From the monthly archives: December 2010
“Too much” (therefore superficial and mechanical) political realism often leads to the assertion that a statesman should only work within the limits of “effective reality”; that he should not interest himself in what “ought to be” but only in what “is”. This would mean that he should not look farther than the end of his own nose… But Machiavelli is not merely a scientist: he is a partisan, a man of powerful passions, an active politician, who wishes to create a new balance of forces and therefore cannot help concerning himself with what “ought to be” (not of course in a moralistic sense). Hence the question cannot be posed in these terms, it is more complex. It is one, that is to say, of seeing whether what “ought to be” is arbitrary or necessary;
whether it is concrete will on the one hand or idle fancy, yearning, daydream on the other. The active politician is a creator, an initiator; but he neither creates from nothing nor does he move in the turbid void of his own desires and dreams. He bases himself on effective reality, but what is this effective reality? Is it something static and immobile, or is it not rather a relation of forces in continuous motion and shift of equilibrium? If one applies one’s will to the creation of a new equilibrium among the forces which really exist and are operative—basing oneself on the particular force which one believes to be progressive and strengthening it to help it to victory—one still moves on the terrain of effective reality, but does so in order to dominate and transcend it (or to contribute to this). What “ought to be” is therefore concrete; indeed it is the only realistic and historicist interpretation of reality, it alone is history in the making and philosophy in the making, it alone is politics.” – Antonio Gramsci, The Modern Prince
Gramsci’s Selections from the Prison Notebooks can be downloaded from Diary of a Walking Butterfly HERE for educational purposes.
For those interested in reading Gramsci’s Prison Notebooks, note that Joseph Buttigieg’s translation of Volumes 1-3, Notebooks 1-8 of 30, of Gramsci’s Prison Notebooks were just released in a 3-volume paperback set. You can buy it through Amazon.com for $60 (down from $60 per volume for the hardcover copies). Socialists everywhere should read Antonio Gramsci!
With the warmest regard for the labour, courage, and memory of Tatiana Schucht, Gramsci’s sister-in-law, without whose efforts to preserve Gramsci’s Prison Notebooks past both Mussolini and Stalin’s censors, at great threat to herself, we would have lost a great communist corpus.
From 26 June 2009
.
“Fill your desire for something long, juicy…”
Burger King has really outdone themselves this time. The print advertisement for their new “Super Seven Incher” sandwich features an wide-eyed, blonde-haired, pale-skin, red lip-sticked, blushing woman with her mouth open, about to have Burger King’s Super Seven Incher put in her mouth. The text below? “It’ll Blow Your Mind Away”. Apparently subtlety is lost on them. But perhaps we can learn from this. Countless ads verge on being this explicit, but are masked in “subtlety” which allows the silence of critique. These ads on the other hand, leave no room for dispute.
This ad could be used as an incredibly powerful teaching tool when discussing gender equality with people convinced that women’s oppression is “over”. It’s become increasingly clear, from the assassination of Dr. George Tiller (the women’s healthcare provider in Wichita, Kansas), to the rampage at the U.S. Holocaust Museum, to the murder of a nine year-old Latina girl and her father by Minutemen terrorists, to the recent post-election surge in gun purchases, that the seeds of a very strong far-right-wing revival are underway. In its sights: gains made around women’s rights, rights and services for oppressed people, especially people of color, immigrants, and working people, and consciousness shifts around LGBT rights.
Editor: While I have some political differences with this piece, its one of my favorite pieces by Dellinger. Its incredibly powerful and I definitely recommend reading it. (Its not too long either). As reprinted in Dave Dellinger’s autobiography, From Yale to Jail: The Life of a Moral Dissenter, the editorial, titled “Declaration of War,” written in 1945 after the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and the fire bombing of Tokyo and other Japanese cities, reads:
—
“The atom bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki destroyed whatever claims the United States may have had to being either “democratic” or a “peace-loving” nation. Without any semblance of a democratic decision—without even advance notice of what was taking place—the American people waked up one morning to discover that the United States government had committed one of the worst atrocities in history.
Hiroshima and Nagasaki were atomized at a time when the Japanese were suing desperately for peace. The American leaders were acting with almost inconceivable treachery by denying that they had received requests for peace, rumors ofwhich had been trickling through censorship for months.
The atom bombs were exploded on congested cities filled with civilians. There was not even the slightest military justification, because the military outcome of the war had been decided months earlier. The only reason that the fighting was still going on was the refusal of American authorities to discontinue a war which postponed the inevitable economic collapse at home,* and was profitable to their pocketbooks, their military and political prestige, their race hatred, and their desires for imperialist expansion.
The “way of life” that destroyed Hiroshima and Nagasaki (and is reported to have roasted alive up to a million people in Tokyo in a single night) is international and dominates every nation of the world. But we live in the United States, so our struggle is here. With this “way of life” (”death” would be more appropriate) there can be no truce nor quarter. The prejudices of patriotism, the pressures of our friends, and the fear of unpopularity, imprisonment or death should not hold us back any longer. It must be total war against the infamous economic, political and social system which is dominant in this country. The American system has been destroying human life in peace and in war, at home and abroad, for decades. Now it has produced the crowning infamy of atom bombing. Besides these brutal facts, the tidbits of democracy mean nothing. Henceforth, no decent citizen owes one scrap of allegiance (if he ever did) to American law, American custom or American institutions.
There is a tendency to think that the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki was an excess that can be attributed to a few militarists and politicians at the top. That is the easy way out. It enables us to express our horror at the more obvious atrocities of our civilization while remaining “respectable” supporters of the institutions which make them inevitable. But obliteration bombing by blockbusters, incendiaries and atom bombs was a logical part of the brutal warfare that had been carried on for nearly four years with the patriotic support of American political, religious, scientific, business and labor institutions. The sudden murder of 300,000 Japanese is consistent with the ethics of a society which is bringing up millionsof its own children in city slums. The lives of 300,000 “enemies” are distant and theoretical to business and labor leaders who find excuses for enjoying $15,000 incomes (and $150,000 incomes) while hiring workers for less than $1,500. Workers who passively accept starvation wages, periodic employment and relief checks, at the order of private owners and civic authorities, will also accept orders to put on a uniform and mutilate their fellow men.
No, the evil of our civilization cannot be combated by campaigns which oppose militarism and conscription but leave the American economic and social system intact. The fight against military conscription cannot be separated from the fight against the economic conscription involved in private ownership of the country’s factories, railroads and natural resources. The fight against the swift destruction of human life which takes place in modern warfare cannot be separated from the slow debilitation of the human personality which takes place in the families of the rich, the unemployed and the poor. The enemy is every institution which denies full social and economic equality to anyone. The enemy is personal indifference to the consequences of acts performed by the institutions of which we are a part.
There is no solution short of all-out war. But there must be one major difference between our war and the war that has just ended. The war against the Axis was fought as a military campaign against people, with the destructive fury, violent hatred regimentation and dishonesty of military warfare. The combatants were conscripts rather than free men. Every day that war went on they were compelled to act in contradiction to the ideals which motivated many of them. Therefore, “victory” was predestined to be a hollow farce, putting an end to killing that never should have been begun, but entrenching white imperialism as the tyrant of the Pacific, and contributing unemployment, slums, and the class hatred to the United States. The American people won half the world and lost their souls.
The war for total brotherhood must be a nonviolent war carried out by methods worthy of the ideals we seek to serve. The acts we perform must be the responsible acts of free men, not the irresponsible acts of conscripts under orders. We must fight against institutions but not against people.
There must be strikes, sabotage and seizure of public property now being held by private owners. There must be civil disobedience of laws which are contrary to human welfare. But there must be also an uncompromising practice of treating everyone, including the worst of our opponents, with all the respect and decency that he merits as a fellow human being. We can expect to face tear gas, clubs and bullets. But we must refuse to hate, punish or kill in return. We must respect the owners, policemen, conservatives and strike-breakers for what they are—potentially decent people who have been conditioned by a sick society into playing anti-social roles, the basic inhumanity of which they do not understand.
This is a diseased world in which it is impossible for anyone to be fully human. One way or another, everyone who lives in the modern world is sick or maladjusted. Slick businessmen and bosses, parasitical coupon clippers, socially blind lawyers, scientists and clergymen are as much victims of “a world they never made” as are the rough and irresponsible elements of America’s great slums. The only way we can begin to break the vicious cycle of blindness, hatred and inequality is to combine an uncompromising war upon evil institutions with an unbending kindness and love of every individual—including the individuals who defend existing institutions.
This is total war. But it is a war in which our allegiance transcends nationalities and classes. Every act we perform today must reflect the kind of human relationships we are fighting to establish tomorrow.
*I was wrong on this one. The collapse didn’t come until much later than I had anticipated. “
by Ernst Bloch
“Mildness and “The Light of His Fury” (William Blake)” from Atheism in Christianity (1972).
“Some men are born lambs… to them Jesus did not preach with the power the Scripture speaks of. And least of all is he himself the mild figure some meek spirits make out. The future the wolves have dressed for the sheep, so that their wolfishness may become twofold. The pseudo-shepherd is portrayed as so quiet, so infinitely patient, that one might think he really was like that. The founder figure must have been free from passions . . . Yet Jesus had one of the strongest passions there are: anger. He overthrew the tables of the money-changers in the Temple, and did not forget to use a whip. He is only patient in the affairs of his own quiet circle; he shows no love at all for its enemies. So far as the Sermon on the Mount is concerned it does not, it is true, speak of one man being set against another for the love of Christ, as do some zealous words (Matt. 10. 35 f.); but then it is not a sermon about days of battle at all. With its blessing on the meek and the peacemakers, it is concerned with the last days: with the End, which Jesus (according to the Mandaean John) thought close at hand. Hence its immediate, chiliastic references to the Kingdom of Heaven (Matt. 5. 3). There is quite a different message for the battle, for the achievement of the Kingdom: “I have not come to bring peace, but a sword” (Matt. 10. 34); or, in more outward-looking, outward-burning terms: “I came to cast fire upon the earth; and would that it were already kindled!” (Lk. 12. 49). Which is exactly what William Blake meant by his corollary in verse, applicable to 1789, “The spirit of turmoil shot down from the Saviour/ And in the vineyards of red France appear’d the light of his fury.”
“The sword in Jesus, preaching, and the fire which purifies as well as destroys, are certainly directed at more than mere palaces: they apply to the whole of the old aeon, which must pass away. But at the lead of the list stand the enemies of those who labor and are heavy laden: the rich, for whom it is more difficult to enter the Kingdom of Heaven than it is (with all the irony of the impossible) for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle. The Church has widened that aperture considerably since, and her Jesus has of course now left the focal point of mutiny. Mildness – to the unjust, that is – has come up trumps, not Jesus’ anger. And yet even Kautsky, who only say in it a “minor religious mantle,” had to admit in his Foundations of Christianity that “The class hatred of the modern proletariat has scarcely ever reached such fanatical forms as that of the Christian proletariat.” Jesus would spew the lukewarm out of his mouth; no single word of his can fit ideologically into any of the social structures we have so far known – least of all the words of Sermon on the Mount. Everything he said is full of expectation, and preparation for the End. His moral teaching is incomprehensible without its apocalyptic counterpart – even prescinding from the (very late) Revelation of John, which, though not confined to Jesus’ doctrine, was continually hinted at in his preaching.
“‘He who endures to the end will be saved’ (Mk. 13. 13): a strict complement indeed to the demands of the Sermon on the Mount. “And what I say to you I say to all: Watch” (Mk. 13. 37). There is no quietism there; rather, in the words of William Blake, these sayings relate to the light of that undeniable fury.”
Take a look at this picture. Do you know who it is?
Most people haven’t heard of him.
But you should have. When you see his face or hear his name you should get as sick in your stomach as when you read about Mussolini or Hitler or see one of their pictures. You see, he killed over 10 million people in the Congo.
His name is King Leopold II of Belgium.
He “owned” the Congo during his reign as the constitutional monarch of Belgium. After several failed colonial attempts in Asia and Africa, he settled on the Congo. He “bought” it and enslaved its people, turning the entire country into his own personal slave plantation. He disguised his “business transactions” as philanthropic and scientific efforts under the banner of the “International African Society”. He used their enslaved labor to extract Congolese resources and services. His reign was enforced through work camps, body mutilations, executions, torture, and his private army.
Most of us – I don’t yet know an approximate percentage but I fear its extremely high – aren’t taught about him in school. We don’t hear about him in the media. He’s not part of the widely repeated narrative of oppression (which includes things like the Holocaust during World War II). He’s part of a long history of colonialism, imperialism, slavery and genocide in Africa that would clash with the social construction of the white supremacist narrative in our schools. It doesn’t fit neatly into a capitalist curriculum. Its bad to “say racist things” (sometimes), but quite fine not to talk about genocides in Africa perpetrated by European capitalist monarchs.
Mark Twain wrote a satire about Leopold called “King Leopold’s soliloquy; a defense of his Congo rule“, where he mocked the King’s defense of his reign of terror, largely through Leopold’s own words. Its 49 pages long. Mark Twain is a popular author for American public schools. But like most political authors, we will often read some of their least political writings or read them without learning why the author wrote them (Orwell’s Animal Farm for example serves to re-inforce American anti-Socialist propaganda, but Orwell was an anti-capitalist revolutionary of a different kind – this is never pointed out). We can read about Huck Finn and Tom Sawyer, but King Leopold’s Soliloquy isn’t on the reading list. This isn’t by accident. Reading lists are created by boards of education in order to prepare students to follow orders and endure boredom well. From the point of view of the Education Department, Africans have no history.
When we learn about Africa, we learn about a caricaturized Egypt, about the HIV epidemic (but never its causes), about the surface level effects of the slave trade, and maybe about South African Apartheid (which of course now is long, long over). We also see lots of pictures of starving children on Christian Ministry commercials, we see safaris on animal shows, and we see pictures of deserts in films and movies. But we don’t learn about the Great African War or Leopold’s Reign of Terror during the Congolese Genocide. Nor do we learn about what the United States has done in Iraq and Afghanistan, potentially killing in upwards of 5-7 million people from bombs, sanctions, disease and starvation. Body counts are important. And we don’t count Afghans, Iraqis, or Congolese.
There’s a Wikipedia page called “Genocides in History”. The Congolese Genocide isn’t included. The Congo is mentioned though. What’s now called the Democratic Republic of the Congo is listed in reference to the Second Congo War (also called Africa’s World War and the Great War of Africa), where both sides of the multinational conflict hunted down Bambenga and ate them. Cannibalism and slavery are horrendous evils which must be entered into history and talked about for sure, but I couldn’t help thinking who’s interests were served when the only mention of the Congo on the page was in reference to multi-national incidents where a tiny minority of people were eating each other (completely devoid of the conditions which created the conflict no less). Stories which support the white supremacist narrative about the subhumanness of people in Africa are allowed to be entered into the records of history. The white guy who turned the Congo into his own personal part-plantation, part-concentration camp, part-Christian ministry and killed 10 to 15 million Conglese people in the process doesn’t make the cut.
You see, when you kill ten million Africans, you aren’t called ‘Hitler’. That is, your name doesn’t come to symbolize the living incarnation of evil. Your name and your picture doesn’t produce fear, hatred, and sorrow. Your victims aren’t talked about and your name isn’t remembered.
Leopold was just one part of thousands of things that helped construct white supremacy as both an ideological narrative and material reality. Of course I don’t want to pretend that in the Congo he was the source of all evil. He had generals, and foot soldiers, and managers who did his bidding and enforced his laws. It was a system. But this doesn’t negate the need to talk about the individuals who are symbolic of the system. But we don’t even get that. And since it isn’t talked about, what capitalism did to Africa, all the privileges that rich white people gained from the Congolese genocide are hidden. The victims of imperialism are made, like they usually are, invisible.
“I am not interested in dry economic socialism. We are fighting against misery, but we are also fighting against alienation. One of the fundamental objectives of Marxism is to remove interest, the factor of individual interest, and gain, from people’s psychological motivations. Marx was preoccupied both with economic factors and with their repercussions on the spirit. If communism isn’t interested in this too, it may be a method of distributing goods, but it will never be a revolutionary way of life.” — Che Guevara
Socialist Politics:
Recommended Readings
