Like Orestes, Mr Assange is now fated to be hunted by the modern day Erinyes – i.e. the maleficent agents of various governments, and family members of people whose names were left unredacted. Unlike Orestes, there is no Athene who can save him. It will no doubt be surprising to Assange, in all of his grandiose naïveté, that his efforts have not (and will not) change the behavior of nation states, which exist in a state of nature.
What is striking to me about contemporary economic doomsday prognostication is how much it echoes the hoary old Marxist theory of crisis, of the inevitable collapse brought on by the inexorable falling rate of profit. What both these crisis theories evidence is, however, a falling rate of political intelligence.
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It is difficult to get outside the cognitive constraints of the ideological image of liberals versus conservatives, and to think "institutionally." What might it mean to think institutionally about capitalism and about the State (government). Regarding the former, it is always oriented to the short term: today's profits matter more than some future event that might never happen. The next quarterly report is the extent of the attention span of the hypothetical self-interested entrepreneur. What might this mean in practice? It may mean, for example, that environmental degradation matters only if it cuts into profitability (who cares if there’s one less spotted owl as long as I make a buck selling timber). This is short-term thinking par excellence and it is perfectly rational if one assumes that people are driven by self-interest and that it would be irrational to pursue strategies that undermine self-interest. What does this mean for the predicted, impending bankruptcy of the contemporary crisis theory? It means that as long as current profits can be maintained at a reasonable level, the long-term possible bankruptcy doesn't matter.
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What both contemporary and old-fashioned orthodox Marxist crisis theory conveniently ignores is the truly inconvenient fact that "crisis management" forestalls such cataclysmic crises, delays them, pushes them off to some future date. Crisis management is the art of softening the blows of short-term thinking, of the supply and demand cycle, and the social and political dislocation that both entail. Crisis management is neither a liberal nor conservative phenomena, it is a function of institutions, in particular State and quasi-State institutions (see the coordinated actions of Paulson, Bernanke, and Geithner in the aftermath of the demise of Lehmann Brothers). The art of crisis management assumes the irrationality of individuals acting on short-term interest in immediate profitability. Crisis management is also a high-wire act: it must find the right balance between the necessary degree of management and the necessary degree of short-term thinking. A crisis of crisis management (Claus Offe) arises when crisis management encroaches too much on the short-term rationality of the market (which is irrational); in other words, it must manage the consequences of market irrationality without undermining this irrationality entirely. (N.B. I'm using the term"irrational" in a non-pejorative, and purely descriptive, sense: short-term thinking and behavior that ignores long-term consequences is irrational in a restricted sense and from a certain point of view).
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To be sure, there is dim recognition of the implications of crisis management among those politicians today, who admonish -- in Matherian tones -- that "we are burdening our children and grandchildren and great grandchildren and great-great grandchildren with debt." Of course we are! As rational economic actors, our only interest is in the now, not the 50 or 70 or 100 years from now. Our contemporary crisis managers push off the cataclysmic crisis onto future generations, who will have their own crisis managers to push off the crisis onto even more future generations, or until the last ton of fossilized coal has been burnt. Such crisis management is short-term thinking that attenuates the consequences of short-term thinking. Is this wrong or immoral? It is neither, if we accept short-term, self-interested behavior on the part of individuals (persons or firms) as normal and inevitable, which is precisely what these Chicken Little politicians assume.
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What about long-term thinking and long-term survival: who does that and how is it accomplished? Typically State institutions (i.e. government) have the task of maintaining the integrity of the socio-economic system over the longue duree. What are those institutions? The internal and external security institutions; and the social security institutions. Both of these long-term oriented institution forms must be maintained, i.e. financed; and hence we have taxation, and it is only a pipe dream to wish taxation away. Moreover, there is no choice to be made by those who seek “limited government” to get rid of one (social security institutions). Both internal/external security and social security are always already, necessarily interdependent. And while it would be nice to return to the seventeenth-century system of mutual aid, it is simply unrealistic (and hence irrational) to assume -- as a form of “tax relief” and “deficit reduction” -- that this is a practical alternative to State institutions. From the standpoint of the short-term, self-interest of the rational actor, time spent tending to ailing Aunt Jenny is time and money taken away from earning more money, starting a business, or pursuing a professional degree. And while this hypothetical rational actor might want to tend to Aunt Jenny, she realizes that she lacks the skill set to cope with her Aunt’s problems and is quite happy to be unburdened of this task by a government agency (Medicare/Medicaid), and by health care and social work professionals who are trained to take care of such ailing Aunts. Two pennies on the dollar of taxation that goes to this purpose is well worth it to this profit-seeking person, who can use the money saved on buying medicine for the aunt to purchase a larger HD television; and the byproduct of this consumption (or, rather, the “pursuit of happiness”) is that another rational actor remains employed at Best Buy.
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Quite contrary to their intentions, the limited government chorus may well create a new economic crisis if their goal of slashing the long-term social security institutions were achieved (for which new institutions of crisis management will evolve and the whole thing starts over once again). Truly limited government would likely be worse than no government at all, because such a limited government would lose political legitimacy, and would be unable to attenuate political and social disorder that comes from the loss of legitimacy.
panzer
on the tracks
east heading
--her face windcold
against the stonegrey of her eyes--
after the wende
hope exchanging hearts
on the glienicke brücke
Recently, Glenn Beck cast his watery gaze upon George Soros. Beck is simply appealing to the anti-semitic segment of his viewing audience. His conspiratorial thinking regarding Soros, reflecting unconsciously the model of the distant past that evoked fear and condemnation of the "Golden International", comports well with the level at which his usual pseudo-intellectual punditry resides: character assassination. I heard Soros talk at an APSA meeting, during which he spoke at length of the deep impact Karl Popper made on his general vision of the social world. I look forward to Beck's future blackboard diagram of the hidden totalitarian kernel lodged in The Open Society and Its Enemies.
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Beck once devoted a program to his view that G.W. F. Hegel's thought lies at the root of what plagues America. I return to Hofstadter frequently for insight into his brand of conspiratorial theory.
"The final aspect of the paranoid style is related to the quality of pedantry to which I have already referred. One of the impressive things about paranoid literature is precisely the elaborate concern with demonstration it almost invariably shows. One should not be misled by the fantastic conclusions that are so characteristic of this political style into imagining that it is not, so to speak, argued out along factual lines. The very fantastic character of its conclusions leads to heroic striving for 'evidence to prove that the unbelievable is the only thing that can be believed. Of course, there are highbrow, lowbrow, and middlebrow paranoids, as there are likely to be in any political tendency, and paranoid movements from the Middle Ages onward have had a magnetic attraction for demi-intellectuals . . . The typical procedure of the higher paranoid scholarship is to start with such defensible assumptions and with a careful accumulation of facts, or at least of what appear to be facts, and to marshal these facts toward an overwhelming 'proof' of the particular conspiracy that is to be established. It is nothing if not coherent -- in fact, the paranoid mentality is far more coherent than the real world, since it leaves no room for mistakes, failures, or ambiguities. It is, if not wholly rational, at least intensely rationalistic; it believes it is up against an enemy who is infallibly rational as he is totally evil, and it seeks to match his imputed total competence with its own, leaving nothing unexplained and comprehending all of reality in one overreachiing, consistent theory. It is nothing if not 'scholarly' in technique. . . What distinguishes the paranoid style is not, then the absence of verifiable facts (though it is occasionally true that in his extravagant passion for facts the paranoid occasionally manufactures them), but rather in the curious leap in imagination that is always made at some critical point in the recital of events. . . The plausibility the paranoid style has for those who find it plausible lies, in good measure, in this appearance of the most careful, conscientious, and seemingly coherent application to detail, the laborious accumulation of what can be taken as convincing evidence for the most fantastic conclusions, the careful preparation for the big leap from the undeniable to the unbelievable. The singular thing about all this laborious work is that the passion for factual evidence does not, as in most intellectual exchanges, have the effect of putting the paranoid spokesman into effective two-way communication with the world outside his group -- least of all with those who doubt his views. He has little real hope that his evidence will convince a hostile world. His effort to amass it has rather the quality of a defensive act which shuts off his receptive apparatus and protects him from having to attend to disturbing considerations that do not fortify his ideas. He has all the evidence he needs; he is not a receiver, he is a transmitter." The Paranoid Style in American Politics, pp. 35-38
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It's worth noting that the program during which Beck uttered the statement that became the target of controversy is entitled "The Puppet Master: How much does George Soros control?" Also interesting, in light of Hofstadter's diagnosis, is the fact that Beck (or his producers) invites his followers to participate in his paranoid style: "For months, Glenn has been pulling back the structure progressives have worked decades to put in place. Beneath every layer lies one common thread: George Soros. Tonight on TV, Glenn presents an in-depth look at the Puppet Master, billionaire financier George Soros, one of the most powerful forces in the Progressive Movement. But don’t just take Glenn’s word for it. Read. Analyze. Do your own homework and come to your own conclusions - read below to fact check all the sources used on tonight's show." (emphasis added)
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One notices in Beck’s paranoid style a monotheistic vision of evil in it. In the particular case of Soros, he is the singular puppet master behind all that is wrong, the First Mover of the "Progressive movement" that is destroying America. The "Jewish" angle Beck explicitly evokes (N.B. it is certainly the case that one could criticize Soros' politics without referencing his religious/ethnic background) works in both the secular and religious registers of the manipulative "Jewish Bankers" and the biblical "Christ Killers" (which no doubts adds to the cathexis between Beck's audience and the subject matter).
In contrast, a polytheistic vision might entail recognition of, and openness to, complexity. On this account, good and evil -- for those who traffic in such a worldview -- would be distributed across a range of gods (i.e. forces, entities, persons, institutions, long and short term historical processes, etc.). This vision may not be as emotionally satisfying for those possessed of the conspiratorial mind, but it would at least bring them in touch with ordinary reality and might take some of the symbolically violent edge off their rhetoric (e.g. the primordialist "Us" versus "Them" imagination).
Tomorrow’s mid-term election portends to be the end of American civilization.
Or not. It will be interesting to watch how these Tea Partysan candidates, who, paradoxically and unconsciously, are running for governing positions on an anti-government platform, will actually function once in government and seated among other governing Republicans. The anti-governmentarians will be a rump within the Republican caucus and they will either consign themselves to irrelevance by holding to their fantastical visions of democratic politics and to their “angry mob” symbolics (and one must consider how much of this anger is real and how much of it is show for the purpose of getting elected by a purportedly angry electorate, as depicted by emocons like Glenn Beck); or they will adapt to business as usual, which means governing according to the principle of compromise (i.e. according to an ethic of responsibility) rather than according to the principle of non-compromise (i.e. according to an ethic of conviction). I suspect they'll soon be fighting to distribute “pork” just like other piggish Democrats and Republicans have for quite a long time now.
However, it is interesting how much the war in Afghanistan is a non-issue, given its costs in human and economic capital.
One foreign policy issue does cut close(r) to home. Insofar as the Mexican diaspora is construed as a terrorist threat, I do expect the new Republican majority to get down to building a Great Wall on the southern border and to seek, at the national level, something akin to Arizona's SB 1070.
