søndag den 11. maj 2014

Dagens citat: Emma Goldman.

"THE STATE, EVERY GOVERNMENT WHATEVER its form, character or colour- be it ab­solute or constitutional, monarchy or republic, Fascist, Nazi or Bolshevik-is by its very nature conservative, static, intolerant of change and opposed to it. Whatever changes it undergoes are always the result of pressure exerted upon it, pressure strong enough to compel the ruling powers to submit peaceably or otherwise, gener­ally "otherwise"-that is, by revolution. Moreover, the inherent conservatism of gov­ernment, of authority of any kind, unavoidably becomes reactionary. For two reasons: first, because it is in the nature of government not only to retain the power it has, but also to strengthen, widen and perpetuate it, nationally as well as interna­tionally. The stronger authority grows, the greater the State and its power, the less it can tolerate a similar authority or political power along side of itself. The psychology of government demands that its influence and prestige constantly grow, at home and abroad, and it exploits every opportunity to increase it. This tendency is motivated by the financial and commercial interests back of the government, represented and served by it. The fundamental raison d'etre of every government to which, inciden­tally, historians offormer days willfully shut their eyes, has become too obvious now even for professors to ignore.

The other factor which impels governments to become even more conservative and reactionary is their inherent distrust ofthe individual and fear of individuality. Our political and social scheme cannot afford to tolerate the individual and his constant quest for innovation. In "self-defence" the State therefore suppresses, persecutes, pun­ishes and even deprives the individual of life. It is aided in this by every institution that stands for the preservation of the existing order. It resorts to every form of violence and force, and its efforts are supported by the "moral indignation" of the majority against the heretic, the social dissenter and the political rebel-the majority for centuries drilled in State worship, trained in discipline and obedience and subdued by the awe of authority in the home, the school, the church and the press.

The strongest bulwark of authority is uniformity; the least divergence from it is the greatest crime. The wholesale mechanization of modern life has increased unifor­mity a thousandfold. It is everywhere present, in habits, tastes, dress, thoughts and ideas. Its most concentrated dullness is "public opinion." Few have the courage to stand out against it. He who refuses to submit is at once labelled "queer," "different," and decried as a disturbing element in the comfortable stagnancy of modern life."

Emma Goldman: The Individual, Society and the State (1940). 



torsdag den 8. maj 2014

Dagens citat: Albert Jay Nock.

"The State’s criminality is nothing new and nothing to be wondered at. It began when the first predatory group of men clustered together and formed the State, and it will continue as long as the State exists in the world, because the State is fundamentally an anti-social institution, fundamentally criminal. The idea that the State originated to serve any kind of social purpose is completely unhistorical. It originated in conquest and confiscation – that is to say, in crime. It originated for the purpose of maintaining the division of society into an owning-and-exploiting class and a propertyless dependent class – that is, for criminal purpose." – Albert Jay Nock (1870-1945) 

onsdag den 7. maj 2014

The European Corporate Union


Crooked Counsel: How law-breaking corporations are advising the European Commission. http://tinyurl.com/pkc3fda

The fire power of the financial lobby: A survey of the size of the financial lobby at the EU level. http://tinyurl.com/ptwsk4z

The MEPs who became corporate lobbyistshttp://tinyurl.com/pqmauzv

Corporate Europe: How Big Business Sets Policies on Food, Climate and War.http://tinyurl.com/o97de2t

Europe Inc.: Regional and Global Restructuring and the Rise of Corporate Power. http://tinyurl.com/kqyvbct

EU more extreme than US on trade. http://tinyurl.com/phbmokb

onsdag den 2. april 2014

De svages værn imod de stærke?

Den lovgivende forsamling skaber statens tekstuelle anatomi og udgør den institution, hvorigennem den styrende klasse systematisk påtvinger samfundets medlemmer dens oppefra dikterede kodeks. Juraen giver staten sin autoritet og omvendt. Uden statens repressive organers (fængselsvæsenet, militæret og politiet) potentielle eller konkrete vold, ville opretholdelsen af loven være umulig, og uden lovgivningen ville politiet og militæret blot have karakter af særdeles veludrustede bander, mens de altså i stedet får deres påståede legitimitet fra lovgivningen, som således tjener to herrer, nærmere bestemt staten og dens styrende klasse på den ene side og sig selv (retsvidenskaben) på den anden.

Juraen er, når den er værst, et værktøj i en skruppelløs herskende klasses hænder, som på den ene side bruger den til at legitimere de magtfuldes handlinger (eksempelvis angrebskrig) og på den anden side begrænser de svageste handlemuligheder (eksempelvis ved enten at kriminalisere eller besværliggøre organiseret modstand - jf. lømmelpakken”). Omvendt kan juraen, når den er bedst, være et middel til at sikre samfundets svageste medlemmer imod dets stærkeste ved at give de svageste rettigheder og påtvinge de stærkeste et bolværk imod egen magt. Oftest er den imidlertid begge dele på en og samme tid. Den kan således give de svageste (og de knap så svage) rettigheder med den ene hånd og lægge særdeles magtfulde redskaber i den styrende klasses hænder med den anden.

Ser staten beskyttelsen af de svage som sin opgave?

Hvis statens opgave er at beskytte de svageste imod de stærkeste, må man først og fremmest have for øje, at staten selv hører til de stærkeste, ja den må endda nok siges at være en af de stærkeste blandt disse. Det følger således at staten bør lægge bånd sig selv, så mulighederne for misbrug og eventuelt resulterende konkret (eller mere abstrakt strukturel) vold stædigt bekæmpes i kampen for at beskytte den svageste imod den stærkeste.

Man bør imidlertid vogte sig for at godtage tanken om, at staten er til for de svagestes skyld, for selvom staten i den universelle skandinaviske velfærdsstats tilfælde indtil videre opretholder et socialt sikkerhedsnet, så sker dette samtidig med, at staterne, som vore regeringer samarbejder med verden over, udgør den vigtigste garant for opretholdelsen af en ganske hierarkisk og derfor socialt meget skæv teknoøkonomisk global orden, hvis eksistens må betegnes som en modsatrettet udvikling, som netop er til skade for de svageste.

Denne kapitalistiske orden, som statsdannelser er en ganske vigtig kilde til, er ikke kommet til verden som et produkt af en naturlig evolution af samfundskroppen, men er blevet konstrueret og opretholdes fortsat af staternes juridiske og institutionelle konstruktioner. Det gælder ikke mindst herhjemme. I stedet for at udgøre de svagestes vigtigste våben imod de stærke, bliver staten derfor ofte det komplet modsatte. Den tvinger samfundets svageste til at betale for dens opretholdelse, som altid samtidig er ensbetydende med opretholdelsen af de stærkestes privilegerede situation, idet staten skaber grundlaget for kapitalen, hvorfor den også udgør grundlaget for de systemiske problemer, som for de svageste er forbundet hermed.

Det er altså kun i den bedste af alle verdener, at staten ser det som sin opgave at værne de svageste imod de stærkeste, herunder imod staten selv. Et nærliggende eksempel er den udbredte brug af isolationsfængsling i Danmark. Da mennesket grundlæggende er et socialt væsen, kan isolationsfængsling forvolde meget bekymrende psykologisk skade på fangen, hvorfor denne praksis kan sammenlignes med tortur, hvilket man må antage er noget som man er bevidst om i de relevante statslige institutioner. I tilfældet isolationsfængsling har man imidlertid bestemt, at statens (retssystemets) behov er mere tungtvejende end fangens. Et klokkeklart eksempel på at staten ikke ser det som sin opgave at forsvare den svage (fangen) imod den stærke (staten), idet man vælger intentionelt at forvolde skade på den tilfangetagne.

Lovgivning vendt imod de svage

I et lovbaseret samfund som vores er man godt stillet, hvis man kender lovgivningen og forretningsgangen i forbindelse med dens vedtagelse og opretholdelse, idet man kan forsøge at ændre på den eller i det mindste kan føre sin sag indenfor dens rammer. Omvendt er man er dårligt stillet, hvis man hverken kender lovgivningen i dens detaljer, har nogen reel mulighed for at påvirke den proces hvori lovgivningen tager form, eller har råd til at føre sin sag. Ofte kan lovsamfundet altså være glimrende for de allerede stærke og derfor ressourcefulde, som qua deres ressourcefuldhed enten kan forsøge at påvirke lovgivningen i eget favør eller ved at trække sager i langdrag på grund af adgang til dygtig juridisk bistand, men samtidig kan det altså udgøre en alvorlig lænke om foden på svage og ressourceløse medlemmer af samfundet.

Lovgivning kan være et glimrende undertrykkelsesværktøj, idet den kan bruges til at give et fernis af legitimitet til en eventuelt bagvedliggende social kontrollogik hos den styrende klasse. Under dække af at ville bekæmpe kriminalitet kan lovgivningen blive grundlaget for undergravning af rettigheder, såsom privatlivets fred, eller den kan tages i anvendelse som socialt ukrudtsmiddel” og bruges til at kriminalisere offerløse gerninger, såsom misbrug af ulovlige substanser, og herefter til at smide de således kriminaliserede bag lås og slå. Lovgivningen kan altså bruges til at gøre de svage svagere ved at kriminalisere og straffe dem, hvormed truslen imod nogle af de svagestes muligheder for et godt liv tager til, idet de nu ikke blot har afhængighed af substanser at bekymre sig om, men også skal bekymre sig om at undvige konsekvenserne af kriminaliseringen, typisk i form af statslig frihedsberøvelse.

Kriminaliseringen af narkotika har muligvis i udgangspunktet haft beskyttelse af de svage som sin underliggende logik, men uanset om dette tidligere var tilfældet (og det bør man ikke uden videre acceptere blindt), så er konsekvenserne efter mange års opretholdelse af denne kriminalisering, ingenlunde ensbetydende med, at de svageste beskyttes. Tværtimod trues de nu af både trusler indefra og udefra. Indefra trues narkomanerne, selvsagt nogle af samfundets svageste medlemmer, af en økonomisk set ganske omkostningsfuld stofafhængighed, som netop er økonomisk og sundhedsmæssigt omkostningsfuld grundet kriminaliseringen, idet det sorte marked hverken kan eller vil garantere renhed eller billige priser. Det afføder et stresset og desperat liv, der så igen ofte resulterer i desperate handlinger.

Udefra trues disse svageste dels af en militant politivirksomhed, som bruger kriminaliseringen af narkotika som påskud til at endevende folks lommer i hele kvarterer og altså ikke kun på narkomaner, og dels af at kriminaliseringen skaber et enormt lukrativt marked for organiserede kriminelle, som grundet denne lukrativitet får stadig større midler til rådighed til at opretholde og udvide deres magt. Helt galt er det ikke gået herhjemme endnu, selvom forbindelsen mellem bandekrigen og den for banderne så lukrative kriminalisering af narkotika synes ganske oplagt. Det er det imidlertid i udlandet, hvor organiserede kriminelle er blevet så magtfulde på grund af kriminaliseringen og de store økonomiske gevinster, som denne kan være forbundet med, at selv veludrustede statslige organisationer har svært ved at stille noget op.

Ofte sikrer lovgivningen ikke befolkningen imod de største trusler imod dens svageste medlemmer. Flere aktuelle eksempler kunne her nævnes: A) En finanslov, hvori der vedtages en intentionel forarmelse af de allerede fattigste, kan eksempelvis vedtages; B) Juridisk deregulering af eksempelvis finansmarkedet kan skabe grobund for aktiviteter, som har en høj risiko for at skabe dårligere tilstande for samfundets svageste og sidst men ikke mindst; C) kan den herskende klasse bruge lovgivningen til at kriminalisere nøjagtig samme handlinger, som staten selv foretager, men som pludselig bliver helt legitime, når de udøves af staten (qua besidder af et monopol på legitim voldsanvendelse).
 
Når en privatperson truer en anden med afpresning, er det således omfattet af straffeloven, men når den selvsamme handling udføres af staten, bliver den ikke alene betragtet som ganske legitim men tilmed som nødvendig og kaldes nu blot for beskatning. Et andet eksempel er terrorlovgivningen, hvori man definerer terrorhandlinger og dikterer høje straffe herfor, så længe de begås af privatpersoner, mens man samtidig fritager statslige aktører fra lovgivningen og eksempelvis giver en krigsførende regering tilladelse til at foretage ganske lignende handlinger - eller tillader meddelagtighed i sådanne – omend i en betydeligt større skala, hvorfor disse handlinger ikke bærer truslen om straf i sig, men i stedet typisk er forbundet med straffrihed, så længe de begås af magtfulde eliter. Kort sagt: Lighed for loven implicerer, ofte at nogle er mere lige end andre.

Vi gør derfor klogt i at vedblive med at fokusere på statslige institutioner og deres skadelige virke imod samfundets svageste. Ydermere gør man klogt i at blive ved med at rette fokus på de magtfuldes forbrydelser (som ofte ikke straffes) og i at forholde sig kritisk til enhver udvidelse af allerede magtfulde organers magt. Vedbliver man eksempelvis med at give mere magt til politiet, kan det ultimativt betyde, at man gør politiet til en så stærk klynge af institutioner, at de bliver en stat i staten, som på den ene side ikke længere lader sig kontrollere og på den anden skaber grobunden for en militant form for social, statslig kontrol. Man bør altså være kritisk overfor enhver tendens til at ville løse problemer forbundet med kriminalitet gennem udvidelse af politiets magt og fængselsvæsenets omfang.

Den forkrøblede retsstat

Der er efter årtusindskiftet mange steder i Vesten sket et vigtigt og ildevarslende skred væk fra borgerrettigheder og henimod det fortvivlende autoritære. Vi så det herhjemme, da man indførte den såkaldte lømmelpakke, som de facto udgjorde et opgør med borgernes ret til fredelig protest og som resulterede i den største masseanholdelse i nyere tids retshistorie. Politiet viste sig ved denne lejlighed som borgerrettighedernes fjender og som systemets ukritiske forsvarere.

Man skal dog ikke fejlagtigt tro, at politiets virke begrænser sig til masseanholdelsen, men man bør som kritisk iagttager af det politiske system se på politiets bredere virke ved folkelige protester, idet man sandsynligvis ved at gøre dette vil finde yderligere belæg for, at politiet betragter opretholdelsen af Grundloven som noget i bedste fald sekundært. Ved brug af magtstrategier som eksempelvis knibetangsmanøvrer, fisker politiet så at sige med det store net ved nogle demonstrationer. Man indfanger hellere for mange end for få, og når uroen har lagt sig, lader man så sigtelserne frafalde og lader frihedsberøvelsen ophøre.

Efter angrebet på tvillingetårnene tog en ganske ildevarslende udvikling fart. Under dække af at ville forøge sikkerheden og forsvare friheden, undergravede man retssikkerheden og foretog et storstilet opgør med hævdvundne borgerlige frihedsrettigheder. I dag ved vi,  hvor langt man har været villige til at gå for at skabe en forstyrrende overvågnings- og kontrolorienteret centralmagt, som nu også målrettet går efter uskyldige, idet overvågningen ikke blot er rettet imod formodede kriminelle, men derimod omfatter alle!

Især udviklingen indenfor juridisk terrorbekæmpelse fortjener vores kritiske årvågenhed, dels fordi denne udvikling forlener frihedskampen med hårdtslående argumentatorisk ammunition, og dels fordi den statslig trussel imod friheden først og fremmest – men ingenlunde udelukkende -  stammer fra den juridiske terrorbekæmpelse og dens underliggende sikkerhedspolitiske argumentation. Den ukritiske opbakning til de internationale terrorlister bør især have vores fokus, da det på nuværende tidspunkt synes evident, at de mere er et statsligt undertrykkelsesmiddel end en garanti imod terrorhandlinger, som enten implicit eller eksplicit antages udelukkende at udgå fra ikke-statslige aktører, til trods for at statslig vold alene i de seneste hundrede år synes at berettige til en vurdering af stater som i det mindste potentielle terroristiske aktører.

Det gør man imidlertid ikke. I stedet fordømmer man ensidigt folkelige bevægelser, som har valgt at føre væbnet kamp imod undertrykkende stater, alt imens de pågældende staters konkrete vold imod visse dele af civilbefolkningen ikke vurderes som terror. Man kan således være militært allieret med Tyrkiet, som gennem årtier systematisk har forsøgt at undertrykke medlemmer af det kurdiske mindretal i landet, og samtidig ensidigt stemple den militante del af den folkelige kurdiske opposition som organiseret terror. Det kalder på kontinuerlig kritik og krav om tungtvejende argumentation.

Det lader i dag til at være blevet åbenlyst for mange, at den styrende klasses politik snarere har at gøre med at opretholde systemet end med at beskytte borgeren imod det. Vi har således set to modsatrettede men nært beslægtede tendenser komme til udfoldelse, idet man på ene side har gjort administrationen mindre gennemsigtig for borgeren (jf. offentlighedsloven), mens man på den anden side har gjort samfundet mere gennemsigtigt for magthaverne (masseovervågning).

Under det nye årtusindes danske retspolitik er maskerne faldet. Systemets mænd og kvinder arbejder for en styrkelse af systemet. En styrkelse, som sker på bekostning af borgernes hårdt tilkæmpede rettigheder, idet disse simultant svækkes. Efterretningstjenesterne i Vesten er således blevet ukontrollerbare stater i staterne, som skalter og valter med de konstitutionelle retsstatslige garantier i et så voldsomt omfang, at mange i dag har erklæret privatlivets fred død og begravet. Stillet overfor en sådan udvikling kan man ikke længere prætendere at være en neutral iagttager af samfundsudviklingen, idet man ikke længere går ram forbi, men derimod er en af denne udviklings ofre!

 

 

 

 

 

 

fredag den 20. september 2013

Matrices of Control

MATRICES OF CONTROL:
MODERNITY, INDUSTRIALISM, AND CAPITALISM.
By Steven Best

In the transition to what is called “modernity”—a revolutionary European and American social order driven by markets, science, and technology—reason awakens to its potential power and embarks on the project to theoretically comprehend and to practically “master” the world. For modern science to develop, heretics had to disenchant the world and eradicate all views of nature as infused with living or spiritual forces. This required a frontal attack on the notion that the mind participates in the world, and the sublation of all manner of the animistic and religious ideologies—from the Pre-Socratics to Renaissance alchemists to indigenous cosmological systems—which believed that nature was magical, divine, or suffused with spirit and intelligence. This became possible only with the dethronement of God as the locus of knowledge and value, in favor of a secular outlook that exploited mathematics, physics, technology, and the experimental method to unlock the mysteries of the universe. Modern science began with the Copernican shift from a geocentric to a heliocentric universe in the sixteenth century, advanced in the seventeenth century with Galileo’s challenge to the hegemony of the Church and pioneering use of mechanics and measurement, while bolstered by Bacon’s and Descartes’s call to command and commandeer nature; and reached a high point with Newton’s discoveries of the laws of gravity, further inspiring a mechanistic worldview developed by Enlightenment thinkers during the eighteenth century.

For the major architects of the modern worldview—Galileo Galilei, Francis Bacon, Rene Descartes, and Isaac Newton—the cosmos is a vast machine governed by immutable laws which function in a stable and orderly way that can be discerned by the rational mind and manipulated for human benefit. Beginning in the sixteenth century, scientific explanations of the world replaced theological explanations; knowledge is used no longer to serve God and shore up faith, but rather to serve the needs of human beings and to expand their power over nature. Where philosophers in the premodern world believed that the purpose of knowledge was to know God and to contemplate eternal truths, modernists exalted applied knowledge and demystified the purpose of knowledge as nothing more than to extend the “power and greatness of man” to command natural forces for “the relief of man’s estate.” Through advancing mathematical and physical explanations of the universe, modernists replaced a qualitative, sacred definition of reality with a strictly quantitative hermeneutics that “disenchanted” (Berman) the world and ultimately presided over the “death of nature” (Merchant).

This involved transforming the understanding of the universe as a living cosmos into a dead machine, thus removing any qualms scientists and technicians might have in the misguided project of “mastering” nature for human purposes. The machine metaphor was apt, not only because of the spread of machines and factories throughout emerging capitalist society, but also because—representing something orderly, precise, determined, knowable, and controllable—it was the totem for European modernity. Newton’s discoveries of the laws of gravity vindicated the mechanistic worldview and scores of eighteenth and nineteenth century thinkers (such as Holbach and La Mettrie) set out to apply this materialist and determinist paradigm to the earth as well as to the heavens, on the assumption that similar laws, harmonies, and regularities governed society and human nature. Once the laws of history, social change, and human nature were grasped, the new “social scientists” speculated, human behavior and social dynamics could be similarly managed through application of the order, harmony, prediction, and control that allowed for the scientific governance of natural bodies.

The rationalization, quantification, and abstraction process generated by science, where the natural world was emptied of meaning and reduced to quantitative value, is paralleled in dynamics unleashed by capitalism, in which all things and beings are reduced to exchange value and the pursuit of profit. In both science and capitalism, an aggressive nihilism obliterates intrinsic value and reduces natural, biological, and social reality to instrumental value, viewing the entire world from the interest of dissection, manipulation, and exploitation. Science sharply separates “fact” from “value,” thereby pursuing a “neutral” or “objective” study of natural systems apart from politics, ethics, and metaphysics, as capitalism bifurcates the public and private sectors, disburdening private enterprise of any public or moral obligations.

The kind of rationality that drives the modern scientific, economic, and technological revolutions—instrumental or administrative reason (herrschaftwissen)—is only one kind of knowledge, knowledge for the sake of power, profit, and control. Unlike the type of rationality that is critical, ethical, communicative, and dialogical in nature, the goal of instrumental reason is to order, categorize, control, exploit, appropriate, and commandeer the physical and living worlds as means toward designated ends. Accordingly, this general type of reason—a vivid example of what Nietzsche diagnoses as the Western “will to power”—dominates the outlook and schemes of scientists, technicians, capitalists, bureaucrats, war strategists, and social scientists. Instrumental knowledge is based on prediction and control, and it attains this goal by linking science to technology, by employing sophisticated mathematical methods of measurement, by frequently serving capitalist interests, and by abstracting itself from all other concerns, often disparaged as “nonscientific,” “subjective,” or inefficient.

The dark, ugly, bellicose, repressive, violent, and predatory underbelly of the “disinterested” pursuit of knowledge, of “reason,” and of “democracy,” “freedom,” and “rights” as well, has been described through a litany of ungainly sociological terms, including, but not limited to: secularization, rationalization, commodification, reification (“thingification”), industrialization, standardization, homogenization, bureaucratization, and globalization. Each term describes a different aspect of modernity—reduction of the universe to mathematical symbols and equations, the mass production of identical objects, the standardization of individuals into the molds of conformity, the evolution of capitalist power from its competitive to monopolist to transnational stages, or the political and legal state apparatus of “representative” or “parliamentary” democracies. Each dynamic is part of a comprehensive, aggressive, protean, and multidimensional system of power and domination, co-constituted by the three main engines incessantly propelling modern change: science, capitalism, and technology. In industrial capitalist societies, elites deploy mathematics, science, technology, bureaucracies, states, militaries, and instrumental reason to render the world as something abstract, functional, calculable, and controllable, while transforming any and all things and beings into commodities manufactured and sold for profit.

From Exploitation to Administration.

Critical theorists and postmodernists resisted Marxist economic reductionism to work out the implications of Weber’s “iron cage of rationality” that tightly enveloped the modern world by the nineteenth century. A critical counter-enlightenment trajectory leads from Nietzsche to Weber to Georg Lukács through Frankfurt School theorists like Theodor Adorno, Max Horkheimer, Herbert Marcuse, and Jurgen Habermas, to postmodernists such as Michel Foucault and Jean Baudrillard. Although many relied on key Marxist categories, they sought a more complex concept of power and resistance than allowed by the economistic emphasis on capital, alienated labor, and class struggle. Where Marx equates power with exploitation, the capital-labor relation, the factory system, and centralized corporate-state power, modern and postmodern theorists of administrative rationality brought to light the autonomous role that knowledge, reason, politics, and technique serve in producing systems of domination and control. Thus, on this line of reasoning, in the early twentieth century German philosopher Martin Heidegger theorized modernity as a huge system of “enframing” that reduced things to mere objects and functions available for human use. Adorno and Horkheimer revealed the “total administration” of society through instrumental reason that sought control over objects, the environment, and human individuals and populations by eliminating difference and treating everything as resources suited to manipulation and control. They witnessed how culture and the arts had been colonized by capitalist values and industrial methods, such that creative works once judged on aesthetic criteria such as originality, sublimity, and edification were assessed instead on economic grounds as commodities with potential mass appeal capable of generating enormous profits. Culture, in short, had become a culture industry, where artworks became commodities for mass production, distribution, and consumption, designed according to rationalized formulae, and administered
through a bureaucratic chain of command.

Similarly, Marcuse documented the loss of critical reason, autonomy, and individual transformation in a “one dimensional” society ruled by capital, state bureaucracy, and technoscience. This system precludes, represses, or absorbs dissent and opposition amid a monotone culture of corporatism and conformity devoid of opposition and dissent. Rather than a centralized control system dominated by corporations and the state, Foucault analyzed modernity as a plurality of micro-institutions such as hospitals, schools, and prisons. Foucault argues that capital exploitation of labor is only one aspect of power, which is far more general in its nature, strategies, and range of effects. Power should be understood not as exploitation, but as rationalization, or rather, as a series of discursive-institutional employments of rationality that seek to “normalize” and “discipline” individuals and populations through the liquidation of alterity and the production of docile minds and bodies. In works such as For a Critique of the Political Economy of the Sign (1981) and The Mirror of Production (1975), Jean Baudrillard interprets political economy as a gigantic system of bureaucratic administration of all social life, such that capitalism is less a structure in itself than an institutional instantiation of a larger rationalization process. In a notable more recent updating of a Weber-Marx synthesis, analyzing the logic and consequences of industrialization and capitalism, sociologist George Ritzer described the “McDonaldization of society.” For Ritzer, this process describes a global phenomenon in which society and culture come under the logic of mass production, standardization, mass consumption, and capital markets. As McDonaldization spreads insidiously, it dulls consciousness, destroys diversity and difference, and integrates people into the global factory system in spheres of production and consumption, work and everyday life, while spreading markets and commodification imperatives in all directions, always with the intent to amass capital and power for the minority elite.

Clearly, instrumental reason targets not only objects and things for control, but also subjects and society; and just as mechanistic science moved seamlessly from objectifying heavenly bodies to policing social bodies, so administrative rationality moved from controlling nature to manipulating society. The disciplining of bodies in eighteenth century schools, the ubiquitous gaze of guards over prisoners in nineteenth century penitentiaries, the Taylorization process in twentieth century factories that studied workers’ movements to minimize wasted energy and maximize surplus value; the eugenics discourse and mass sterilization policies in the United States during the 1920s; the networks of mass culture, electronic media, and advertising that constitute a vast “society of the spectacle” (Guy Debord) that transforms citizens from active agents to passive consumers; the colonization of minds of children, youth, and adults through a cornucopia of chemical toxins that dull, deaden, and neutralize minds through pharmaceutical warfare—these are only some of the seemingly infinite methods and techniques used to regiment populations, pacify resistance, neutralize activity, and eliminate opposition.

A Light Snuffed Out.

Despite the optimistic predictions of sundry eighteenth century Enlightenment thinkers in Germany, France, the United States, and elsewhere, the rise of science, technology, global markets, rationality, and critical thinking did not lead to universal peace, happiness, and prosperity for the world’s peoples. In the alchemy of capitalist modernity, things morph into their opposites, and thus dreams spawned nightmares, visions of light brought darkness, knowledge bred ignorance, productive forces evolved into destructive forces; competition led to monopoly; wealth produced misery; automation extended the regime of labor, and freedom multiplied domination. The unfettered development of reason, science, technology, and markets did not eliminate wars, abolish poverty, or annul want. Like “democracy” and “rights,” the discourse of “Progress”—the Gospel of Modernity—disguises private interests (the small minority who comprise the financial, political, and cultural elite) under the mask of universal discourse (e.g., “the rights of man”). “Progress” thus works to obscure unjust social relations and to legitimate science, technology, and capitalism, and thus is a mantra created by and for elites.

The underbelly of the Enlightenment and “Age of Reason” was riddled with racism, patriarchy, genocide, slavery, and colonialism, and the leaders and ambassadors of modernity had the audacity to uphold capitalism, science, and industry as a “civilization” par excellence, generating a society that allegedly transcends the legacy of “savage” and “barbaric” cultures. This “pinnacle” of human evolution, this “mature” realization of promise in relation to which non-Western and pre-modern societies were but “infants,” proved its superiority through two world wars, fascism, totalitarianism, genocide, and atomic warfare, followed by a nuclear arms race and ecological destruction on a planetary scale. In the tragic “dialectic of enlightenment,” Adorno and Horkheimer noted, reason morphed into its opposite as “catastrophe radiated over the earth.” Whereas modern theorists of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries championed the spread of reason, science, and technology as emancipatory, “postmodern” critics of the late twentieth century attacked these forces as coercive and oppressive. They rejected the naïve coupling of reason and freedom to argue that reason aided by science, technology, and capitalism produces monsters and catastrophes. Accordingly, Lyotard finds the main characteristic of the “postmodern condition” and fin-de-siècle malaise to be “incredulity toward metanarratives” (i.e., modern progressivist visions of history as a linear and purposive movement of events toward the confluence of reason and freedom.)

Habermas, however, rejects postmodern critiques themselves as totalizing, as one-sided polemics that conflate different forms of rationality into one oppressive force that allegedly has colonized all of society. For Habermas, the problem with modernity is not too much rationality, but too little. That is, whereas modernity is characterized by the hegemony of instrumental rationality which seeks a technical mastery of nature and society, the Enlightenment culture generated a communicative rationality that is concerned not with power and control but rather the logic of raising different validity claims which require redemption under conditions of argumentation while seeking consensus over important issues of government and social regulation. Whereas Habermas agrees with critical modernists and postmodernists that instrumental reason has bolstered the domination of human over nature and human over human, he insists that communicative rationality can decouple reason and domination. Thus, he believes, there are positive aspects of the Enlightenment and modern liberalism that can be redeemed and developed toward emancipatory ends. The Enlightenment, therefore, is not dead or unqualifiedly disastrous; rather, Habermas declares it and modernity as a whole to be an “unfinished project.”

Systems of Command.

After World War II, and the huge gains made by U.S. corporate and military interests, the idea of a manifold and structured power system—an industrial complex—was first articu-lated and became common vernacular. In his seminal work, The Power Elite (1956), sociologist C. Wright Mills theorized the structural outcomes arising from the mutual class interests uniting military, governmental, and business leaders within an anti-democratic oligarchy. During his January 1961 Farewell Address to the Nation, President Dwight D. Eisenhower warned of a menacing new “military-industrial complex,” a post-war power bloc composed of the armed forces, private defense contractors, weapons suppliers, the Pentagon, Congress, and the Executive Branch of government. Invoking this unholy alliance among industrialism, capitalism, and state militarism, Eisenhower cautioned that weapons and warfare had become new industries and capital markets that may boost the economy but undermine the Constitution and upset the “balance of powers” among the executive, legislative, and judicial branches of government.

But it was not only the military that had exploited science and technology, appropriated industrial models of production and organization, used bureaucratic organization techniques, and produced commodities—deadly weapons of war—for capital markets and profit motivations. As Eisenhower delivered his somber address, the foundations of the military-industrial complex were already set and began multiplying and manifesting in different institutions, disciplines, fields of research, and social institutions. The military-industrial complex was but part of a larger revolution bent on remaking American society, Western Europe, and ultimately the entire globe in its own image of power, subjugation, and profit. At the same time, its autonomy congealed within basic paradigms or structures rooted in imperatives of control, domination, efficiency, and profit within various hierarchical systems of rule. In this sense, as Noam Chomsky has described it, the military-industrial complex is “a misnomer . . . There is no military-industrial complex: it’s just the industrial system operating under one or another pretext.”

In the decades since Eisenhower’s speech, one sees in capitalist societies the fluid and dynamic merging of science, technology, mass production, capitalism, bureaucracy, and hierarchical power systems. It was not only the military that had merged with market models, industrial paradigms, systems of mass production, growth and efficiency impera-tives, and bureaucratic administration, but also every other institution of society. By the mid-twentieth century, in sectors ranging from medicine, agriculture, media, and entertainment, to security, education, criminal justice, and transportation, virtually all institutions were reconceived and reconstructed according to capitalist, industrial, and bureaucratic models suited to the aim of realizing profit, growth, efficiency, mass production, and standardization imperatives. These systems, moreover, interrelate and reinforce one another. We can see this, for instance, in how the constellation in which the academic industrial complex does research for the medical industrial complex and Big Pharma, exploiting the nonhuman animal slaves of the animal industrial complex in university, military, and private vivisection laboratories and producing fraudulent research financed by and for pharmaceutical capital. The dubiously researched drugs are patented, typically fast-tracked into market sales by the obliging Food and Drug Administration, and then advertised through the media industrial complex. Up to 115 million animals die worldwide annually to perpetuate this fraud, and the human victims of research-for-profit succumb to the medical industrial complex for costly “disease man-agement” (not “health care”) treatment that treats only symptoms to focus on the ultimate objective of profit. The dissent of animal rights activists is criminalized by the security industrial complex, and many are sent off to languish, along with one out of every one hundred adults in the U.S. population incarcerated in the prison industrial complex.

Similarly, in the fast-growing academic industrial complex, universities are no longer noble institutions of “higher education” but rather profit-seeking corporations that treat students as commodities; replace costly tenured profes-sors with the cheap labor of part-time, contract, and adjunct instructors; and emphasize the highly lucrative fields of science, engineering, and athletics, while marginalizing “non-performing” disciplines such as philosophy, sociology, and anthropology. Universities also opens their doors to the military and security industrial complexes to staff the U.S. global war machine and repres-sive state apparatus with well-trained functionaries. Meanwhile, our food system has become thoroughly industrialized and corporatized as small, family farms have been bankrupted and assimilated into the giant conglomerate holdings of agribusiness. Thus, factory farms have become the international business standard, as agribusiness giants such as Cargill and Monsanto absorb remaining tradi-tional farms into their global networks by coercive attempts to impose seeds, pesticides and herbicides, and service technologies they patent and own, and taking advantage of “genetic pollution” on neighboring farms to sue, destroy, and control their land as well. But to announce the role of these multinational companies in determining the shape and nature of our lives is to recognize that the capitalist-industrial complex has become global, diversi-fied, interconnected and networked.

The Dialectic of Globalization.

In a classic work, Karl Polyani (1957) described the “great transformation” from prein-dustrial to industrial society. With Douglas Kellner, I attempted previously to theorize the transformation of twenty-first century global industrial society—the postmodern adventure (which designated dramatic changes in the economy and society, but also in science, technology, politics, culture, nature, and human identity itself). (...)

The termination of the Bretton Woods financial system and the collapse of the Soviet Union followed in the wake of centuries of capital-driven globalization. Neoliberal capitalism has become the new paradigm of permanent growth. The implications of the neoliberal stage of capitalist marketization are enormous, as capitalism universalizes its rule, throws off “superfluous” and “injurious” constraints on “free trade,” and increasingly realizes the goal of purity of function and purpose through the autonomization of the economy from society, so that the social is the economic. Over the last few decades, Takis Fotopoulos notes, “A neoliberal consensus has swept over the advanced capitalist world and has replaced the social-democratic consensus of the early post-war period.”

Not only have “existing socialist societies” been negated in the global triumph of capita-lism, so too have social democracies and the bulk of institutional networks designed to protect individuals from the ravages of privatization and the relinquishment of responsi-bilities to people in need to case them into barbaric barrenness of the “survival-of-the-fittest.” Over the last several decades, the capitalist production process itself has become increasingly transnationalized and thereby relatively autonomous (but not in total negation) of the archipelago of nation-states in favor of global institutions and power blocs of unprecedented influence and might. We have moved from a world economy to a new epoch known as the global economy. Whereas formerly the world economy was composed of the development of national economies and state-based circuits of accumulation interlinked through commodity trade and capital flows in differentiated world markets, today corporations and national production systems are reorganized and functionally integrated into porous global circuits, creating a single and increasingly homogenous field for massive and mobile capitalism.

Fuelled by new forms of science and technology, military expansion, and aggressive colonization of southern nations and the developing world, capitalism evolved into a truly global system. Global capital is inspired by neoliberal visions of nations as resource pools and open markets operating without restrictions. The process euphemistically termed “globalization” is driven by multinational corporations such as ExxonMobil and DuPont; financed by financial goliaths such as the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF), and legally protected by the World Trade Organization (WTO). It homogenizes nations into a single economic organism and trading bloc through arrangements such as the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), the Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA), and the European Union (EU). Multinationals seduce, bribe, and coerce nations to open their markets and help drive down labor costs to a bare minimum, and rely heavily on corrupt dictators, loans and debt, and “hit men” and armies to enforce the rule of their “structural transformations” of societies into conduits for the flow of resources and capital. Globalization has produced trade laws that protect transnational corporations at the expense of human life, biodiversity, and the environ-ment. It is accompanied by computerization of all facets of production and expanding automation, generating heightened exploitation of labor, corporate downsizing, and greater levels of unemployment, inequality, insecurity, and violence

Debates rage over issues such as when globalization dynamics began and if current ones are continuous developments of centuries of global markets and exchange or something qualitatively new; whether corporate globalization is mainly a positive or negative dynamic; the degree to which globalization is largely under the command of U.S. capital and military interests or more diverse and plural powers; whether the United States is a declining empire and a power shift is underway from American-European capital to the rapidly modernizing and growing economies of the East (China and India) and the South (Latin America); the extent to which the nation state is still a significant force amidst the growing power of international corporate and financial networks; whether or not industrial logics such as standardization have been displaced by postindustrial developments (such as are organized more around communications, science, knowledge, and service industries than traditional manufacturing operations) and post-Fordist “flexible” production schemes, and so on. While a vast literature explains recent epochal shifts in terms like postindustrialism, post-Fordism, or postmodernity, we grasp numerous novelties but nevertheless insist that significant changes and reorganization in technology, organization, culture, and capital are best understood not as something qualitatively different, but rather as new stages in capitalism still dominated by profit and growth imperatives. And as theorists such as Claus Offe, John Keene, Scott Lash, and John Urry describe the restructuring process as “disorganized capitalism,” we see this as a complex form of the reorganization of capitalism, constituting a new mode of economic and social organization with momentous consequences.

There has been less realization, however, that structures of power are multiple, plural, and decentralized, and that we live amidst a tangled matrix of systems anchored in logics of control, standardization, exploitation, and profit. Taken together, this “power complex” continues to expand throughout the globe and to grow new tentacles, each system or network overlapping with and reinforcing others, and the totality integrating nature, animals, and human beings ever deeper into a veritable global industrial complex. The expansive, colonizing, interconnected network is comprised of numerous industry-capital specific systems such as the criminal industrial complex, the agricultural industrial complex, the medical industrial complex, the animal industrial complex, the academic industrial complex, the military industrial complex, the prison industrial complex, the entertainment industrial complex, and the communication industrial complex, to name some of the more salient configurations.

the powerful logics of industrialization and capitalism, symbiotically interlocked at least since the nineteenth century, have expanded, diversified, and colonized ever more institutions and organizing systems, and expanded into a world system. In any one institutional node of this protean and rhizomatic network, one can find logics, functions, and procedures that include commodification, profit-seeking, corporatization, and privatization; hierarchical command and bureaucratic administration; exploitation of technoscience and expertise; electronic information networks and profit-making goals; and structures of state and military repression, coercive violence, and prison to enforce institutional power.

By no means is globalization to be understood as an inherently negative dynamic or consequence of human history, as if the desideratum is fragmentation, isolation, provincialism, and nationalism. Ever since Homo sapiens migrated out of Africa and dispersed itself globally across the continents, human existence has been a global dynamic and knowledge, culture, and technologies have spread in all directions, such as with the influence of Islam on the West. Certainly, from the standpoint of the natural environment and the countless animal species driven into extinction, the rapid global growth of human populations, technologies, and economies has not been a positive development. But dissemination of knowledge, culture, and people is a positive and enriching process; indeed, it is now urgent that the paradigm shift from economics and growth to ecology and sustainability take root on a global scale. A salient distinction to be made here is between globalization from above (as dictated by multinational capital) and globalization from below (as realized in self-organizing and democratic ways by people in cul-tural exchange and open movement). And just as we reject the false option of seeing power as either macrological or micrological, recognizing both that power, resources, and wealth are concentrated like never before and yet distributed throughout societies in a wide range of institutions, none of which are reducible to ruling elites or a dominant class, so we reject framing the issue as Marx or Weber, in favor of Marx and Weber, while affirming the need for a host of other fruitful perspectives, such as the standpoints of gender, race, and species.

Moreover, it would be a serious mistake to think that the octopus of interlocked power networks covering the globe does not generate appropriate responses and relevant modes of resistance and struggle. Through even perfunctory perusal of sites such as Indymedia, Infoshop, 325nostate.net, Guerilla News, and Bite Back, one can see that resistance is intense, global, and total, against every system of hierarchy ever devised, giving rise to diverse and vital struggles for human, animal, and earth liberation. As dramatically evident in battles such as raged in Madrid in 1994, in Seattle in 1999, and in Genoa in 2001, “anti-” or, more accurately, “alter-globalization” groups throughout the world recognized their common interests and fates, and formed unprecedented kinds of alliances to fight against the globalization of capital. Global capitalism has emerged as the common enemy recognized by world groups and peoples, and resistance movements have come together in alliances that bridge national boundaries, North-South divisions, and different political causes.

Yet struggles have not kept pace with the scope and speed of planetary plunder; resistance movements are winning some battles, but losing the larger war against greed, violence, expanding corporate power, militarization, and against metastasizing systems of economic growth, technological development, overproduction, overconsumption, and overpopu-lation. The deterioration of society and nature demands a profound, systematic, and radical political response, yet in recent decades Left opposition movements have tended to become more reformist and co-opted on the whole, growing weaker in proportion to their strategic importance and the power of global capital. As the world spirals ever deeper into disaster, with all things becoming ever more tightly knit into the tentacles of global capitalism, there is an urgent need for new conceptual and political maps and compasses to help steer humanity into a viable mode of existence.

(..) It bears repeating that the forces of death, destruction, and domination today are not only capitalism, transnational corporations, and the banking and finance institutions, but are also states, militaries, bureaucracies, and sundry systems of control that aim to colonize and control nature, animals, and human populations. Additionally, the underlying mentalities of hierarchy and instrumentalism that have driven Western culture and beyond for over two millennia remain instantiated in the global consciousness. As such, they shape not only the materially systemic forms that domination now takes, but also present limiting factors for the planetary realization of liberation struggles.

If every moment is pregnant with revolution, this is an especially pivotal time in history, a crossroads for the future of life. As the social and ecological crisis deepens, with capitalism surging, inequalities growing, control systems tightening, forests disappearing, species vanishing, oceans dying, resources diminishing, and the catastrophic effects of global climate change now immanent and irreversible, windows of reasonable political opportunity for the production of an alternative social order are rapidly closing. The actions that humanity now collectively takes or fails to take will determine whether the future is more hopeful or altogether bleak.

As the corporate machines continue to slash and burn the planet, inequalities widen and power grows, logics of profit and control spread through social institutions, human numbers and the insatiable appetites of the global consumer society swell as the biodiversity of flora and fauna steeply declines, it is easy to become not only cautious or pessimistic about the prospects for planetary peace and freedom, but fatalistic and nihilistic. In the schools and social movement discourse, we are beginning to hear from some who appear resigned to the catastrophe playing out on this planet. Others, however, remain oblivious to this incredible moment in time and the epic tragedy of resigning humanity’s fate to be a failed primate species because of its inability to harness the evolutionary advantages of a large forebrain or overcome its predilection to tribalism, xenophobia, hubris, hierarchy, violence, alienation from nature and other life forms, and uncontrolled growth.

Surrender, however, is not an option. Our debt to the past and present is great, and we have no choice but to live in the tension that pits hopes and ideals against grim realities and unprecedented challenges. As Italian theorist Antonio Gramsci wrote, “The challenge of modernity is to live without illusions and without becoming disillusioned.” But every crisis harbors opportunities for profound change, and the “grow or die” imperative that ought to shape our priorities is not capitalist in nature, but rather evokes the need for moral, psychological, and social evolution, to be realized in radically new forms of consciousness, species identities, ethics, values, social arrangements, and lifeways. There is no swift economic or technological fix for the myriad complex crises we confront. The only solution lies in organizing informed radical change across all levels of the integrated systems of domination—commencing with an emancipatory education into and critical understanding of the precise nature and dynamics of the systematic barriers blocking our journey into sustainable planetary community. Let us hope that this long march through the institutions does not further transform into a trail of tears.

mandag den 12. august 2013

Et frigjort samfund består af frigjorte individer.


Som en orienterende generalisering kunne man sige, at den politiske filosofi siden oplysningstiden har været (over)fokuseret på kollektiv emancipation. Hvem der indgår i det kollektiv man ønsker at frigøre varierer godt nok, men fokuset er altså ikke desto mindre først og fremmest på kollektiv emancipation. Lidt firkantet kunne man sige, at den klassiske liberalisme havde en kollektiv emancipation af borgerskabet som dens mål, mens socialismen har en kollektiv emancipation af arbejderklassen som sit mål. Det er imidlertid problematisk udelukkende at have sit fokus på kollektiv emancipation, for et samfund består selvsagt ikke blot af forbindelser imellem individer (heriblandt de strukturer som individerne er underlagt), men selvfølgelig også af de individer der er forbindelser imellem.

Spidsformuleret kunne man sige, at et strukturelt emanciperet samfund ikke er til megen nytte, såfremt det består af traumatiserede neurotikere med misbrugsproblemer. Et velfungerende emanciperet kollektiv kan altså med andre ord næppe bestå eller udvikles kontinuerligt, hvis det udgøres af dysfunktionelle individer, hvorfor kollektivet bør bestræbe sig på, at bruge ressourcer på at frigøre såvel den enkelte som helheden. Det psykopatologiske individ der ikke kan overskride sin egocentrisme vil således snarere være en byrde for den demokratiske udvikling af et samfund, end en force, idet selvoverskridelse og selvbeherskelse er nødvendige forudsætninger for at en egalitær og libertær samfundsorden kan komme på benene og ikke mindst bestå. En helhedsorienteret libertær praksis er derfor nødt til både at beskæftige sig med de individuelle og kollektive facetter af emancipationen.

Et eksempel kunne være en konsensusdemokratisk beslutning. For at kunne få en sådan til at fungere er det nødvendigt, at de implicerede er i stand til at indgå kompromisser og tilsidesætte egne viljer og ønsker for at få tingene til at køre. Konsekvensen kan ellers blive træghed og ubeslutsomhed, i en proces som trækker tænder ud, idet den kan forekomme ikke at være stort andet end et langstrakt og perspektivløst skænderi. Konsensusbeslutninger er derfor heller ikke noget man bør bestræbe sig på af princip, for de kan være meget svære at opnå - især jo større mængden af individer som skal indgå i konsensusbeslutningen er - såfremt blot nogle få forventer altid at få deres stemme hørt og deres vilje sat igennem. Alle kan ikke få ret hele tiden. Det egocentriske individ vil i en demokratisk sammenhæng spørge “hvad synes jeg er bedst for mig og hvordan opnår jeg det?” og vil således kunne bremse for den demokratiske proces, udelukkende fordi vedkommende ikke er i stand til at se hinsides egen næsetip, mens det egentligt demokratiske og derfor gruppeorienterede individ vil spørge “hvad synes vi er bedst for os og hvordan opnår vi det bedst sammen?”.

Ser man det som undertrykkelse, at man ikke altid får sin stemme hørt, er man egocentriker snarere end gruppeorienteret. Det er barnets logik, ikke den voksnes. Det er ikke dine små individuelle interesser der er væsentlige, men vores interesser og hvordan vi bedst plejer dem sammen. Hvis du insisterer på altid at blive hørt, altid at udvirke indflydelse på en beslutning, altid på at få noget at skulle have sagt, så evner du ikke at overskride dig selv og din overdrevne fokus på dig selv vil være det egentligt repressive i sammenhængen. Det er ikke undertykkelse at blive nedstemt i en beslutningstagningsproces, man frivilligt befinder dig i. Det er den pris man må betale, hvis tingene skal fungere og beslutninger skal træffes. Alle vil aldrig være lige glade for alle beslutninger der træffes, men det bør man heller ikke forvente. Såfremt man føler, at der ingen lydhørhed er for de idéer og holdninger man bringer til bordet og sjældent er tilfreds med de beslutninger der træffes, bør man imidlertid nok spørge sig selv om man har lyst til at bruge mere af sin tid i det pågældende fællesskab. Grundlaget for et velfungerende demokratisk fællesskab er nemlig altid frivillighed, og man skal selvfølgelig være fri til at indgå i andre associationer med andre mennesker, under andre forhold, såfremt det passer een bedre.

Det egocentriske individ befinder sig i et mentalt og emotionelt fangenskab. Det er så at sige fængslet i dets eget hoved, følelsesliv og perspektiv. Det evner ikke at drage omsorg for andre, og som oftest ikke engang for sig selv. Det fuldstændig egocentriske menneske er godt nok en patologisk sjældenhed, for de fleste udvikler heldigvis (i det mindste en grad) af empati og kan drage omsorg for andre end dem selv, men vi har alle tendensen til selvretfærdighed og egoisme i os, hvorfor vi er nødt til at se på den indre repression i os selv, samtidig med at vi fokusere på den udefrakommende repression som forvoldes af andre. Vi er altså nødsaget til at arbejde med os selv og være os bevidste om vore skyggesider, hvis vi skal gøre os forhåbninger om at kunne opretholde emanciperede fællesskaber. Det er så den individuelle side af sagen. Den kollektive side af sagen er, at der ikke blot gøres plads til den enkeltes emancipation, men at den ligefrem tilskyndes. Det frie samfund er således omsorgsfuldt og omfavnende, men aldrig omklamrende. Fællesskabet vil derfor til envher tid bestræbe sig på at skabe institutioner som fodrer den enkeltes udvikling. Institutioner hvori den enkelte oplever og derfor lærer værdien af både frihed og demokratisk samarbejde allerede fra barnsben. Der bør derfor være fokus på at skabe, eller måske snarere generindre, en frigørelsens pædagogik og dernæst på at etablere institutioner hvori en sådan praktiseres. Det vil jeg derfor skrive om i et senere blogindlæg.



fredag den 9. august 2013

Dagens citat: Keith Thomas Lohse.


"....Når der f.eks tales om vores krigsdeltagelse, er der glatte, vandkæmmede, som oftest unge eller yngre "eksperter" i studiet. IKKE, eller meget sjældent, forældre til faldne eller soldater med erfaring fra diverse kamppladser. Når der tales økonomi, er det altid velklædte, veluddannede, veltalende knivskarpe jakkesæt, som HAR mælk og rugbrød og penge nok til endnu mere mælk og rugbrød, der udtaler sig i eksperternes sted. Det er konstant som at betragte sjælløse robotter tale om deres egne gigabytes eller foretrukne maskinolie: ingen indlevelse, ikke én sveddråbe på "ekspertens" pande og absolut ingen menneskelig indignation. Bare fravær. Fravær og mekanisk upersonlig afliring af behageligt velkendte "kendsgerninger". Som en slags kontrolleret udgave af Fluernes Herre, bare i flottere tøj og med de veltrænede røvbalder i designermøbler nu:

barnemennesker med barneholdninger der bestemmer hvad "tegnene" betyder, for alle de mange frygtsomme, mindre heldige børn, der aldrig kommer til, eller som har alt for travlt med at bore fingerneglene ned i afgrundens kant, til at kunne koncentrere sig om HVAD der egentlig sniksnakkes om, inde i skærmens flimrende flimmer. Og imens brænder hele verden naturligvis til slagger allevegne. 

Hvor er vores indignerede debattører på TV? Vores bekymrede, vrede politikere? Vores eksperter - som står ved deres rådvildhed og ikke bare kolporterer illusionen om ET eller andet jakkesæts tankesæts snarlige overhøjhed? Hvor fanden er MENNESKELIGHEDEN? Hvor er tvivl, ærlighed og det vi med et lidt fortærsket ord kan kalde ægthed? Hvor er originalerne, fritænkerne, fuckfingrene, de som ikke bare bringer flere ens, fabrikfremstillede  trækul til kedsommelighedens sløvt osende Webergrill?

(...) Det vi har fået, i det moderne runestens-landskab, er fuldkommen ens studieværter der taler med fuldkommen ens gæster, om fuldstændig det samme. Og bevares, de SER behagelige ud, de er som regel også behagelige at høre på - fordi de aldrig siger noget som ikke er selvindføjet og vi derfor altid falder fra, efter nogle sekunder. Altid, alle steder. Og det, synes jeg, er en utilgivelig svaghed i såvel det primitive som det såkaldt ædle samfund. Det er naturligvis også én af hovedårsagerne til den allestedsnærværende apati og opgivenhed. Danmark er blevet en bager med tretusinde slags fuldstændigt ens kager og millionvis af ligeglade, apatiske kunder, der bare shopper fra vugge til grav, med krummer i mundvigene og glasagtige, ligeglade øjne.  


Det er en ny tids skoledukse der styrer på alle fronter, ulidenskabelige omega-hanner og hunner, der burde prøve noget LSD og lidt analsex. Og måske at være hjemløse et par måneder. Vores politikere har aldrig arbejdet, de har aldrig sultet eller frygtet for næste måneds husleje. Vores "eksperter" - uanset indenfor HVAD - har aldrig strejfet væk fra den slagne vej, de har tilsyneladende aldrig deltaget i NOGET som helst, der ikke bekræftede de vinkler og holdninger de allerede havde i forvejen - og de fleste af dem, kommer de samme 2-3 steder fra og har (tilsyneladende) også samme skrædder. Vi har fået en ny adel, et velklædt normativt demokratur, bestående af upassionerede levebrøds-eksperter, hvis eneste raison d'etre tilsyneladende er dette: at opretholde et stadigt, maskinelt flow af endnu mere levebrød, ind i de glat snurrende maskiner de selv og deres holdninger er."

- Keith Thomas Lohse aka. Mit Navn Er Keith: Fugl Føtex.

torsdag den 25. juli 2013

De historieløse politikeres håbløse ørkenkrig.


Det var en ikke blot en mindre fejltagelse at sende danske soldater ind i Afghanistan. Det var en historisk hovedløs forsvarspolitisk beslutning, som har kostet dusinvis af danske soldaters liv og milliarder af danske kroner. Penge, som eksempelvis kunne have været brugt på at lave hospitaler og skoler i andre tredjeverdenslande, som befinder sig i fredstid.

Samtidig må en udtalt historieløshed præge de krigspositive politikere, for er den fortsat igangværende krig virkelig en ædel kamp imod religiøse mørkemænd? Selv hvis vi - for argumentets skyld - tager den officielle krigsbegrundelse for gode varer, så kan krigen højst opfattes som et omfattende oprydningsarbejde efter Reagans udenrigspolitiske parløb med fundamentalisten og ekspræsidenten af Pakistan Muhammed Zia ul-Haq, idet man med saudiarabiske midler i 1980’erne byggede islamistiske koranskoler i stor stil langs den pakistansk-afghanske grænse og sendte mange tusinde hellige krigere ind i Afghanistan for at bekæmpe den sovjetiske tilstedeværelse i landet. Efterfølgende så man den anden vej, mens både etableringen af al-Qaeda fandt sted, og grundlaget for det Taliban-styrede Afghanistan blev lagt. Den islamistiske radikalisering af såvel Pakistan som Afghanistan kan således let vurderes at være en utilsigtet konsekvens af en særdeles aggressiv koldkrigspolitik, men denne betydningsfulde nøgle til forståelse af konfliktens historik undlader bannerførerne for den aktivistiske udenrigspolitik i reglen at komme ind på. Derfor foranlediges man let til at stille spørgsmålet: Har de danske krigspositive politikere virkelig en så snæver historisk horisont, at de ikke engang evner at analysere blot få årtier tilbage?

Ser vi nærmere på krigens begyndelse, bliver det endvidere hurtigt krystalklart, at de vestlige krigsmagter ikke har rent mel i posen. Krigen påbegyndtes allerede lidt over en måned efter angrebet på tvillingetårnene d. 11. september. Et angreb, der ifølge den officielle forklaring primært blev begået af folk med saudiarabiske pas, som havde forberedt angrebet i Tyskland, hvorfor det altså ikke blev udført af hverken folk med afghansk baggrund eller forberedt på afghansk jord. Washington forlangte efterfølgende udlevering af Osama bin Laden, hvilket man nægtede fra afghansk side, såfremt der ikke blev leveret konkrete beviser på bin Ladens medskyldighed. Et ganske legitimt krav, burde man mene. Sådanne beviser blev så vidt vides aldrig leveret, og krigen blev kort efter påbegyndt, uden at der forelå autorisation hertil fra FNs Sikkerhedsråd, hvilket teoretisk set betyder, at krigen blev påbegyndt i uoverensstemmelse med folkerettens forskrifter. Den var med andre ord, ligesom Irak-krigen, i strid med flere internationale konventioner, som Danmark har underskrevet og dermed lovet at holde i hævd. I det mindste til at begynde med. FN-sanktioneringen af krigen kom nemlig først senere og altså derfor retroaktivt, hvilket i sig selv er interessant.

Vi kæmpede den gode krig på de godes side, forsikrer politikerne os, men krigen har gennem størstedelen af dens tid været logistisk muliggjort af Usbekistan, et af verdens mest korrupte og brutale diktaturer, og økonomisk af Folkerepublikken Kina, et andet af verden mest repressive regimer, da den amerikanske del i krigen finansieres gennem gældsstiftelse til blandt andre Kina. Endvidere er det meget svært at sluge for folk, der har ulejliget sig med at læse op på den amerikanske udenrigspolitiks historie, at vores soldater skulle kæmpe blandt de noble og moralsk ophøjede. Det er der ganske enkelt ikke noget grundlag for at vurdere, såfremt man, ulig politikerne i det danske Folketing, besidder blot en smule historisk bevidsthed om den amerikanske udenrigspolitik siden anden verdenskrig og især siden krigen i Vietnam. Det bliver ikke lettere at sluge denne underliggende påstand, når man tager med i betragtningen, at vi, blot to år efter krigens påbegyndelse, blev løjet med ind i en anden ørkenkrig, der som bekendt baserede sig på til lejligheden fabrikerede “beviser”. Næppe ligefrem noget man ville forvente af de noble og moralsk ophøjede.

Tilbage står, at vi i tolv år har været i krig med afghanske stammekrigere, som aldrig har udgjort nogen trussel mod dansk territorium, hvorfor det vi nysprogligt kalder forsvarspolitik vanskeligt kan tolkes som andet end en udbredt vilje til at bakke fuldstændig ukritisk op om den amerikanske dominanspolitik. Selvom det er velkendt, at amerikanerne benytter sig af tortur, fortsat støtter repressive regimer verden over og har været i nærmest konstant krig de seneste 65 år, og selvom det nu også blevet kendt, at den amerikanske stat udspionerer os, støtter politikerne dem fortsat ubetinget, hvilket både er ganske sigende og foruroligende.

Den aktivistiske udenrigspolitik har været alt andet end en succes. Afghanistan er langt fra aftalebaniseret og er igen centrum for verdens opiumsproduktion. Irak er stadig nedsunket i kaos ovenpå angrebskrigen mod landet, og Libyen-interventionen skabte ikke et demokratisk paradis på jord men blev i stedet kilden til den nuværende konflikt i Mali. Alligevel er man mere end villig til at drage i krig igen, så snart Washingtons diktat lyder. Det burde vække større forundring, skepsis og kritik, for for blot få årtier siden var det modsatte tilfældet.



tirsdag den 9. juli 2013

Cybersemiotics.

The following passage is taken from the abstract of a new paper by the Danish philosopher Søren Brier entitled "Cybersemiotics: A New Foundation for Transdisciplinary Theory of Information, Cognition, Meaningful Communication and the Interaction Between Nature and Culture"

"Cybersemiotics constructs a non-reductionist framework in order to integrate third person knowledge from the exact sciences and the life sciences with first person knowledge described as the qualities of feeling in humanities and second person intersubjective knowledge of the partly linguistic communicative interactions, on which the social and cultural aspects of reality are based. The modern view of the universe as made through evolution in irreversible time, forces us to view man as a product of evolution and therefore an observer from inside the universe. This changes the way we conceptualize the problem and the role of consciousness in nature and culture. The theory of evolution forces us to conceive the natural and social sciences as well as the humanities together in one theoretical framework of unrestricted or absolute naturalism, where consciousness as well as culture is part of nature. But the theories of the phenomenological life world and the hermeneutics of the meaning of communication seem to defy classical scientific explanations. The humanities therefore send another insight the opposite way down the evolutionary ladder, with questions like: What is the role of consciousness, signs and meaning in the development of our knowledge about evolution? Phenomenology and hermeneutics show the sciences that their prerequisites are embodied living conscious beings imbued with meaningful language and with a culture. One can see the world view that emerges from the work of the sciences as a reconstruction back into time of our present ecological and evolutionary self-understanding as semiotic intersubjective conscious cultural and historical creatures, but unable to handle the aspects of meaning and conscious awareness and therefore leaving it out of the story. Cybersemiotics proposes to solve the dualistic paradox by starting in the  middle with semiotic cognition and communication as a basic sort of reality in which all our knowledge is created and then suggests that knowledge develops into four aspects of human reality: Our surrounding nature described by the physical and chemical natural sciences, our corporality described by the life sciences such as biology and medicine, our inner world of subjective experience described by phenomenologically based investigations and our social world described by the social sciences. I call this alternative model to the positivistic hierarchy the cybersemiotic star. The article explains the new understanding of Wissenschaft that emerges from Peirce’s and Luhmann’s conceptions"