Once I tutored a girl (junior in high school) in physics who was very bright but didn't like physics. The first couple of lessons I read the book aloud to her and she got it immediately, the third lesson I asked her what she liked to read and we talked for half an hour, the fourth lesson I told her that as long as she kept getting A's in physics by reading the book once in a while we could just chat every lesson. So that's what we did. She brought me various questions she had about things, and didn't tell her parents. I bummed her cigarettes sometimes but I felt bad about that.
One day this girl asked me (because her mother hadn't given her a satisfying answer) what exactly the difference was between socialism and communism. You can imagine how much fun I had explaining it, with historical examples and thought experiments and so forth. In the end she said something like: "I mean, they both seem pretty good to me. But, like, I don't know. People on welfare who just sit around and don't do anything all day, and other people have to work and pay for them. That doesn't seem fair."
And I could have said: "Yeah, but you getting to be literate and the apple of your father's eye when they don't get that, that's not fair either." Or I could have said: "Yeah, but most people don't want to sit around that way, they just don't have the opportunities you do." Which I think those things would have been true. But in the end I decided to say: "I think that maybe you just shouldn't care about that because maybe it just doesn't matter at all." And she asked why and I said, well, because society is rich enough to be leeched off of a little bit, so we don't have to go around measuring who deserves what and in what way and why, and deciding whether people are the deserving poor or lazy niggers, and even if it costs you not having air conditioning or a nice car wouldn't you just rather we all stopped wondering who deserved what all the time? Because the conservatives talk about it (I deserve my money and they don't! No fair!) and the liberals talk about it (I don't deserve my money and they do!) and the whole thing turns into this elaborate morality play when really, we could just all have enough food and a place to sleep and a little bit of free time and chill out. And I think that's why I'm a Marxist instead of a liberal, because instead of wanting to live in a society where everyone is treated fairly (according to their deserts) I want to live in a society which doesn't try or need to decide who deserves.
I don't know if she was convinced, but I at least surprised her.
I don't think feeling guilty is ever a political good, I think guilt is inseparable from liberal-progressive politics, and I think we as a society can do better than mere justice, whatever justice means.
Monday, July 25, 2011
Wednesday, February 16, 2011
Shadow Objects
Sometimes it's pretty clear who is the object of your affections, because you think about her every day or something like that. But objects also play hide-and-seek. Like, you break up with someone, and it's kind of okay, and you're like "I guess it wasn't so important to possess that object." And then you find out she's getting married and you're all crying or whatever and you're like "I guess I was secretly possessing that object all this time in a weird future-burrow of my mind, and I didn't even know it, and I guess it was kind of important." You know?
A related situation that amuses me a little: on those rare occasions when I find myself in serious situations, I often leave those situations and promptly begin to think of something else entirely. But then I think: "Wait! That was serious!" and I try to think about it but it doesn't work. And then I wonder whether perhaps I am "missing" or even God forbid "avoiding" a Major Event in my life. But then I think it's hard to tell which things are Major.
All things considered, it's very hard to tell.
A related situation that amuses me a little: on those rare occasions when I find myself in serious situations, I often leave those situations and promptly begin to think of something else entirely. But then I think: "Wait! That was serious!" and I try to think about it but it doesn't work. And then I wonder whether perhaps I am "missing" or even God forbid "avoiding" a Major Event in my life. But then I think it's hard to tell which things are Major.
All things considered, it's very hard to tell.
I have been reading some Meghan Boyle. (You can too! http://muumuuhouse.com/ ) Her extremely consistent style (affectless, lists) allows the extremely efficient representation of two things: sweetness and shame. Both are rendered "bearable," and in the same way, since sweetness evokes shame. I am deeply mistrustful of the whole enterprise.
Being In Error
Learning from one's mistakes strikes me as a kind of disloyalty. This is why it's shameful. Much more noble to remain as a monument to one's error, and perhaps more useful to posterity. But we're only human. We can't even manage to refuse to speak to anyone for more than an hour or so. We end up learning after all, despite our best efforts.
Monday, January 3, 2011
You Don't Own Your Money! (How to Defend the Welfare State)
Vicente writes here against the evil right-wing "your tax dollars are paying for $3 iced lattes for lazy postal workers in Miami" rhetorical trick. I don't think he quite expresses the full degree of wrongness involved here, so I'll take a crack at it.
The minor point: This technique is the Republicans' way of dealing with a really profound political problem: They must lower taxes (since that's what we vote them in to do), but they can't cut the military budget (because they're politically invested in a constant state of war) or services (because Americans love every particular manifestation of the nanny state even if they hate the idea of it). The $3 lattes function as an imaginary source of the savings necessary for substantial tax cuts. I am agnostic on whether the technique is profoundly cynical or somewhat less cynical but profoundly dangerous. The cynical interpretation: Republicans will not cut spending but will lower taxes, because when an American voter is asked whether he wants lower taxes or more social security he always answers "Let's do both!" The deficit will of course continue to increase, and when asked about this Republicans will blame "government waste" (lattes) or, if push comes to shove, lazy poor people. The dangerous interpretation: Republicans will in fact destroy the welfare state whatever the political cost; accusing the government of frivolous spending is the first step to destroying it, and by the time Americans realize that it's not just poor black people who are getting screwed it will be too late. (In other words, we'll soon know whether the Tea Party is sincere. I for one hope not.)
(By the way, just so we're all on the same page here: Democracy doesn't work because voters are selfish and very stupid. Or rather, it works just to the extent that the elites who determine political discourse are too honest to exploit the stupidity and selfishness of voters. To understand the modern Republican party we need to determine whether it is run by (1) an elite which is cynical enough to promise whatever voters want to hear in order to maintain power or (2) a group of people who are just as stupid and selfish as their constituents. For example: Who in the Republican Party really doubts the existence of global warming, and who merely finds it convenient to do so? Obviously there's no clear line to be drawn here-- they probably don't know themselves what they really believe-- but there sure is a gradient, as can be seen by the Tea Party vs. Republican Establishment infighting. Which would you prefer were the case?)
The major point: The only way to defend the welfare state is to keep making the point, over and over again, that the whole question of what the government is doing with "my money" is wrongheaded for the simple reason that you have no right to your property. That any of us can "own" property is the product of a very particular social arrangement which is constructed and maintained by government and social consensus in myriad ways. CEOs own yachts not because their work somehow produced the yacht or its equivalent value, but because a vast number of people did a thousand different things (build yachts, regulate the NYSE, become police, keep the CEO's schedule) to produce a social system in which yachts are distributed to some and not others. The government is the organ of that social system as a whole; as such, the government has an absolute right to whatever value is produced by that social system.
This is important to remember when you're defending the welfare state-- for example, when you're claiming that the government should continue to fund state colleges. The point isn't that we should take money from the CEOs in order to compensate poor students for some perceived injustice, because they "deserve" a chance to become CEOs themselves. The point is that the social system is right now arbitrarily deciding to give some fool a yacht and may very well arbitrarily decide to go distribute its surplus somewhere else-- on frivolous cultural studies classes, for example.
When we fall into the trap of defending the welfare state as though it were some sort of justifiable but unfortunate burden on the rich, we have already vastly underestimated what a government can do. The government is a social mechanism for distributing socially produced value; as such, it's our tool for making a society that works the way we want it to. Which is why we don't need to prove that the unemployed "deserve" some benefits because they've been screwed somehow; we can just shrug, say that we're sick of seeing so many yachts around, and give them some money. If some of them use it to buy Cheetos or pink nail polish or flat-screen TVs, well-- CEOs spend money foolishly, too, and it's not their goddamned money either.
The minor point: This technique is the Republicans' way of dealing with a really profound political problem: They must lower taxes (since that's what we vote them in to do), but they can't cut the military budget (because they're politically invested in a constant state of war) or services (because Americans love every particular manifestation of the nanny state even if they hate the idea of it). The $3 lattes function as an imaginary source of the savings necessary for substantial tax cuts. I am agnostic on whether the technique is profoundly cynical or somewhat less cynical but profoundly dangerous. The cynical interpretation: Republicans will not cut spending but will lower taxes, because when an American voter is asked whether he wants lower taxes or more social security he always answers "Let's do both!" The deficit will of course continue to increase, and when asked about this Republicans will blame "government waste" (lattes) or, if push comes to shove, lazy poor people. The dangerous interpretation: Republicans will in fact destroy the welfare state whatever the political cost; accusing the government of frivolous spending is the first step to destroying it, and by the time Americans realize that it's not just poor black people who are getting screwed it will be too late. (In other words, we'll soon know whether the Tea Party is sincere. I for one hope not.)
(By the way, just so we're all on the same page here: Democracy doesn't work because voters are selfish and very stupid. Or rather, it works just to the extent that the elites who determine political discourse are too honest to exploit the stupidity and selfishness of voters. To understand the modern Republican party we need to determine whether it is run by (1) an elite which is cynical enough to promise whatever voters want to hear in order to maintain power or (2) a group of people who are just as stupid and selfish as their constituents. For example: Who in the Republican Party really doubts the existence of global warming, and who merely finds it convenient to do so? Obviously there's no clear line to be drawn here-- they probably don't know themselves what they really believe-- but there sure is a gradient, as can be seen by the Tea Party vs. Republican Establishment infighting. Which would you prefer were the case?)
The major point: The only way to defend the welfare state is to keep making the point, over and over again, that the whole question of what the government is doing with "my money" is wrongheaded for the simple reason that you have no right to your property. That any of us can "own" property is the product of a very particular social arrangement which is constructed and maintained by government and social consensus in myriad ways. CEOs own yachts not because their work somehow produced the yacht or its equivalent value, but because a vast number of people did a thousand different things (build yachts, regulate the NYSE, become police, keep the CEO's schedule) to produce a social system in which yachts are distributed to some and not others. The government is the organ of that social system as a whole; as such, the government has an absolute right to whatever value is produced by that social system.
This is important to remember when you're defending the welfare state-- for example, when you're claiming that the government should continue to fund state colleges. The point isn't that we should take money from the CEOs in order to compensate poor students for some perceived injustice, because they "deserve" a chance to become CEOs themselves. The point is that the social system is right now arbitrarily deciding to give some fool a yacht and may very well arbitrarily decide to go distribute its surplus somewhere else-- on frivolous cultural studies classes, for example.
When we fall into the trap of defending the welfare state as though it were some sort of justifiable but unfortunate burden on the rich, we have already vastly underestimated what a government can do. The government is a social mechanism for distributing socially produced value; as such, it's our tool for making a society that works the way we want it to. Which is why we don't need to prove that the unemployed "deserve" some benefits because they've been screwed somehow; we can just shrug, say that we're sick of seeing so many yachts around, and give them some money. If some of them use it to buy Cheetos or pink nail polish or flat-screen TVs, well-- CEOs spend money foolishly, too, and it's not their goddamned money either.
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