"This blog is my political activity. I am making it because I don't want to feel helpless and overpowered, and because I don't just want to sit on the sidelines and watch others work." That was how I began this blog in April. The stimulus to those words, and this blog, was Naomi Klein's profound and scary 2007 book, The Shock Doctrine, subtitled The Rise of Disaster Capitalism.
Throughout my adult life my heart has belonged to the left and to progressive causes and the progressive mind-set; but I have, excepting a few marches, letters to the editor, and a radio call-in or two, been a passive sideliner who voted Democrat at election time. I have been a passive sideliner, because of a pretty deeply ingrained sense of helplessness. The Shock Doctrine really did SHOCK me: it showed me WHY I have felt helpless, and WHY I resigned myself to helplessness. The Shock Doctrine convinced me moreover that there are people out there who want people like me to feel helpless and stay on the sidelines. The book has convinced me that the people who want people like me on the sidelines know just how to make people like me feel helpless and behave passively, and that they actively work to create these feelings, and they actively work to keep us feeling that way and on the sidelines.
When I realized this, I became angry, and at the same time, almost instantly, I didn't feel helpless anymore. I resolved that from this point forward I was going to find ways to speak up, and be active, and learn, and agitate, and look for kindred spirits, and change the way things are. And that's where NOT ONLY THE FUTURE came from.
The argument of Klein's book is that for a long time there has been a strategy--NOT a conspiracy, a strategy--to exploit the "shock and awe" of disasters, natural like tsunamis or human-inflicted like wars, to advance the cause of unfettered free-market capitalism. Klein's argument is nuanced, complex, and rests on a lot of detailed study of different examples of the Shock Doctrine's implementation over the last thirty-five years.
http://www.amazon.com/Shock-Doctrine-Rise-Disaster-Capitalism/dp/0312427999/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1372400750&sr=1-1&keywords=The+Shock+Doctrine
A nutshell summation of the book's arguments are provided in Michael Winterbottom's film of the same title, which can be streamed here: http://www.amazon.com/The-Shock-Doctrine/dp/B006GUW718/ref=sr_1_1?s=movies-tv&ie=UTF8&qid=1372401225&sr=1-1&keywords=The+Shock+Doctrine
Klein has distanced herself from the film, and I would caution viewers that what the book is about does NOT lend itself to being put in a nutshell, so the movie is no substitute for a careful reading of the book itself.
The most brilliant section of The Shock Doctrine for me is Chapter 12, "The Capitalist Id," which is essentially a capitalist critique of capitalism, making the point that capitalist system ceases to work very well (or at least ceases to work well for more than a very few), once the system itself has no real competition.
Thursday, June 27, 2013
Thursday, June 20, 2013
ANARCHISM
I identify as an anarchist, but admit that I'm very much a beginning student. I've found the Anarchist FAQ online to be enormously informative and thought-provoking, but I have only scratched its surface. http://www.infoshop.org/AnAnarchistFAQ
Here's an introductory pass at what I mean (and don't mean) when I say "anarchism." Anarchy is a situation freed of hierarchies, in which power relations between people are as equal as can possibly be made. Anarchy is an ideal, and not an ideal to be realized in a mechanical, or a mechanically purist way. Some authority relationships are very hard to dispense with. As a parent and a teacher I have found myself in situations where I've reluctantly had to impose my authority, and in other situations where I caught myself enjoying my position of being able to call the shots, or anxiously clinging to the reins in fear of what would happen if I sought a more democratic way to approach a particular problem.
Another basic ideal of anarchism is the faith that human beings, freed of fear and coercion, will ultimately do the right thing. I have this faith, though I know that fears and coercions run deep; that they are not just imposed externally, and that there is much teaching and healing and re-framing to be done before this ideal becomes concretely real.
Henry David Thoreau opens his "Essay on Civil Disobedience" as follows: "I HEARTILY ACCEPT the motto, — 'That government is best which governs least'; and I should like to see it acted up to more rapidly and systematically. Carried out, it finally amounts to this, which also I believe, — 'That government is best which governs not at all'; and when men are prepared for it, that will be the kind of government which they will have." "When men are prepared for it" is the wise, key phrase in all of that. Preparing for it entails struggles and education both inward and outward: the leveling of power structures in work, government, school and family; and the building within of a responsible, compassionate, gracious and noble human individual.
The freeing of trade, of markets, and of trusting the invisible hand, have nothing to do with anarchism. That is because markets and predatory businessmen are the only things that end up being "free" in a "free market." The neo-liberal economics of Milton Friedman and his followers create hierarchies and reinforce power relationships between people; they do not abolish them.
Free improvised music has been an environment in which I've felt something like real and functioning anarchy: mutual respect and trust between musicians as we make something together with no leaders. Another musical situation that has given an experience of a different sort of anarchy is in performing certain ensemble scores of John Cage. Many of Cage's compositions involved his giving up many of the intentions traditionally imposed by a composer. He would also allow freedoms to performers not customarily assumed. There is an experience playing such a score of discovery, of intensified responsibility, of exhilarating surprise, that all feel connected to the relative leveling of hierarchies among and between performers and composer.
I grew up in a very very small town. There was no mayor or city council or police. I remember few crimes or trouble requiring the sheriff be called. In emergencies, people would figure out what to do. There was a volunteer fire department, and my mother, a registered nurse, would step up to be the equivalent of the town doctor when needed. There would be differences of opinion, and these could sometimes be tense, but it still feels to me that it made a whole lot of difference in how that community functioned, that we all had the luxury of actually knowing by face and name everyone living in or around town. Relatively, this was anarchy.
More about anarchy and anarchism in future posts. Thanks again for reading.
Here's an introductory pass at what I mean (and don't mean) when I say "anarchism." Anarchy is a situation freed of hierarchies, in which power relations between people are as equal as can possibly be made. Anarchy is an ideal, and not an ideal to be realized in a mechanical, or a mechanically purist way. Some authority relationships are very hard to dispense with. As a parent and a teacher I have found myself in situations where I've reluctantly had to impose my authority, and in other situations where I caught myself enjoying my position of being able to call the shots, or anxiously clinging to the reins in fear of what would happen if I sought a more democratic way to approach a particular problem.
Another basic ideal of anarchism is the faith that human beings, freed of fear and coercion, will ultimately do the right thing. I have this faith, though I know that fears and coercions run deep; that they are not just imposed externally, and that there is much teaching and healing and re-framing to be done before this ideal becomes concretely real.
Henry David Thoreau opens his "Essay on Civil Disobedience" as follows: "I HEARTILY ACCEPT the motto, — 'That government is best which governs least'; and I should like to see it acted up to more rapidly and systematically. Carried out, it finally amounts to this, which also I believe, — 'That government is best which governs not at all'; and when men are prepared for it, that will be the kind of government which they will have." "When men are prepared for it" is the wise, key phrase in all of that. Preparing for it entails struggles and education both inward and outward: the leveling of power structures in work, government, school and family; and the building within of a responsible, compassionate, gracious and noble human individual.
The freeing of trade, of markets, and of trusting the invisible hand, have nothing to do with anarchism. That is because markets and predatory businessmen are the only things that end up being "free" in a "free market." The neo-liberal economics of Milton Friedman and his followers create hierarchies and reinforce power relationships between people; they do not abolish them.
Free improvised music has been an environment in which I've felt something like real and functioning anarchy: mutual respect and trust between musicians as we make something together with no leaders. Another musical situation that has given an experience of a different sort of anarchy is in performing certain ensemble scores of John Cage. Many of Cage's compositions involved his giving up many of the intentions traditionally imposed by a composer. He would also allow freedoms to performers not customarily assumed. There is an experience playing such a score of discovery, of intensified responsibility, of exhilarating surprise, that all feel connected to the relative leveling of hierarchies among and between performers and composer.
I grew up in a very very small town. There was no mayor or city council or police. I remember few crimes or trouble requiring the sheriff be called. In emergencies, people would figure out what to do. There was a volunteer fire department, and my mother, a registered nurse, would step up to be the equivalent of the town doctor when needed. There would be differences of opinion, and these could sometimes be tense, but it still feels to me that it made a whole lot of difference in how that community functioned, that we all had the luxury of actually knowing by face and name everyone living in or around town. Relatively, this was anarchy.
More about anarchy and anarchism in future posts. Thanks again for reading.
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