Descartes' Legacy: The Century of the Self
- Thread starter Padraig
- Start date
vimothy
yurp
Hmmm...
vimothy
yurp
What about going into more depth, could we do that instead?
Where are these analyses? What do they say?
The USSR is a failed experiment - it didn't fail because of Gorbachov or "neo-liberalism" (whatever the hell you mean by that), it failed because women had to traipse around cities queing for hours for cotton wool instead of sanitary towels, because of the amount of time it took to get a car, because getting what you wanted depended on who you knew, because of the lack of incentive, because Soviet production was stuck eternally in the extensive phase and never made it to the intensive phase where real improvements to goods take place, because the lack of a freely set price where supply and demand curves meet meant that it was impossible to judge efficiency, to judge supply, to judge demand... blah, blah, blah
I know you said that.
I want to talk about Soviet economics - it must be expensive to run an empire, right? Cuba, Afghanistan, they don't have quite the same outgoings as the USSR, which ran, for instance, a huge army with a massive aresnal of weapons. If the price of goods, materials and "constant capital" (lol) is set by a bureaucratic body (like Gosplan), how can you judge whether you can afford any of it? How can you judge when steel is not the right material to use and you should go onto something else? How can you judge whether your AK-47 factory is in the right part of the empire, or whether somewhere else would be more efficient? These are the problems which slowly and inorexably impoverished the USSR.
Why did Gorbachov initiate glasnost and perestroika in the first place?
Ok, and I'll try again: was the Soviet economy strong enough to continue indefinitely? Would the Soviet Union have been able to sustain itself if Gorbachov hadn't "incubated by political means the neo-liberal ideology"?
I'm trying to establish whether or not you agree that the Soviet economy was a disaster. We are talking about the collapse of the USSR, I believe that its collapse was economic in nature. It's relevant to the discussion because that's what we're discussing. You say it's political - ok, so where do you fit the Soviet economy in to all that?
Psycholanalysts bring me out in a rash (of course).
vimothy
yurp
Did I really misinterpret Zizek? What did I miss?
I think that it's really fair enough for people in ex-communist countries in Europe to want to treat the symbols of communism as they treat the symbols of nazism. Isn't it? Is it really part of a plot to redefine European identity along anti-communist rather than anti-fascist lines? Should the impluse to condem communism be regarded as we regard Berlusconi's defense of Mussolini?
Even the quote from Lacan.com misses the point: Saddam was a totalitarian ruler (just check the kitsch madness of the pictures: Saddam as Saladin, Saddam the pious muslim, Saddam the mischievous rake, Saddam the kind father, Saddam the military leader, etc) and the US didn't generate the fundamentalist opposition - they existed already.
Guybrush
Dittohead
Not really misinterpret, but hundredmillionlifetimes only posted the last paragraph of the text, so the context was lost. Your opinion is fairly common, and so is, what seems to be, Žižek’s notion: as nazism is more ‘evil’ than communism in theory (the superiority of some races over others, etc.), it’s inherently worse than communism, regardless of their similarities in practice. I don’t know if I agree. However, if we were to pit socialism against nazism, I think you would find very few who would claim them to be equally ‘bad’.
My opinion on laws banning offensive symbols is simple: I dislike them no matter how benevolent they are.
I would call Saddam an authoritarian, but it’s a borderline case, yes.
vimothy
yurp
Parody of Curtis over at normblog:
http://normblog.typepad.com/normblog/2007/03/the_history_of_.html
http://normblog.typepad.com/normblog/2007/03/the_history_of_.html
Mr. Tea
Let's Talk About Ceps
Oops, that's torn it! Someone's dissed one of postmodernism's holy cows, so out come the personal insults...
Edit: and for what it's worth I think vimothy's comment was perfectly justified. You have a habit of quoting other people's arguments - one or two paragraphs - and then when someone voices an opinion on that writer you scream "IGNORAMUS! How DARE you pass comment on this writer as you haven't read his entire works, etc. etc.". Well I think it's prefectly reasonable to pass comment on a few lines of text if that's all you're given to read - if the writer's words should be read in context, then it behoves you not to present them out of context. As it happens, I think Zizek's assertion, viz. 'most people think fascism is less bad than communism', is utter arse. So-called 'Soviet chic' is used to advertise everything from vodka to mobile phones these days, in case you hadn't noticed. Don't see too much 'Nazi chic'. do you? No-one believes fascism was the 'lesser evil', even though the total number of unnatural deaths caused globally, directly and indirectly, by communism is probably higher than that caused by fascism. And if vimothy has extensively read Zizek, it gives him even more of a right to call him an idiot if that's how he feels about the man's ideas. You come across as extremely arrogant in your constant assertions that anyone who disagree with one of your po-mo darlings has simply failed to understand them. It is, believe it or not, possible to understand someone's arguments and to disagree with them as a result.
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vimothy
yurp
Alain Badiou is a big fat wanker!
BTW and for what it's worth, I feel that I have read enough Zizeck (and seen enough of his - thoroughly revolutionary, naturally - programmes) to have an opinion of the man and his work - it's idiotic, fun and fashionable maybe (I do love his accent and his lisp and his dishevelled intellectual look), but it's idiotic.
Guybrush
Dittohead
One thing I found bewildering about the Fascism vs Communism discussion was if he by Fascism meant Mussolini’s Fascist Italy (which most people, arguably, think was ‘less bad’ than Soviet), or Fascism as a general ideology. As some scholars argue that Nazism should be labelled a Fascist ideology, he also could have indirectly referred to that. As I said: confusing.
Regarding your having read Žižek: there is a stark difference between reading a text with ideological blinkers, and approaching it unprejudicedly. You cannot expect it to disclose itself if you read it as the Devil reads the Bible.
Regarding your having read Žižek: there is a stark difference between reading a text with ideological blinkers, and approaching it unprejudicedly. You cannot expect it to disclose itself if you read it as the Devil reads the Bible.
Mr. Tea
Let's Talk About Ceps
But Žížë'k seems to be claiming that anyone who tries to compare fascism with communism (as many have done, especially in those parts of Europe unfortunate enough to have been shat on by both) is necessarily drawn to the conclusion that fascism was somehow 'less bad', as it was 'an understandable reaction to the communist threat'. But communism *saved* Europe - well, Western Europe, at any rate - in WWII: surely without the Eastern Front to distract and ultimately ruin Hitler (which would presumably have been the case if the he hadn't violated the Soviet-Nazi non-aggression pact) he'd have been able to turn the full might of the Wehrmacht on the Western Front? Even with American help, things would have looked distinctly shady for Britain in that case.
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Guybrush
Dittohead
Whew, that’s a knotty question to answer. I didn’t think of that. I guess you question is something like this: does the Soviet Union’s contribution to the defeat of the Axis Powers make it ‘less evil’ than Fascist Italy, despite the latter being ‘less evil’ if the two are compared solely on domestic grounds? I really have no idea.
Mr. Tea
Let's Talk About Ceps
Well I wasn't talking about fascist Italy per se, I was talking about fascism generally. The fact that the Soviets helped defeat Nazi Germany certainly made them useful to the Western Allies, that's for sure; I wouldn't say it makes them any less 'bad', in terms of what the Soviets did to their own people, and the Eastern European countries they effectively annexed. In fact, the crimes of Mussolini's Italy surely pale in comparison next to those of Stalin's USSR.
I think what it comes down to is that communism - or should that be Communism? - at least as an ideology sets out to improve people's lives by freeing them of the yoke of capitalist oppression, to use specifically Communist terminology. Fascism, by contrast, does what it says on the tin: it's self-admittedly all about nationalism, militarism, totalitarianism and other things that right-thinking (although not far-Right thinking!) people generally consider Very Bad Indeed.
While not too many people still call themselves Communists (outside of, say, North Korea and the Spartacist League), many still describe themselves as socialists, Marxists or Marxist-Leninists. You won't find too many people who will call themselves fascists these days; it's effectively become exclusively a perjorative term.
And on a final note, it seems Mussolini's granddaughter is a neo-Fascist politician who looks like an Essex slapper and appeared in a 1983 edition of Playboy. Nice tits, mind you.
I think what it comes down to is that communism - or should that be Communism? - at least as an ideology sets out to improve people's lives by freeing them of the yoke of capitalist oppression, to use specifically Communist terminology. Fascism, by contrast, does what it says on the tin: it's self-admittedly all about nationalism, militarism, totalitarianism and other things that right-thinking (although not far-Right thinking!) people generally consider Very Bad Indeed.
While not too many people still call themselves Communists (outside of, say, North Korea and the Spartacist League), many still describe themselves as socialists, Marxists or Marxist-Leninists. You won't find too many people who will call themselves fascists these days; it's effectively become exclusively a perjorative term.
And on a final note, it seems Mussolini's granddaughter is a neo-Fascist politician who looks like an Essex slapper and appeared in a 1983 edition of Playboy. Nice tits, mind you.
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vimothy
yurp
Well, I took him to mean both, but really to be talking about fascism in the wider sense (including Nazi Germany and so on).
So, I can't read him at all then? That doesn't seem right to me. Of course, one should be open-minded with respect to the views of people on the other side of the political spectrum, but I don't see how I can avoid your devil reading the bible problem. Don't you want to be able to read things by, say, "neo-liberals" and criticise them? Don't we all read things with ideological blinkers?
I like Zizek as a fantasist (like Freud really), but I do think psychoanalysis is a bit daft ("the tunnel is mummy... the train is daddy..." etc) and not the basis for a sensible politics. Zizek is an apologist for totalitarianism (check his paean to Lenin for e.g.), but then, so was Ezra Pound, and I still read bits of the Cantos and enjoy them.
Basically, the stuff which comes from psychoanalysis is voodoo, and his politics are irresponsible in the extreme.
vimothy
yurp
Fascism also sets out to improve people's lives by freeing them from capitalist oppression, and also contains healthy doses of socialist economics (all about control). Like communism, fascism is a reaction to the big, bad, scarily pointless modern world, which provides a grand, catch-all solution which everyone can (must!) believe in, an Ur-myth and a scapegoat to blame. Lots of modern day fascists are anti-capitalist, malthusian ecologist types, who want to return to simpler peasant like nobility and union with the land.
Mr. Tea
Let's Talk About Ceps
Oh, sure, I know the Nazis (for example) actually enacted a lot essentially socialist economic policies (hence 'national socialism'), and that Hitler blamed rich industrialists and bankers for the downfall of his beloved Germany almost as much as he blamed Jews and communists. I was just making the point that one could, in principle, support Marx's ideas while condemning all the attrocities that have been committed in in the name of his ideas; by contrast, I don't think anyone would say "Fascism is nice really, it's just that people like Hitler and Mussolini got the wrong end of the stick and cocked things up" - Hitler and Mussolini were fascists par excellence, surely?
vimothy
yurp
No I quite agree with what you and Guybrush (and even Slavoj
)are saying really: on some level, communism and marxism are a lot more rational and agreeable than fascism. I know people who refuse to describe the USSR as communist and instead insist on calling it state capitalist or sovietist. However, surely Marxism and communism have got to be criticised as attempts, just like fascism, to solve all of mankind's problems (as imagined yr fav ressentiment filled ideologue) with one utopian stroke of the brush. Honest question: if communism is qualitatively superior (or even just different) to fascism, how come it has killed more people?
Mr. Tea
Let's Talk About Ceps
Oh, I think you misunderstand me: I wouldn't hesitate to call the USSR a 'Communist' state, because that's what it was. I'm no apologist for Stalin! I'm just saying the case could be made that Marx (for example) would have been horrified at what was done in his name - partly because he never advocated armed struggle and revolution. As I understand it, he considered communism a more 'scientific' way of living, and thought that, just as fitter species out-compete less fit ones, communism would inevitably, at some undefined point in the future, be the dominant (or even exclusive) political system in the world, just as human beings had come to be the dominant species.
You could also say that more people have been killed under communism simply because it has affected more people, in the same way that the average Satanist is probably a nastier person than the average Christian, but far more people have been killed by Christians because there have never been great numbers of Satanists at any one time.
You could also say that more people have been killed under communism simply because it has affected more people, in the same way that the average Satanist is probably a nastier person than the average Christian, but far more people have been killed by Christians because there have never been great numbers of Satanists at any one time.
vimothy
yurp
I was actually agreeing with you - to a point. It's just that regardless of how communism is supposed to occur, what actually does happen seems drearily inevitable. And why is that? I think that, in addition to the danger posed to humanity by any utopian politics, it's all because of systemic economic problems, something which Marx is responsible for.
Yep - part of the problem with communism is its extended appeal, especially to otherwise intelligent individuals...
old goriot
Well-known member
thanks for the videos, hmlt. I was totally unaware of Adam Curtis. I found them immensley interesting.
A few points
TPON - re: the Straussians. Having watched the film I would say that the Straussians are given a completely fair assessment.
Century of the Self & The Trap
I really liked these. As some people pointed out, the story left out certain areas.
I think The Trap would have benefitted from some discussion of the rise of central banking, fiat currency, and the effect of the US dropping the gold standard in 1972.
I think it is key to recognize that the American dollar went from being something that could be redeemed from the world's largest gold reserves, to, by the sixties, a peice of paper branded "America" that was backed by nothing since the gold had mostly been sold off after the war. American economic policy since then has been more or less a PR campaign to buoy the dollar at all costs.
Ever since 1972 the Fed has responded to every economic problem by creating money out of nothing (also known as lowering interest rates) and causing speculation bubbles. But printing money doesn't create value, unless one were under the delusion that the paper money and dollar figures held intrinsic value (Wiemar Republic). Widespread market delusions are called bubbles, and we are nearing the end of the "US Dollar Bubble". Real estate, stocks, consumer credit in the 80's, dot coms in the 90's, and real estate again in the 2000's. Every bubble burst has been offset by new US Dollars being created, poured in and filling up another bubble. The whole thing has been supported by the widespread belief that, as the new world reserve currency, the US dollar obeyed no known economic laws and could never radically depreciate, no matter how badly debased. The long-term continual debasement of Roman silver coins (the closest historical precendent for the American dollar) is a classic example of the hopeless strategy of currency manipulation that becomes an irresistable temptation for rulers of a decaying empire who enjoy a trusted, almost monolithic currency that comes to reflect the power of the state rather than the value generated by the members of the state. This strategy is effective in the short term, but always disastrous in the long-term. The invisible hand smacks it back into place, painfully.
Since 1972 the American economy (and by extension the world economy) has been based on the fantasies of the the Federal Reserve. If you look at thier current statements re: the sub-prime mortgage meltdown + foreclosure crisis, it is clear how far the chasm between economic reality and the world of the Federal Reserve has widened. It has even led to Orwellian doublespeak on Wall Street like "Trade account deficits are good because they cause capital account surpluses". The problem is that capital account surplus is really another word for debt. The social security "trust fund" that is actually a chest full of IOU's (bonds) written by the American government to itself is just another example of the way in which American leaders came to believe that the American dollar had otherworldly properties that did not obey the laws of logic.
This view is unravelling by the day. Some economists are forecasting a dollar depreciation of 30-50% within the next ten years. Others like Peter Schiff of CNBC are forecasting an outright economic collapse (due in part to the impending bankruptcy of publicly backed lenders Fanny Mae and Freddy Mac) and a possible return to gold as the world reserve currency. Even grandpa buy-and-hold Warren Buffett has warned that the trade deficit is unsustainable, the dollar will depreciate, and therefore he is for the first time in his career buying overseas and exiting the american market.
The problem is that the US Dollar has pretty much inflated the world economy at this point, and everyone has exposure to it. I read one report of a NY real estate agent who has sold his 15 million dollar upper eestside house and is moving to China. Even after moving all of his assets to China at an optimal time when the dollar is still high and the yuan is artificially low, he still expects to lose 30-40% of his net worth in the coming recession.
I guess my point would be that the monetary gains that made the selfishness Curtis identifies possible and prevalent have themselves been largely illusory in a very real economic sense. Americans could never actually afford that second wave of individualized consumerism, it was funded by abandoning Bretton Woods and unhinging the dollar from real-world valuations - resulting in the stagflation of the 70's. I think a lot of the chaos that Curtis attibutes to the markets is more so a function of the last 50 years of fantasy based monetary policy (and the rampant speculation it engenders), mainly on the part of the Federal Reserve and Alan Greenspan. Personally I'm worried that the US will turn to military fascism when the money is all dried up.
A few points
TPON - re: the Straussians. Having watched the film I would say that the Straussians are given a completely fair assessment.
Century of the Self & The Trap
I really liked these. As some people pointed out, the story left out certain areas.
I think The Trap would have benefitted from some discussion of the rise of central banking, fiat currency, and the effect of the US dropping the gold standard in 1972.
I think it is key to recognize that the American dollar went from being something that could be redeemed from the world's largest gold reserves, to, by the sixties, a peice of paper branded "America" that was backed by nothing since the gold had mostly been sold off after the war. American economic policy since then has been more or less a PR campaign to buoy the dollar at all costs.
Ever since 1972 the Fed has responded to every economic problem by creating money out of nothing (also known as lowering interest rates) and causing speculation bubbles. But printing money doesn't create value, unless one were under the delusion that the paper money and dollar figures held intrinsic value (Wiemar Republic). Widespread market delusions are called bubbles, and we are nearing the end of the "US Dollar Bubble". Real estate, stocks, consumer credit in the 80's, dot coms in the 90's, and real estate again in the 2000's. Every bubble burst has been offset by new US Dollars being created, poured in and filling up another bubble. The whole thing has been supported by the widespread belief that, as the new world reserve currency, the US dollar obeyed no known economic laws and could never radically depreciate, no matter how badly debased. The long-term continual debasement of Roman silver coins (the closest historical precendent for the American dollar) is a classic example of the hopeless strategy of currency manipulation that becomes an irresistable temptation for rulers of a decaying empire who enjoy a trusted, almost monolithic currency that comes to reflect the power of the state rather than the value generated by the members of the state. This strategy is effective in the short term, but always disastrous in the long-term. The invisible hand smacks it back into place, painfully.
Since 1972 the American economy (and by extension the world economy) has been based on the fantasies of the the Federal Reserve. If you look at thier current statements re: the sub-prime mortgage meltdown + foreclosure crisis, it is clear how far the chasm between economic reality and the world of the Federal Reserve has widened. It has even led to Orwellian doublespeak on Wall Street like "Trade account deficits are good because they cause capital account surpluses". The problem is that capital account surplus is really another word for debt. The social security "trust fund" that is actually a chest full of IOU's (bonds) written by the American government to itself is just another example of the way in which American leaders came to believe that the American dollar had otherworldly properties that did not obey the laws of logic.
This view is unravelling by the day. Some economists are forecasting a dollar depreciation of 30-50% within the next ten years. Others like Peter Schiff of CNBC are forecasting an outright economic collapse (due in part to the impending bankruptcy of publicly backed lenders Fanny Mae and Freddy Mac) and a possible return to gold as the world reserve currency. Even grandpa buy-and-hold Warren Buffett has warned that the trade deficit is unsustainable, the dollar will depreciate, and therefore he is for the first time in his career buying overseas and exiting the american market.
The problem is that the US Dollar has pretty much inflated the world economy at this point, and everyone has exposure to it. I read one report of a NY real estate agent who has sold his 15 million dollar upper eestside house and is moving to China. Even after moving all of his assets to China at an optimal time when the dollar is still high and the yuan is artificially low, he still expects to lose 30-40% of his net worth in the coming recession.
I guess my point would be that the monetary gains that made the selfishness Curtis identifies possible and prevalent have themselves been largely illusory in a very real economic sense. Americans could never actually afford that second wave of individualized consumerism, it was funded by abandoning Bretton Woods and unhinging the dollar from real-world valuations - resulting in the stagflation of the 70's. I think a lot of the chaos that Curtis attibutes to the markets is more so a function of the last 50 years of fantasy based monetary policy (and the rampant speculation it engenders), mainly on the part of the Federal Reserve and Alan Greenspan. Personally I'm worried that the US will turn to military fascism when the money is all dried up.
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