pensions, shared governance through unions or employee representatives), and dumping any and all social costs. In the Right’s traditionalist capitalism, poor people have existed to provide fungible and hence precarious labor on demand, not to get better educations than their parents had; everyone should be fireable at will, etc.

The Right’s model makes cultural and economic sense in US history: it remarries corporate ownership to patriarchy, affirms de facto white supremacy, helps restore an earlier dependence of women on men, to name just a few cultural features. And it makes economic sense in the context of the American extractive economy–which requires mass quantities of cheap docile labor via slavery, then Jim Crow and immigration without rights– that is historically the bedrock of American wealth, and still is in most “red state” sectors of the country (e.g. NC’s hog and poultry agribusiness).

In short, the right’s “endgame” is the restoration of plantation capitalism. It will have new forms, but the key economic strategy is the prevention of knowledge workers from keeping the value of their productivity gains, which requires they be marginalized politically. The Great Mistake also discusses the various ways university administrators have played into the Right’s hands on economic as well as policy matters. At the same time, I’m fairly sure that if more regular voters understood what the weakening of universities will do both to their salaries and their status in society, these NC-style attacks would lose most of their (already mostly passive) support. I think the national politics are more fluid than they appear.”

I agree with Chris that red states (especially) are pursuing a strategy that undercuts the “knowledge-based economy” in pursuit of a nostalgic vision of “manufacturing” that fits the “extractive model.” But I am more convinced than I am sure he is that such a strategy is hopeless. The Alabamas of our union are condemning themselves to comparative poverty—and the agony here in North Carolina is watching a state that has attracted a fair share of the knowledge based economy to these parts work to dismantle it and become Alabama instead of Massachusetts. In other words, I don’t see where the right can win if it is playing the game that Chris describes—and I think much (hardly all) of the business elite understand that fact.

That said, it is worth saying a few further things. One, North Carolina’s prosperity is largely based now on the Research Triangle Park (RTP), which was built as a private—public partnership between businesses, state government, and the three research universities: Duke, UNC, and NC State, starting in the late 1950s. That kind of public investment—as opposed to the kind of negative investment of tax credits epitomized by the new FoxComm deal in Wisconsin—is pretty close to unthinkable today. The difference is that the positive investment of public dollars gave the public a place at the table in the planning of the RTP, with largely positive results. It was also based on a fifty year plan that proved to be fairly accurate about the challenges facing North Carolina (decline of textile, tobacco, and furniture industries) and pretty accurate about what could replace those lost economic drivers. There’s a decent case to be made that the original fifty year plan is now outdated and that the RTP needs a serious reboot and rethink at the moment. Not surprisingly, the ability to forge the kind of partnership that got things rolling in 1957 appears totally lost. But there is also no coherent vision of what the next fifty years will see us requiring.

There is no denying that North Carolina’s prosperity is very, very unevenly distributed. This is not just about income and wealth inequality, which still does not reach Northeast levels (New York, Connecticut, Massachusetts) in this state, but is nonetheless real. It is also about geographic distribution. The eastern and western parts of the state are far poorer than the prosperous Piedmont in the middle. Given the structure of American political districting, which gives disproportionate power to rural over urban voters, the legislature is skewed toward those who are not beneficiaries of the knowledge economy—and who, in many cases, view that economy as their cultural and economic enemy.

If nothing else, the left should be pushing for a realistic “living wage” for all workers and for basic job security and health/retirement benefits. I don’t see any realistic alternatives to a market economy. That’s where I am liberal. But I do think there should be strong state intervention in/regulation of that economy. On the intervention side, some measures should address market forces directly (like a high minimum wage) while other measures—primarily progressive tax rates—should mitigate the market’s tendency to produce extremely unequal outcomes. That’s where I am a social democrat.

And, as my last few posts have suggested, I believe the tax revenues should be devoted in part to investment in infrastructure. I take universities—and the creation of an educated citizenry—as part of that infrastructure. Even if the right wing refuses such investments—and, in fact, as Chris suggests, desires a return to “plantation capitalism”—I don’t see how such a strategy can be anything but self-defeating. The knowledge economy will leave the Alabamas in the dust.

Note that all of this says nothing about “finance capitalism.” New York (and the way wealth is generated there) is not California (Silicon Valley). The relation of finance capital to education is very complex—as is suggested by today’s Kevin Drum piece about the way that membership in a fraternity increased lifetime earnings by a whopping 36%. That wouldn’t come as any surprise to anyone in the development office at UNC. All the Wall Street guys were frat boys back in the day. And the measures needed to regulate/intervene in finance capital (starting with a transaction tax, a meaningful increase in capital gains tax, and strict rules about computer trading) are different than those called for when dealing with Google, Apple, and Facebook.

Finally, I agree with Chris that the political situation in this country is more fluid than might appear. One of the left’s biggest problems has been its inability to overcome the “passivity” of which Chris speaks. I was astounded—and still am—by how quietly the unemployed took their fate in the wake of 2008. They crawled into a corner, ashamed, and licked their wounds, as if it were a personal flaw that led to their being laid off. I don’t understand that. There’s an enthusiasm gap, at least when it comes to electoral politics, that is fatal in the low turnout on the left for mid-term and local elections. Counting on 75 year old Bernie to solve that problem is a formula for disaster. We need some you, fire-breathing, and inspirational leaders. I think there are plenty of people out there who could be inspired by such a visionary.

Life and Death

The Senate passed, by a vote of 89 for, 9 against, a 700 billion dollar defense bill yesterday, giving the Trump administration more to spend on the military that it had asked for. At the same time, that august body contemplates (and is within one or two votes of passing) a bill that would take away health care from millions. Truly, we have a political system in love with death and remorseless in its attacks on life.

This from Tolstoy’s late essay (1900), “Thous Shalt Not Kill”:

“That nations should not be oppressed, and that there should be none of these useless wars, and that men may not be indignant with those who seem to cause these evils, and may not kill them–it seems that only one small thing is necessary. It is necessary that men should understand things as they are, should call them by their right names, and should know that an army is an instrument for killing, and that the enrollment and management of an army–the very thing which kings, emperors, and presidents occupy themselves with so self-confidently–is a preparation for murder.”

If only it were a question of calling thing by their right names! Not that I underestimate the will to obfuscation, the will that led us to rename the Department of War the Department of Defense. I have a hard time describing–and dealing with–how dispirited I currently feel about the state of our nation and our world. Must humans be worshipers of death?

Church vs. State

The current battles between the politicians in North Carolina (both those in our state legislature and those on the Board of Governors for the state-wide university system) remind me of nothing so much as the battles between church and state as portrayed in the film, Beckett. Like the medieval church, the university, under the double banner of academic freedom and the right of professional expertise to self-governance, claims—and actually possesses—an autonomy that infuriates the statesmen. The politicians (despite their hypocritical claims to abhor state power and over-reach) are determined to bring the university to heel. It only exacerbates matters that universities generate a loyalty and affection among students and alums that politicians can only dream of attaining.

Put this way, the university is the Church. And, certainly, the university has plenty of analogues with the Church, especially in the pretension to and, sometimes achievement of, the otherworldly. Plenty of room for hypocrisy there—and undoubtedly no shortage of actual indulgence in that vice.

But I can’t help but view our power-grasping politicians through the lens of religion as well. I have tried, mostly successfully, during my life and academic career to resist those narratives that posit a sickness deep in the American soul, that see our nation as doomed by a darkness, an original sin, that means it is impossible we will ever live up to our high-falutin’ ideals. I don’t want to believe that racism explains all of the American past and the American present. I do want to believe that the US has done a decent—albeit far from perfect—job of providing a good enough life for a higher percentage of its citizens than have most societies in human history. But I cannot deny that the desire to believe these things may be making me blind to the uglier truth.

In any case, I read this in a Kipling story (“Watches of the Night”): “You may have noticed that many religious people are deeply suspicious. They seem—for purely religious purposes, of course—to know more about iniquity than the unregenerate. Perhaps they were specially bad before they became converted! At any rate, in the imputation of things evil, and in putting the worst construction on things innocent, a certain type of good person may be trusted to surpass all others.”

Now, you could say that the evangelicals meet their match in this regard with the “America is rotten to the core” crew. Fair enough. But what I want to ponder is the desire to punish. When I consider why these right-wingers hate the university—and consider the ways they express that hatred—what I see (among other factors, no doubt) is the desire to subject professors to “market discipline.” It is not enough to see evil. One must punish it. And the chosen instrument for punishment is the market. The right-wingers may be able to mouth all the virtues of the free market. But what they really like is that it punishes people, that it causes pain to the reprobate. How else to explain the need to hunt down the poorest and most vulnerable at every turn and make sure that they are suffering enough? It’s almost as if the prosperous cannot enjoy their riches without also knowing that some are excluded from that enjoyment.

Of course, the price for that enjoyment is “hard work”—and the right (reminiscent of Kipling’s comments on “suspicion”) is obsessed with the notion that there are people out there who are avoiding “hard work,” who are living off the fat of government largesse.

The university looks like a free consequence zone. Bad enough that students get to play on their parents’ and the state’s dime for four years. But that professors get to do so for a lifetime is truly insufferable! Teaching only two days a week! Summer vacations! Sabbaticals! And with fancy titles and exaggerated respect. There ought to be a law against it.