Wednesday, May 4, 2011
A fantastic documentary on the state of Drum and Bass at the time I was a frequent partygoer
http://vimeo.com/17072599
Friday, February 25, 2011
Parallell Cuts
With the American economy still struggling to recover from the blowout of 2008, many citizens on all sides of the political spectrum are now openly questioning the government's ability to provide solutions and answers to the fiscal crisis. While, unfortunately, those that are given the most attention by the mainstream (read: corporate) media are the undereducated and woefully ignorant "Tea Partiers", there is a growing level of discontent in the moderate middle of this country, who are beginning to realize that the promise of the "American Dream" has been corrupted and destroyed by decades of corporate interference and influence peddling. In spite of this debasement of democracy, which has never been so obvious and obnoxious, the solutions that the right wing have chosen for the economic crisis have been centered around in the first case ensuring that the revenue and wealth for the richest in society remains at the highest levels the greater populace will tolerate and in the second case destroying any ability of the poor and less privileged to participate in society as anything more than pure labor by the inexorable destruction of all social social spending.
The tax cut extensions, passed by Congress and signed by ostensibly (laughably) liberal Democrat President Barack Obama will have the effect of adding approximately 2.5 trillion dollars to the deficit over the next 10 years. It's hard to see what possible stimulation to the lagging economy this can provide, given that in a weak economy, wealth is hoarded, not invested, as the return on investment is so difficult to predict (unless you're a bank, in which case you can rely on being bailed out, but that's another story). Therefore, giving tax cuts to those who already hold the vast majority of wealth in society is not only irresponsible, but fiscal suicide.
One can go even farther and see how foolish the tax cuts are, for the reasons stated above, and their inevitable effect on the economy as a whole. The economy rests on consumption as its main driving factor. If the consumptive power of the majority of citizens in an economy is restricted by their inability to access wealth, through the hoarding by the rich and the lack of incentive to invest, then the economy begins to stagnate. With no demand, there is no reason to supply. With no reason to supply, there are no jobs, and with no jobs, less reason to consume, more reason to hoard for all strata in society, etc, etc. This circular bathtub drain decline of the economy is what made the Great Depression even worse following the Stock Market's crash. No jobs- no demand- no supply- no jobs- no demand. The Great Depression was alleviated by the public works programs instituted by President Roosevelt, although were it not for World War II and the resulting demand for material the programs would have failed, mainly because he did not do enough and actually had begun to roll back many of the programs (resulting in an almost immediate dip in the economy).
The postwar economy was robust, and grew for an historically unprecedented two decades until 1973, when the inevitable contraction occurred. This contraction was not only inevitable, but easily foreseen. It is simply impossible for an economy and consumption to continually grow. Eventually the need for more products will wane. The world, resources and demand are finite necessarily. With the contraction of the economy, the wealthy looked around the landscape and realized their wealth could not exponentially grow at the levels it had in the past from their investments. Thus began a wholesale attack on a tax code which had been acceptable when growth was ensured, union and labor rights that had been a necessary evil to ensure timely production and social spending which would guarantee the freeing of personal funds for consumption. The wealth at the top would necessarily have to be protected at all costs, and then, as now, those in office were far far more beholden to the wealthy than the middle and lower classes.
In the past three decades, the assault on the poor and middle class has been relentless, with social services and public works programs being cut with the same zeal as taxes for the richest in the country. That the two cuts are frequently parallel should be unsurprising. Today, the Republican controlled House of Representatives is demanding more social spending cuts to facilitate the extension of tax cuts for the richest passed just this past December, and although the Democratically controlled Senate and Executive branch state they are only trying to compromise by offering up programs to be cut, it almost appears from an outside stance that the two are working together to ensure just the outcome the Republicans are forthright enough to say openly (whether that's actually true is irrelevant, this is complete conjecture given the general state of affairs in our government and the corporate influence). An even more damning example of the simultaneous groveling to the wealthy and attack on the lower classes is the union busting bill in Wisconsin- Governor Walker rammed through tax cuts and corporate subsidies valued at 140 million dollars of losses for the state treasury, then turned around and cut 137 million from public works and social spending to fix the deficit HE HAD JUST CREATED.
The only solution within our current economic and governmental societal makeup for the crisis we find ourselves in should be apparent to all but the most ideologically blinded. In order to reinvigorate the American economy, the American consumer must have the necessary wealth to consume. The hoarding of the wealthy is doing nothing for the economy as a whole when it is not invested. Therefore, we must tax the rich at levels above 40 percent and redistribute that wealth to the remaining 90 percent of Americans through social services, public works and even debt relief. If consumerism is the engine on which our economy relies to drive, we must stimulate it accordingly.
The tax cut extensions, passed by Congress and signed by ostensibly (laughably) liberal Democrat President Barack Obama will have the effect of adding approximately 2.5 trillion dollars to the deficit over the next 10 years. It's hard to see what possible stimulation to the lagging economy this can provide, given that in a weak economy, wealth is hoarded, not invested, as the return on investment is so difficult to predict (unless you're a bank, in which case you can rely on being bailed out, but that's another story). Therefore, giving tax cuts to those who already hold the vast majority of wealth in society is not only irresponsible, but fiscal suicide.
One can go even farther and see how foolish the tax cuts are, for the reasons stated above, and their inevitable effect on the economy as a whole. The economy rests on consumption as its main driving factor. If the consumptive power of the majority of citizens in an economy is restricted by their inability to access wealth, through the hoarding by the rich and the lack of incentive to invest, then the economy begins to stagnate. With no demand, there is no reason to supply. With no reason to supply, there are no jobs, and with no jobs, less reason to consume, more reason to hoard for all strata in society, etc, etc. This circular bathtub drain decline of the economy is what made the Great Depression even worse following the Stock Market's crash. No jobs- no demand- no supply- no jobs- no demand. The Great Depression was alleviated by the public works programs instituted by President Roosevelt, although were it not for World War II and the resulting demand for material the programs would have failed, mainly because he did not do enough and actually had begun to roll back many of the programs (resulting in an almost immediate dip in the economy).
The postwar economy was robust, and grew for an historically unprecedented two decades until 1973, when the inevitable contraction occurred. This contraction was not only inevitable, but easily foreseen. It is simply impossible for an economy and consumption to continually grow. Eventually the need for more products will wane. The world, resources and demand are finite necessarily. With the contraction of the economy, the wealthy looked around the landscape and realized their wealth could not exponentially grow at the levels it had in the past from their investments. Thus began a wholesale attack on a tax code which had been acceptable when growth was ensured, union and labor rights that had been a necessary evil to ensure timely production and social spending which would guarantee the freeing of personal funds for consumption. The wealth at the top would necessarily have to be protected at all costs, and then, as now, those in office were far far more beholden to the wealthy than the middle and lower classes.
In the past three decades, the assault on the poor and middle class has been relentless, with social services and public works programs being cut with the same zeal as taxes for the richest in the country. That the two cuts are frequently parallel should be unsurprising. Today, the Republican controlled House of Representatives is demanding more social spending cuts to facilitate the extension of tax cuts for the richest passed just this past December, and although the Democratically controlled Senate and Executive branch state they are only trying to compromise by offering up programs to be cut, it almost appears from an outside stance that the two are working together to ensure just the outcome the Republicans are forthright enough to say openly (whether that's actually true is irrelevant, this is complete conjecture given the general state of affairs in our government and the corporate influence). An even more damning example of the simultaneous groveling to the wealthy and attack on the lower classes is the union busting bill in Wisconsin- Governor Walker rammed through tax cuts and corporate subsidies valued at 140 million dollars of losses for the state treasury, then turned around and cut 137 million from public works and social spending to fix the deficit HE HAD JUST CREATED.
The only solution within our current economic and governmental societal makeup for the crisis we find ourselves in should be apparent to all but the most ideologically blinded. In order to reinvigorate the American economy, the American consumer must have the necessary wealth to consume. The hoarding of the wealthy is doing nothing for the economy as a whole when it is not invested. Therefore, we must tax the rich at levels above 40 percent and redistribute that wealth to the remaining 90 percent of Americans through social services, public works and even debt relief. If consumerism is the engine on which our economy relies to drive, we must stimulate it accordingly.
Tuesday, May 25, 2010
Jeffrey Sachs' Shortsightedness
Jeffrey Sachs' prescriptive work, Common Wealth: Economics For A Crowded Planet, offers up solutions to the increasingly dire straits of our planet and species survival. Sachs relies, not surprisingly, on the goals of his very own Millennium Promise Alliance, which propagates the same global panaceas formulated during his tenure as the Director of the United Nations Millennium Project. Sachs' optimism of these technological solutions, which will be explained in some depth later, is tempered by a realism borne of the study and experience of the failures of policy development. The question one finds oneself asking throughout the book, however, is this: are these solutions possible given the continually increasing consumption of the world? Sachs fails to address a reduction of consumption, and, in doing so, leaves his argument incomplete and highly flawed.
Sachs draws upon the work of his colleagues in his analysis of a myriad of survival-threatening Anthropocenic changes within our natural environment. The Anthropocene refers to a new period of the Earth's history, in which for the first time the radical changes to the environment are due to the actions of a species, in this case an evolved great ape known as homo sapiens. Humanity's insatiable desire for resources to provide for its ever growing population has had catastrophic results for the vast majority of life on the planet. Sachs details the damage, beginning with an observation of the increasing human population and the requirements of the planet to support it. Sachs goes on to discuss the fallout of these requirements, climate change, water overuse and species decline. Much, if not all, of this information is gleaned by Sachs from his colleagues at The Earth Institute at Columbia University, and there is no real reason to doubt the veracity of his claims due to his citing of data and use of graphical, numerical and literary explanations to elucidate each point. The Anthropocene is well documented within the book, and its consequences are obvious and dangerous to the survival not only of man, but his entire planetary ecosystem.
Sachs leaps right into providing the way out of this global mess which humanity has created. He relies mainly upon finding politically feasible means to convince the disparate nations of the world, with their varied and antithetical interests, to work together to find common ground on which to base successful intervention in the worst abuses of the world and one another, and, indeed, to reverse as much as possible the mistakes of the past in order to create a better future. These are admirable goals, and goals which it is difficult to find fault with. Sachs endorses several far ranging techniques to stem the flow of greenhouse gasses into the environment, including renewable sources of electricity production, electric powered cars and a cap and trade system for industrial emissions. As far as water, Sachs endorses rainwater harvesting, more efficient means of crop watering and even desalinization of salt water as a last resort. For the global human threat to just about every other species imaginable, Sachs is hopeful that implementation of biodiversity protections, the introduction of more aquaculture based farm fishing to offset the danger and damage to the already possibly irreversibly depleted global fish stocks and pricing of meats relative to their actual cost in land use and feed will lead to a more sustainable and fair world for all species. All these solutions (and these are but a sampling, though the following is true for all) are reliant on global treaties.
Now, these treaties are an easy place to take issue with Sachs, as they are all but unenforceable and completely dependent on the signatory nations accepting and abiding by them. One could easily argue that Sachs' entire work is admirable, but hopelessly utopian. "You see," one might say, "it's all well and good to promote the benefits to world security that execution of the treaties referenced and called for by Sachs, but that will never, ever happen. The nations of the world can not be trusted to act in concert!" This view is not exactly incorrect, although much of the blame for the impossibility of treaty enforcement lies with the more powerful nations whose interests are usually at odds with the interests of the treaties and whose support for said treaties is usually conditional on public advocation and legislative realization. The United States is undoubtedly the greatest offender in this regard, mainly because of its standing as an influential world leader and the repercussions and examples of its action, but it is not alone. China and India are two great polluters of the world and also resist taking action for the future and good of the planet for the short term goals of economic growth. With these impediments to global communal action, it is easy to put down Sachs' work as mere idealism. But what Sachs is calling for is more than simply the solutions laid out in the book, he is calling for a paradigm shift in how the world interacts.
A paradigm shift in the way the global village interacts is not an unattainable goal, but it does not go far enough. The global village we can define as all nations and peoples of the Earth, and the interaction within it as international relations. Thus, the paradigm shift called for by Sachs involves a radical readjustment in how nations deal with one another and further their interests. Yet Sachs' entire premise has a fatal flaw. Sachs refuses to even address two simple facts. The first is that the levels of consumption in the highly developed countries far outstrip those of the underdeveloped, so much so that the United States' consumption alone, if adopted with the rest of the world, would require 5.3 Earths to sustain our current population. The second is that the drive of the world economy which Sachs pins much of his hope on- the development as freedom ideal- relies specifically on increased global consumption as economic pilot and leader. It is somewhat easy to determine where this idealism comes from, Sachs' positions within the UN and his harshly prescriptive austerity measures to open up Eastern Europe's markets after the fall of the Soviet Union are indicative of a somewhat optimistic neoliberal conception of the world show his faith in and adherence to the principles of capitalism (although he does acknowledge the flaws of pure market societies). Unfortunately for Sachs, when this idealism drifts into the realm of consequences, his thesis begins to shake. This is shown in two specific examples.
One of Sachs' main points of hope and activism is the act of spreading information technology, in the form of cell phones and computers, to the developing world. This is not in itself a bad thing, connectivity to the rest of the world often has the result of higher education, tolerance and freedom. And it would be the height of hypocrisy for this student to deny the right to this technology to those far less fortunate as he writes this essay on his laptop. But there are very real consequences to the increase of information technology production, and they must be made clear when discussing the dissemination of the idea of their spread. First, most if not all information technology is made possible by a rare mineral known as coltan. Coltan is a very rare and precious mineral which possesses the ability to conduct the electronic transfers our cell phones and wireless devices require to work. It is mined around the world, but nowhere so much as the Congo. The Congo has been torn apart by the hunt for this and other resources, unspeakably horrific dehumanizing violence is practiced daily in the name of power grabs and resource access. The Congo is currently the battleground for no less than four surrounding nations, and coltan plays no small part. The strife, combined with the environmental degradation of the mining of the resource, are parallel to the very problems Sachs would have the spread of information technology assist in reducing. Secondly, the insatiable world desire for information technology joined with the lightning speed that the technology is created and developed has the consequence of swift equipment redundancies. These redundancies are seldom recyclable, and therefore the toxic computer waste of the developed nations has found a home on the shores and in the land of those poor nations who have traded their ecological well being for a measure of economic security. With the spread of information technologies to undeveloped nations, even the option of displacing their waste will not be feasible, let alone recycling, and the waste will have catastrophic effects. So here we see that despite Sachs' well-intentioned desire to see a spread of information technology to grow economically the poorer nations so they can take their place in the global capitalist order, increased consumption can only lead to more problems.
The second problem of Sachs' book is its attempts to maintain the developed world's obsession with the automobile. Sachs endorses plug-in hybrids, which would be charged on the electric grid during low power times (night, mainly) and use gasoline only after a certain threshold of power has been used or high power is needed. The idea works as long as there is a way to enforce the charging of the cars on the grid during low energy consumption and the electric grid is not dependent on dirty energy sources for its power. Right? Well, not exactly. Hybrid cars have already been shown to use up close to the amount of energy in their production that their use ostensibly saves. With the computer technology inside these hybrids, and their potential successors, the toxic waste and environmental cost of these supposedly green technologies are irrelevant. The damage of their production and eventual disposal equal or even outweigh the potential savings to the planet of their use. Yet Sachs does not even mention this, does not even recognize that there may be a need for the strict curbing of consumption around the world for the environment and ecological balance he professes to be concerned with to survive.
The issue of consumption is an issue we need to analyze in great detail if our societies and species can be expected to survive our own activities. When we consume, there are consequences for our environment. Humanity's history has been one of resource use and habitat manipulation, but it is only in the past two hundred years that resource overuse and habitat destruction have become the accepted and expected ways of life. Industrialization, for all the fringe benefits it may have provided humanity with, has had consequences which have been devastating to all species- including ours- on the planet. Therefore, to endorse a point of view, as Sachs does, that the solutions to these problems is not less but more industrialization, albeit a cleaner industrialization, is foolish. Sachs seems to think that if the entire world is developed and consuming at a rate to provide economies and people with health and prosperity (this rate is unreasonable to even imagine as a possibility), then these global problems can work themselves out. Greenhouse gasses? Don't stop driving alone or buying cars, buy electric! Industrial pollutants in the air? Develop your economy using dirty fuels then slowly phase them out! Destitute poverty? Don't take ownership of your resources or labor from foreign companies, buy a cell phone! Consume, consume, consume is what Sachs tells us, only do it in such a way that is palatable to your leisure class sensibilities of the white man's burden and charitably share your superior knowledge with the lesser, poor of this Earth. Change only what will not matter.
Sachs draws upon the work of his colleagues in his analysis of a myriad of survival-threatening Anthropocenic changes within our natural environment. The Anthropocene refers to a new period of the Earth's history, in which for the first time the radical changes to the environment are due to the actions of a species, in this case an evolved great ape known as homo sapiens. Humanity's insatiable desire for resources to provide for its ever growing population has had catastrophic results for the vast majority of life on the planet. Sachs details the damage, beginning with an observation of the increasing human population and the requirements of the planet to support it. Sachs goes on to discuss the fallout of these requirements, climate change, water overuse and species decline. Much, if not all, of this information is gleaned by Sachs from his colleagues at The Earth Institute at Columbia University, and there is no real reason to doubt the veracity of his claims due to his citing of data and use of graphical, numerical and literary explanations to elucidate each point. The Anthropocene is well documented within the book, and its consequences are obvious and dangerous to the survival not only of man, but his entire planetary ecosystem.
Sachs leaps right into providing the way out of this global mess which humanity has created. He relies mainly upon finding politically feasible means to convince the disparate nations of the world, with their varied and antithetical interests, to work together to find common ground on which to base successful intervention in the worst abuses of the world and one another, and, indeed, to reverse as much as possible the mistakes of the past in order to create a better future. These are admirable goals, and goals which it is difficult to find fault with. Sachs endorses several far ranging techniques to stem the flow of greenhouse gasses into the environment, including renewable sources of electricity production, electric powered cars and a cap and trade system for industrial emissions. As far as water, Sachs endorses rainwater harvesting, more efficient means of crop watering and even desalinization of salt water as a last resort. For the global human threat to just about every other species imaginable, Sachs is hopeful that implementation of biodiversity protections, the introduction of more aquaculture based farm fishing to offset the danger and damage to the already possibly irreversibly depleted global fish stocks and pricing of meats relative to their actual cost in land use and feed will lead to a more sustainable and fair world for all species. All these solutions (and these are but a sampling, though the following is true for all) are reliant on global treaties.
Now, these treaties are an easy place to take issue with Sachs, as they are all but unenforceable and completely dependent on the signatory nations accepting and abiding by them. One could easily argue that Sachs' entire work is admirable, but hopelessly utopian. "You see," one might say, "it's all well and good to promote the benefits to world security that execution of the treaties referenced and called for by Sachs, but that will never, ever happen. The nations of the world can not be trusted to act in concert!" This view is not exactly incorrect, although much of the blame for the impossibility of treaty enforcement lies with the more powerful nations whose interests are usually at odds with the interests of the treaties and whose support for said treaties is usually conditional on public advocation and legislative realization. The United States is undoubtedly the greatest offender in this regard, mainly because of its standing as an influential world leader and the repercussions and examples of its action, but it is not alone. China and India are two great polluters of the world and also resist taking action for the future and good of the planet for the short term goals of economic growth. With these impediments to global communal action, it is easy to put down Sachs' work as mere idealism. But what Sachs is calling for is more than simply the solutions laid out in the book, he is calling for a paradigm shift in how the world interacts.
A paradigm shift in the way the global village interacts is not an unattainable goal, but it does not go far enough. The global village we can define as all nations and peoples of the Earth, and the interaction within it as international relations. Thus, the paradigm shift called for by Sachs involves a radical readjustment in how nations deal with one another and further their interests. Yet Sachs' entire premise has a fatal flaw. Sachs refuses to even address two simple facts. The first is that the levels of consumption in the highly developed countries far outstrip those of the underdeveloped, so much so that the United States' consumption alone, if adopted with the rest of the world, would require 5.3 Earths to sustain our current population. The second is that the drive of the world economy which Sachs pins much of his hope on- the development as freedom ideal- relies specifically on increased global consumption as economic pilot and leader. It is somewhat easy to determine where this idealism comes from, Sachs' positions within the UN and his harshly prescriptive austerity measures to open up Eastern Europe's markets after the fall of the Soviet Union are indicative of a somewhat optimistic neoliberal conception of the world show his faith in and adherence to the principles of capitalism (although he does acknowledge the flaws of pure market societies). Unfortunately for Sachs, when this idealism drifts into the realm of consequences, his thesis begins to shake. This is shown in two specific examples.
One of Sachs' main points of hope and activism is the act of spreading information technology, in the form of cell phones and computers, to the developing world. This is not in itself a bad thing, connectivity to the rest of the world often has the result of higher education, tolerance and freedom. And it would be the height of hypocrisy for this student to deny the right to this technology to those far less fortunate as he writes this essay on his laptop. But there are very real consequences to the increase of information technology production, and they must be made clear when discussing the dissemination of the idea of their spread. First, most if not all information technology is made possible by a rare mineral known as coltan. Coltan is a very rare and precious mineral which possesses the ability to conduct the electronic transfers our cell phones and wireless devices require to work. It is mined around the world, but nowhere so much as the Congo. The Congo has been torn apart by the hunt for this and other resources, unspeakably horrific dehumanizing violence is practiced daily in the name of power grabs and resource access. The Congo is currently the battleground for no less than four surrounding nations, and coltan plays no small part. The strife, combined with the environmental degradation of the mining of the resource, are parallel to the very problems Sachs would have the spread of information technology assist in reducing. Secondly, the insatiable world desire for information technology joined with the lightning speed that the technology is created and developed has the consequence of swift equipment redundancies. These redundancies are seldom recyclable, and therefore the toxic computer waste of the developed nations has found a home on the shores and in the land of those poor nations who have traded their ecological well being for a measure of economic security. With the spread of information technologies to undeveloped nations, even the option of displacing their waste will not be feasible, let alone recycling, and the waste will have catastrophic effects. So here we see that despite Sachs' well-intentioned desire to see a spread of information technology to grow economically the poorer nations so they can take their place in the global capitalist order, increased consumption can only lead to more problems.
The second problem of Sachs' book is its attempts to maintain the developed world's obsession with the automobile. Sachs endorses plug-in hybrids, which would be charged on the electric grid during low power times (night, mainly) and use gasoline only after a certain threshold of power has been used or high power is needed. The idea works as long as there is a way to enforce the charging of the cars on the grid during low energy consumption and the electric grid is not dependent on dirty energy sources for its power. Right? Well, not exactly. Hybrid cars have already been shown to use up close to the amount of energy in their production that their use ostensibly saves. With the computer technology inside these hybrids, and their potential successors, the toxic waste and environmental cost of these supposedly green technologies are irrelevant. The damage of their production and eventual disposal equal or even outweigh the potential savings to the planet of their use. Yet Sachs does not even mention this, does not even recognize that there may be a need for the strict curbing of consumption around the world for the environment and ecological balance he professes to be concerned with to survive.
The issue of consumption is an issue we need to analyze in great detail if our societies and species can be expected to survive our own activities. When we consume, there are consequences for our environment. Humanity's history has been one of resource use and habitat manipulation, but it is only in the past two hundred years that resource overuse and habitat destruction have become the accepted and expected ways of life. Industrialization, for all the fringe benefits it may have provided humanity with, has had consequences which have been devastating to all species- including ours- on the planet. Therefore, to endorse a point of view, as Sachs does, that the solutions to these problems is not less but more industrialization, albeit a cleaner industrialization, is foolish. Sachs seems to think that if the entire world is developed and consuming at a rate to provide economies and people with health and prosperity (this rate is unreasonable to even imagine as a possibility), then these global problems can work themselves out. Greenhouse gasses? Don't stop driving alone or buying cars, buy electric! Industrial pollutants in the air? Develop your economy using dirty fuels then slowly phase them out! Destitute poverty? Don't take ownership of your resources or labor from foreign companies, buy a cell phone! Consume, consume, consume is what Sachs tells us, only do it in such a way that is palatable to your leisure class sensibilities of the white man's burden and charitably share your superior knowledge with the lesser, poor of this Earth. Change only what will not matter.
Monday, May 24, 2010
The roots of the immigration crisis.
Mexico and the United States have had a contentious relationship over the centuries, but today this relationship is incredibly strained despite the great interdependence each nation shares with the other. The context for this strain lies is the great border migration from Mexico into the Southwestern states. This migration is at times legal, but mostly is illegal, and here the problem begins. The problem of illegal immigration is compounded by the racism of the American people on the border who see (wrongly) employment opportunities vaporizing with the influx of non-native Americans and (partially correctly) their tax dollars going to the upkeep of an illegal population. The illegal immigration problem is the result of international policies of globalization that have had the effect of destroying the social programs and safety nets that stabilized and subsidized the population of the Mexican people.
The project of development for the Third World pursued by the First World, primarily the United States, had a great and profound affect on Mexico. This process of industrialization of undeveloped nations and their subsequent integration into the global economy was a continuation, in a fashion, of the colonialist policies of the pre-World War II. Because of the empire draining effects of that war, and because of the spreading of Western concepts of democracy, revolution, and individual freedom, the old repressive tactics of the traditional empire would not suffice to control the resources and labor of the global underclass. A new direction was needed for the First World, the global elite, as it were, if we take into account the population levels of the First World in comparison with their global consumption. This new direction required a delicate dance between on the one hand promoting a philosophy of individualist economic libertarianism aimed at subjugation elimination and freedom and on the other protecting First World rights and power over the resources and labor of the Third World. Thus, developmentalist policies came to be seen as not only the newer version of the "White Man's Burden", but also as the barometer up against which a nation's fortunes were measured.
Mexico, being the United States' neighbor to the south, came to the table of developmentalist negotiations in a unique position. There were two antithetical aspects to this position. For one, Mexico had the advantage on the table of providing the United States and its transnational corporations with labor at a rate cheaper than could be exploited domestically without having to ship capital and resources across far distances with the risks inherent in doing so. Also, the neighbor to the north, Canada, was a far more difficult partner for industry's bottom line, having, as it did and does, a higher cost of living and unionized labor force. In this regard, Mexico had an advantage. But this advantage was tempered by Mexico's dependence on the United States for loans and cross-border economic interactivity. This dependence relied on the US's singular place in the Western Hemisphere as economic and military hegemonic superpower. While Mexico had an advantage at the bargaining table in regards to what it could offer, the US held the power position by virtue of what it could withhold. It is no surprise, then, that Mexico adopted the policies "suggested" by its neighbor to the north.
Among the policies instituted in the name of development in Mexico was the Mexican Border Industrialization Program, or BIP. Intrinsically tied to the growing decentralization of the global production system and world labor force, the BIP "paralleled this 'decentralization'.. whereby unfinished components would come to the new industrial enclave for assembly to be sold on the world market as a world product. In 1965, the Mexican government implemented the BIP to allow entirely foreign-owned corporations to establish labor-intensive assembly plants within a 12 mile strip south of the border" (Development and Social Change, Philip McMichael, p.81). Thus began the cross-border economic relationship which would, as times became dire for the Mexican people, become the familiar starting point for those who dreamed of a better life in the north. The BIP provided exactly what Mexico had promised, furnishing US based transnational mega-corporations with cheaply manufactured products ready for assembly or sale in the US market within 12 miles of the border. Even today, as the US and Japan are increasingly moving their car factories to just over the Mexican border for US consumption, the BIP has had a lasting influence on the economic reality in which both the people of Mexico and the United States live.
With developmental policy came crushing debt. This debt had its origination in the currency devaluation and the deregulation of financial institutions in the 1970s. President Richard Nixon, in 1971, declared the dollar no longer tied to gold as a last resort for its value, having the effect of international currency floating in relative value to one another. International currency trading exploded, creating an industry of numerology whose total annual income was almost twice that of real production. With this sudden explosion of wealth, and the resulting currency instability that was a logical outcome of the policy, transnational corporations and financial institutions had little choice but to "diversify their global operations to reduce their risk" (McMichael, p. 125-126). This had the consequence of low interest loans ad infinitum to Third World countries, which in turn led those nation's leaders to take advantage of what was essentially free money. Although much of this money was recycled into the economy by way of public works projects with an eye to keeping a pacified public in the face of sometimes brutal and corrupt regimes and usually exploitative international economic practices of domestic production for export, some- and sometimes most- was inevitably lost to corrupt state officials and graft. Whatever the end result of the loan, the financial institutions were only too happy to loan and the Third World was only too happy to accept. "Too much money", as McMichaels says on page 126, "was lent on the assumption that countries could not go bankrupt". Once countries had problems repaying due to a myriad of issues, including but not limited to currency devaluation, they had no choice but to continue to take out loans simply to service the debt on the previous loans. It's easy to see how this course of action could lead to bankruptcy, which inevitably occurred, leading to a global debt crises, the solution of which were crushing austerity measures.
Debt management was a process by which the First World simultaneously disposed of the developmentalist mentality of its dealings with the Third World and ushered in the beginning of globalization. The Third World was in a bind. Constrained on the one hand by crushing debt, and on the other by the conditions of debt relief prescribed by the World Bank and the IMF, both instruments of the interests of the First World, the nations of the Third World found themselves in a bind. They had no choice but to accept the debt relief, despite the conditions set. These conditions were draconian austerity measures that aimed at the destruction of social programs for the poor and privatization of public resources- privatization that came from the First World more than from domestic industry. With these cuts in social spending came the inevitable consequences of food shortages, increased poverty and unrest. "The debt managers [of the IMF and the World Bank] placed the blame [for the debt crisis] on the policies of the debtor countries rather than on the organization of the global financial system", which had, of course, caused the crisis to be far worse than it otherwise may have been by continual low interest loans (McMichael, p.132). The only recourse for the debtor nations against these nation-destroying policies aiming at the profitability of the First World was a collective debtor's strike, which was seen as unlikely to work by the individual nations as they would have to rely on their fellows to implement the same strike measures, a risk many were hesitant to take.
Mexico was one of the first countries to collapse under the weight of its debt and thus became a testing ground for the measures the First World would tie their loans to. By 1982, Mexico had a national debt of $80 billion. The IMF agreed to service the debt, but only if Mexico would undertake to implement certain austerity measures, including, but not limited to, elimination of food subsidies, reduction of social health services and reduction of wages. Mexico's outgoing President Portillo railed against the IMF but was forced to reverse himself due to political pressure from the incoming President Miguel de Madrid, and the austerity measures proceeded as planned. The measures were a horror for the Mexican people. "The number of Mexicans in poverty rose from 32.1 to 41.3 million, matching the absolute increase in population size during 1983-1987 (emphasis added)... manufacturing growth rates plummeted...By 1986, Mexico was exporting to the United States more than $2 billion worth of fresh fruits, vegetables and beef, but also importing from that country $1.5 billion in farm product, largely basic grains and oil seeds. IMF structures made dependency on staple foods more expensive and reduced the government's role in subsidizing food staples" (McMichael, p. 135). Mexico had gone from being a poor but relatively social secure country to a poverty-striken wasteland of industry within less than half a generation.
Is it any wonder, then, that in a situation in which abject poverty had become an industrialized reality within a handful of years that destitute Mexicans would look northward for salvation and the survival of their families? When else in history have an oppressed and subjugated people not taken advantage of their proximity to their oppressor? While one can make the argument that the economic imperialism of the First World is not a perfect parallel to the imperialism of the colonial powers of yesteryear, the fact remains that the policies implemented by the Mexican government at the behest of the First World, and, due to proximity and the fact of the 50 percent exposure of US based banks in Mexico, specifically at the behest of the United States constitute an imperialism of economy. And while this essay has declined to tackle the subject head on, the dawn of NAFTA brought about not only capital flight from the United States to Mexico for the cheap labor available, but also brought about a massive decline in the value of the peso resulting from currency speculation and overvaluation. Even before NAFTA the seeds were there for massive migration northward from Mexico, and these seeds were not because of Mexico's policies or the character of the Mexican people. The true reason for the great illegal immigration of the Mexican people to the United States is the misguided policy of developmentalism that has been pursued with an eye towards First World profit at the expense of Third World humanity.
The project of development for the Third World pursued by the First World, primarily the United States, had a great and profound affect on Mexico. This process of industrialization of undeveloped nations and their subsequent integration into the global economy was a continuation, in a fashion, of the colonialist policies of the pre-World War II. Because of the empire draining effects of that war, and because of the spreading of Western concepts of democracy, revolution, and individual freedom, the old repressive tactics of the traditional empire would not suffice to control the resources and labor of the global underclass. A new direction was needed for the First World, the global elite, as it were, if we take into account the population levels of the First World in comparison with their global consumption. This new direction required a delicate dance between on the one hand promoting a philosophy of individualist economic libertarianism aimed at subjugation elimination and freedom and on the other protecting First World rights and power over the resources and labor of the Third World. Thus, developmentalist policies came to be seen as not only the newer version of the "White Man's Burden", but also as the barometer up against which a nation's fortunes were measured.
Mexico, being the United States' neighbor to the south, came to the table of developmentalist negotiations in a unique position. There were two antithetical aspects to this position. For one, Mexico had the advantage on the table of providing the United States and its transnational corporations with labor at a rate cheaper than could be exploited domestically without having to ship capital and resources across far distances with the risks inherent in doing so. Also, the neighbor to the north, Canada, was a far more difficult partner for industry's bottom line, having, as it did and does, a higher cost of living and unionized labor force. In this regard, Mexico had an advantage. But this advantage was tempered by Mexico's dependence on the United States for loans and cross-border economic interactivity. This dependence relied on the US's singular place in the Western Hemisphere as economic and military hegemonic superpower. While Mexico had an advantage at the bargaining table in regards to what it could offer, the US held the power position by virtue of what it could withhold. It is no surprise, then, that Mexico adopted the policies "suggested" by its neighbor to the north.
Among the policies instituted in the name of development in Mexico was the Mexican Border Industrialization Program, or BIP. Intrinsically tied to the growing decentralization of the global production system and world labor force, the BIP "paralleled this 'decentralization'.. whereby unfinished components would come to the new industrial enclave for assembly to be sold on the world market as a world product. In 1965, the Mexican government implemented the BIP to allow entirely foreign-owned corporations to establish labor-intensive assembly plants within a 12 mile strip south of the border" (Development and Social Change, Philip McMichael, p.81). Thus began the cross-border economic relationship which would, as times became dire for the Mexican people, become the familiar starting point for those who dreamed of a better life in the north. The BIP provided exactly what Mexico had promised, furnishing US based transnational mega-corporations with cheaply manufactured products ready for assembly or sale in the US market within 12 miles of the border. Even today, as the US and Japan are increasingly moving their car factories to just over the Mexican border for US consumption, the BIP has had a lasting influence on the economic reality in which both the people of Mexico and the United States live.
With developmental policy came crushing debt. This debt had its origination in the currency devaluation and the deregulation of financial institutions in the 1970s. President Richard Nixon, in 1971, declared the dollar no longer tied to gold as a last resort for its value, having the effect of international currency floating in relative value to one another. International currency trading exploded, creating an industry of numerology whose total annual income was almost twice that of real production. With this sudden explosion of wealth, and the resulting currency instability that was a logical outcome of the policy, transnational corporations and financial institutions had little choice but to "diversify their global operations to reduce their risk" (McMichael, p. 125-126). This had the consequence of low interest loans ad infinitum to Third World countries, which in turn led those nation's leaders to take advantage of what was essentially free money. Although much of this money was recycled into the economy by way of public works projects with an eye to keeping a pacified public in the face of sometimes brutal and corrupt regimes and usually exploitative international economic practices of domestic production for export, some- and sometimes most- was inevitably lost to corrupt state officials and graft. Whatever the end result of the loan, the financial institutions were only too happy to loan and the Third World was only too happy to accept. "Too much money", as McMichaels says on page 126, "was lent on the assumption that countries could not go bankrupt". Once countries had problems repaying due to a myriad of issues, including but not limited to currency devaluation, they had no choice but to continue to take out loans simply to service the debt on the previous loans. It's easy to see how this course of action could lead to bankruptcy, which inevitably occurred, leading to a global debt crises, the solution of which were crushing austerity measures.
Debt management was a process by which the First World simultaneously disposed of the developmentalist mentality of its dealings with the Third World and ushered in the beginning of globalization. The Third World was in a bind. Constrained on the one hand by crushing debt, and on the other by the conditions of debt relief prescribed by the World Bank and the IMF, both instruments of the interests of the First World, the nations of the Third World found themselves in a bind. They had no choice but to accept the debt relief, despite the conditions set. These conditions were draconian austerity measures that aimed at the destruction of social programs for the poor and privatization of public resources- privatization that came from the First World more than from domestic industry. With these cuts in social spending came the inevitable consequences of food shortages, increased poverty and unrest. "The debt managers [of the IMF and the World Bank] placed the blame [for the debt crisis] on the policies of the debtor countries rather than on the organization of the global financial system", which had, of course, caused the crisis to be far worse than it otherwise may have been by continual low interest loans (McMichael, p.132). The only recourse for the debtor nations against these nation-destroying policies aiming at the profitability of the First World was a collective debtor's strike, which was seen as unlikely to work by the individual nations as they would have to rely on their fellows to implement the same strike measures, a risk many were hesitant to take.
Mexico was one of the first countries to collapse under the weight of its debt and thus became a testing ground for the measures the First World would tie their loans to. By 1982, Mexico had a national debt of $80 billion. The IMF agreed to service the debt, but only if Mexico would undertake to implement certain austerity measures, including, but not limited to, elimination of food subsidies, reduction of social health services and reduction of wages. Mexico's outgoing President Portillo railed against the IMF but was forced to reverse himself due to political pressure from the incoming President Miguel de Madrid, and the austerity measures proceeded as planned. The measures were a horror for the Mexican people. "The number of Mexicans in poverty rose from 32.1 to 41.3 million, matching the absolute increase in population size during 1983-1987 (emphasis added)... manufacturing growth rates plummeted...By 1986, Mexico was exporting to the United States more than $2 billion worth of fresh fruits, vegetables and beef, but also importing from that country $1.5 billion in farm product, largely basic grains and oil seeds. IMF structures made dependency on staple foods more expensive and reduced the government's role in subsidizing food staples" (McMichael, p. 135). Mexico had gone from being a poor but relatively social secure country to a poverty-striken wasteland of industry within less than half a generation.
Is it any wonder, then, that in a situation in which abject poverty had become an industrialized reality within a handful of years that destitute Mexicans would look northward for salvation and the survival of their families? When else in history have an oppressed and subjugated people not taken advantage of their proximity to their oppressor? While one can make the argument that the economic imperialism of the First World is not a perfect parallel to the imperialism of the colonial powers of yesteryear, the fact remains that the policies implemented by the Mexican government at the behest of the First World, and, due to proximity and the fact of the 50 percent exposure of US based banks in Mexico, specifically at the behest of the United States constitute an imperialism of economy. And while this essay has declined to tackle the subject head on, the dawn of NAFTA brought about not only capital flight from the United States to Mexico for the cheap labor available, but also brought about a massive decline in the value of the peso resulting from currency speculation and overvaluation. Even before NAFTA the seeds were there for massive migration northward from Mexico, and these seeds were not because of Mexico's policies or the character of the Mexican people. The true reason for the great illegal immigration of the Mexican people to the United States is the misguided policy of developmentalism that has been pursued with an eye towards First World profit at the expense of Third World humanity.
Saturday, May 22, 2010
Roscoe Pound and the Negative Community
Roscoe Pound's collection of essays, An Introduction to the Philosophy of Law, provides a historical and analytical account of the origins and evolution of our system of laws. From the philosophical beginnings of the Western system of law in Greece and Rome to the divergent tracks of the Continental and Anglo-American schools of legal application in the mid-twentieth century, Pound shows how law today is influenced equally by bygone traditions and the extenuating circumstances of modern economic life. Within the many rich ideas explored within the text lies a common thread of a sort of libertarianism- not a libertarianism that argues for the freedom of man from government, but instead a libertarianism that argues for a freedom of man within government. Pound's philosophy approaches equally the socialistic worldview of the positivist analysis in the book, leading to interesting, and yet not contradictory, points of view on subjects ranging from contractual obligation, liability, the ideological basis of property and the wider subject of proper, fair application of law within our American society. The idea of a "negative community", from which our society evolved and in which nothing is owned and all is communal, is one that shows the genesis of our concepts of law and property.
Pound begins his look at legal philosophy by examining the need for it in a society that depends on its rules in its day to day economic and social interactions. Within the building of a legalistic society, the transitional period between a negative society of communal living and an affirmative one of personal ownership, the ideology of natural- and by natural Pound refers to the state of true being that the Pre-Socratic Greek philosophers used- laws and rules are by necessity correctively changed and challenged by legal reason. "The technique", that was used to evolve the traditional, mythologically based set of societal rules into a more stable system of law, explains Pound, "was one of legal reason; but it was a legal reason identified with natural reason and worked out and applied under the influence of a philosophical ideal", in this case the ideal of stability and security within the budding society (Pound, p.10-11). The need for a stable form of governance between individuals in society is a need Pound readily admits, in fact, he goes so far as to say that law exists in order to "measure all situations by an idealized form of the social order of the time and place", or, in other words, to effect as perfectly as the bureaucratic order of government can the ideals of society (Pp. 12). Where the function of legal philosophy fits in to this scheme is to attempt to reconcile the stoic, fixed ideal of law with the changing societal mores, and to find a rationalization for these changes that is palatable to the public and elite alike. Thus, legal philosophy is an integral part of the evolutionary process of law- it provides a meditative and theoretical background for the changes that law must undergo in a transitional society.
Pound further examines the function legal philosophy in society as he approaches the subject of the "end of law", ostensibly the entire function of law itself- to make itself unnecessary by instituting such undeniably true tenets of legality as to make disobedience to them a societal impossibility. This was the desire of the Greeks, who saw law as "a device to keep each man in his appointed groove in society and thus prevent friction with his fellows", a social strata reinforcement that was the zenith of kinship and caste related society, such that to deny these laws would be to deny one's own culture (Pp. 34). Thus Heraclitus said that the public "should fight for their law as for their city wall"; their walls were to keep out invaders and their laws were to keep within their cultural and social standards. To allow one to fall, the other would not be far behind. To Heraclitus, the end of law is synonymous with the protection of it. Law simply is, and it should be protected as such. But this is more a result and consequence of his time in history than of any revolutionary and perfectly static theory of law, as Heraclitus lived many thousands of years before the advent of the division of labor, a recurring theme for Pound, who defines today's quasi-capitalistic political economy as directly correlative to this revolution of production. For Heraclitus, however, society and life conformed more or less to the patterns of the past and thus a major change in them was unforeseeable. The end of law had already occurred for his culture, as it had evolved far enough from it roots as a negative community towards one of positive possession. Perhaps the lesson of Heraclitus is therefore not that he was foolish and wrong, but that we too run the risk of not being apprehensive of the future and what it may hold for us when we look to our utopian post-law worlds- whichever they may be.
Pound has his beliefs, though they are for the most part disguised within the objectivity of his prose and they tend, again, in the direction of libertarianism without reaching the point of blind ideology. Pound's streak of realistic individualism is perhaps most clearly articulated on page 60, where he makes a rare leap of personal judgement on the entire ideology of judicial theory, Says Pound, "we need a theory [of law] which recognizes the administrative element as a legitimate part of the judicial function and insists that individualization in the application of legal precepts is no less important than the contents of these precepts themselves". To Pound, then, the evolution of the affirmative society has necessitated a bureaucracy of administration that has legitimacy and authority, but, on the other hand, the individual interpretation of law, an individualistic approach to the entire legal sphere, must also have credence and legitimacy. It is almost as if, in our society of affirmative private ownership, we have had as res communes no longer land, material goods or autonomy, but the sphere of law, the rules by which we are all expected to abide, must still be seen as a negativist throwback, an element of our society we all have an interest and stake in. Therefore we can see in Pound's philosophy a true and strong respect for the individual, and individualist interpretation of the res communes of law, tempered by a realism that understands the demands of modern society for an administrative rule of the publicly owned philosophical background to our society's rules. And Pound also realizes the limits of law and its philosophical rationale- "organization and system are logical constructions of the expounder rather than in the external world expounded" (Pp. 72). So while he on the one hand exhorts the power and righteousness of the individual to interpret, apply and live by the rules of society, he also understands that these rules are not set in stone, and subject to change. In other words, Pound believes that there should be a great amount of individualism and personal latitude in how one approaches the res communes of law, all the while recognizing the imperative for society to use the power of governmental authority, given and granted by law, to enforce the immutable rule of law so far as it has not been revised within the parameters society has given it.
The concept of the negative community has a place within the entire Idea of law, and specifically within Pound's work. First it is necessary to go to the text to see Pound's explanation of it, in turn an interpretation of the theories of Pufendorf. Pound says Pufendorf argues "that there was in the beginning a 'negative community'. That is, all things were originally res communes. No one owned them. They were subject to use by all" (Pp. 116). Pound agrees with this premise, expanding it with the help of Blackstone, who Pound writes "held that a principle of acquisition by a temporary power of control coextensive with possession expressed the nature of man in primitive times and that afterward, with the growth of civilization, the nature of man in a civilized society was expressed by a principle of complete permanent control of what had been occupied exclusively, including as a necessary incident of such control the ius disponendi (or right of property disposition)" (ibid.). These two philosophical interpretations of the pre-legal society are compatible with one another in that they both show a pre-ownership society in action. On the one hand, in a purely Pufendorf negative society theory, before the advent of private ownership, all society was in res communes. But from the more detailed analysis of Blackstone, a development of this idea, we see that there was indeed a concept of ownership in the negative society, but one that hinged on and was predicated on the concept of temporary ownership and use. The idea of permanent ownership and the solitary right to something was unheard until the emergence of the affirmative society. This evolutionary societal change is the key to understanding our current state of law and governance.
In the transitional period between a negative and affirmative community, there begins to become a need for a system of rules and laws that can assist these changes and hopefully find peaceful solutions to disputes of the new property and economic inter-relationship reality. The negative community, with its reliance on the communal ownership of land and means of production, has no need for a set system of law, and if there is any law it refers only to the basics of mutual respect that are integral to the simplest human interaction. Once the affirmative community, with its concept of private ownership and possession, comes to rear its head, is there a need for a more staid and detailed form of legality. This brings us back to the natural law/legal reason debate and integration in political theory, such that the theory begins to need to incorporate abstractions of reason and theory into what had traditionally been seen as natural truth, the being and true state of things and their natural properties. It is the idea of possession and the affirmative community that leads to the need for law proper.
Liability, property and contract are the facets of law Pound concentrates on, and we can see within each how these were unneeded in the negative community and were necessitated by the emergence of the affirmative community. Liability, first, because its beginnings as "a duty to buy off the vengeance to him to whom an injury had been done" evolved into "recovery of a thing certain, or what was originally the same, a sum certain, promised in such wise as to endanger the general security if the promise is not carried out" and has become, in our society, "to be based on an act, and it must be a culpable act" (Pp. 74, 75, 81). To put this another way, the law of liability was originally purely to prevent acts of violence from breaking out whenever the self-preservation or pride of an individual was challenged. From this came recovery, which was based more upon the economic and physical results of contractual promises. Here it is apparent that the affirmative community is coming to the fore, in that we see promises made in reference to property and possession, otherwise, what would be the use in recovery? Finally, we come to liability as regards to knowing, intentional activity that has an adverse affect on others. This has a direct correlation to the evolution of the affirmative community. In the negative community, there are no intentional damages to the individual from the individual, as the individual does not exist as the same entity as he does within the affirmative community. In the negative community, the individual is a part of the whole. There is no individual ownership, and thus the concept of the individual is different than ours, based as it is in the negative community on the community as a sum of the individuals within it.
Property is the conceptual genesis of the affirmative community and contract law is the logical continuance of this theoretical starting point. Property, private property, is an irreconcilable idea for the citizen of the negative community. All property is public, and the concept of property itself is somewhat foreign to the negative denizen, as all there is is public, and cannot be owned by any individual in society. But it is precisely the idea of private property, the idea that "control of an owner [of property], in order to be complete, must include not only the power to give inter vivos but also the power to provide for devolution after death as a sort of postponed gift" (Pp. 115), that is antithetical to the negative community. If one cannot own something for oneself alone, how can one transfer any possession or exclusive use of said article to one's heirs after death? The answer lies in our modern ideal of property, based on the idea of discovery and production, in which what one finds is his by natural right, and what is produced belongs to either the producer, owner and employer, or both. Contract is a natural outgrowth of this theory. Contract presupposes a society in which all interactions are done with the backdrop of economic life having direct correlation with property and its production and usurpation. Contract also, of course, has a backdrop in tradition in culture, a backdrop of promises and the bond of one's word. But what contract has evolved into in our society is far different than a simple handshake and honor pledge. Contract now becomes, "in a commercial and industrial society, a claim or want or demand of society that promises be kept and that undertakings be carried out in good faith, a social interest in the stability of promises as a social and economic institution.. The legal idea, so far as there is one, is not of obligation but of property right to the creditor" (Pp. 133-34, 138). Contract is a technique of the property class to honor each other's debts and to keep the system of property alive, lest it be destroyed by its own deficiencies of logic and create an end to the affirmative society once and for all.
The negative community is where our society evolved from. With the beginning of the widespread acceptance of the idea of private property, society needed a clear cut and fixed system of rules. This was provided by the integration of conceptual natural law and legal reasoning. The resulting legal framework of society, with the function of legal philosophy within it being to rationalize those changes in law that naturally occur within a constantly evolving society, is one that has been with us for millennia, though, again, in different forms throughout the centuries. The affirmative community of private ownership brought with it many changes, among them the institution of administrative bureaucracies, a necessary evil from the philosophical perspective of Roscoe Pound. Individualism and the res communes of law, the only true public possession we all still share, are compatible in their likeness, that is, their similarities are that they are both based within the individuals ability to determine their reality. The negative community is a thing of the past, but perhaps, with the end of law, we will see its resurgence.
Pound begins his look at legal philosophy by examining the need for it in a society that depends on its rules in its day to day economic and social interactions. Within the building of a legalistic society, the transitional period between a negative society of communal living and an affirmative one of personal ownership, the ideology of natural- and by natural Pound refers to the state of true being that the Pre-Socratic Greek philosophers used- laws and rules are by necessity correctively changed and challenged by legal reason. "The technique", that was used to evolve the traditional, mythologically based set of societal rules into a more stable system of law, explains Pound, "was one of legal reason; but it was a legal reason identified with natural reason and worked out and applied under the influence of a philosophical ideal", in this case the ideal of stability and security within the budding society (Pound, p.10-11). The need for a stable form of governance between individuals in society is a need Pound readily admits, in fact, he goes so far as to say that law exists in order to "measure all situations by an idealized form of the social order of the time and place", or, in other words, to effect as perfectly as the bureaucratic order of government can the ideals of society (Pp. 12). Where the function of legal philosophy fits in to this scheme is to attempt to reconcile the stoic, fixed ideal of law with the changing societal mores, and to find a rationalization for these changes that is palatable to the public and elite alike. Thus, legal philosophy is an integral part of the evolutionary process of law- it provides a meditative and theoretical background for the changes that law must undergo in a transitional society.
Pound further examines the function legal philosophy in society as he approaches the subject of the "end of law", ostensibly the entire function of law itself- to make itself unnecessary by instituting such undeniably true tenets of legality as to make disobedience to them a societal impossibility. This was the desire of the Greeks, who saw law as "a device to keep each man in his appointed groove in society and thus prevent friction with his fellows", a social strata reinforcement that was the zenith of kinship and caste related society, such that to deny these laws would be to deny one's own culture (Pp. 34). Thus Heraclitus said that the public "should fight for their law as for their city wall"; their walls were to keep out invaders and their laws were to keep within their cultural and social standards. To allow one to fall, the other would not be far behind. To Heraclitus, the end of law is synonymous with the protection of it. Law simply is, and it should be protected as such. But this is more a result and consequence of his time in history than of any revolutionary and perfectly static theory of law, as Heraclitus lived many thousands of years before the advent of the division of labor, a recurring theme for Pound, who defines today's quasi-capitalistic political economy as directly correlative to this revolution of production. For Heraclitus, however, society and life conformed more or less to the patterns of the past and thus a major change in them was unforeseeable. The end of law had already occurred for his culture, as it had evolved far enough from it roots as a negative community towards one of positive possession. Perhaps the lesson of Heraclitus is therefore not that he was foolish and wrong, but that we too run the risk of not being apprehensive of the future and what it may hold for us when we look to our utopian post-law worlds- whichever they may be.
Pound has his beliefs, though they are for the most part disguised within the objectivity of his prose and they tend, again, in the direction of libertarianism without reaching the point of blind ideology. Pound's streak of realistic individualism is perhaps most clearly articulated on page 60, where he makes a rare leap of personal judgement on the entire ideology of judicial theory, Says Pound, "we need a theory [of law] which recognizes the administrative element as a legitimate part of the judicial function and insists that individualization in the application of legal precepts is no less important than the contents of these precepts themselves". To Pound, then, the evolution of the affirmative society has necessitated a bureaucracy of administration that has legitimacy and authority, but, on the other hand, the individual interpretation of law, an individualistic approach to the entire legal sphere, must also have credence and legitimacy. It is almost as if, in our society of affirmative private ownership, we have had as res communes no longer land, material goods or autonomy, but the sphere of law, the rules by which we are all expected to abide, must still be seen as a negativist throwback, an element of our society we all have an interest and stake in. Therefore we can see in Pound's philosophy a true and strong respect for the individual, and individualist interpretation of the res communes of law, tempered by a realism that understands the demands of modern society for an administrative rule of the publicly owned philosophical background to our society's rules. And Pound also realizes the limits of law and its philosophical rationale- "organization and system are logical constructions of the expounder rather than in the external world expounded" (Pp. 72). So while he on the one hand exhorts the power and righteousness of the individual to interpret, apply and live by the rules of society, he also understands that these rules are not set in stone, and subject to change. In other words, Pound believes that there should be a great amount of individualism and personal latitude in how one approaches the res communes of law, all the while recognizing the imperative for society to use the power of governmental authority, given and granted by law, to enforce the immutable rule of law so far as it has not been revised within the parameters society has given it.
The concept of the negative community has a place within the entire Idea of law, and specifically within Pound's work. First it is necessary to go to the text to see Pound's explanation of it, in turn an interpretation of the theories of Pufendorf. Pound says Pufendorf argues "that there was in the beginning a 'negative community'. That is, all things were originally res communes. No one owned them. They were subject to use by all" (Pp. 116). Pound agrees with this premise, expanding it with the help of Blackstone, who Pound writes "held that a principle of acquisition by a temporary power of control coextensive with possession expressed the nature of man in primitive times and that afterward, with the growth of civilization, the nature of man in a civilized society was expressed by a principle of complete permanent control of what had been occupied exclusively, including as a necessary incident of such control the ius disponendi (or right of property disposition)" (ibid.). These two philosophical interpretations of the pre-legal society are compatible with one another in that they both show a pre-ownership society in action. On the one hand, in a purely Pufendorf negative society theory, before the advent of private ownership, all society was in res communes. But from the more detailed analysis of Blackstone, a development of this idea, we see that there was indeed a concept of ownership in the negative society, but one that hinged on and was predicated on the concept of temporary ownership and use. The idea of permanent ownership and the solitary right to something was unheard until the emergence of the affirmative society. This evolutionary societal change is the key to understanding our current state of law and governance.
In the transitional period between a negative and affirmative community, there begins to become a need for a system of rules and laws that can assist these changes and hopefully find peaceful solutions to disputes of the new property and economic inter-relationship reality. The negative community, with its reliance on the communal ownership of land and means of production, has no need for a set system of law, and if there is any law it refers only to the basics of mutual respect that are integral to the simplest human interaction. Once the affirmative community, with its concept of private ownership and possession, comes to rear its head, is there a need for a more staid and detailed form of legality. This brings us back to the natural law/legal reason debate and integration in political theory, such that the theory begins to need to incorporate abstractions of reason and theory into what had traditionally been seen as natural truth, the being and true state of things and their natural properties. It is the idea of possession and the affirmative community that leads to the need for law proper.
Liability, property and contract are the facets of law Pound concentrates on, and we can see within each how these were unneeded in the negative community and were necessitated by the emergence of the affirmative community. Liability, first, because its beginnings as "a duty to buy off the vengeance to him to whom an injury had been done" evolved into "recovery of a thing certain, or what was originally the same, a sum certain, promised in such wise as to endanger the general security if the promise is not carried out" and has become, in our society, "to be based on an act, and it must be a culpable act" (Pp. 74, 75, 81). To put this another way, the law of liability was originally purely to prevent acts of violence from breaking out whenever the self-preservation or pride of an individual was challenged. From this came recovery, which was based more upon the economic and physical results of contractual promises. Here it is apparent that the affirmative community is coming to the fore, in that we see promises made in reference to property and possession, otherwise, what would be the use in recovery? Finally, we come to liability as regards to knowing, intentional activity that has an adverse affect on others. This has a direct correlation to the evolution of the affirmative community. In the negative community, there are no intentional damages to the individual from the individual, as the individual does not exist as the same entity as he does within the affirmative community. In the negative community, the individual is a part of the whole. There is no individual ownership, and thus the concept of the individual is different than ours, based as it is in the negative community on the community as a sum of the individuals within it.
Property is the conceptual genesis of the affirmative community and contract law is the logical continuance of this theoretical starting point. Property, private property, is an irreconcilable idea for the citizen of the negative community. All property is public, and the concept of property itself is somewhat foreign to the negative denizen, as all there is is public, and cannot be owned by any individual in society. But it is precisely the idea of private property, the idea that "control of an owner [of property], in order to be complete, must include not only the power to give inter vivos but also the power to provide for devolution after death as a sort of postponed gift" (Pp. 115), that is antithetical to the negative community. If one cannot own something for oneself alone, how can one transfer any possession or exclusive use of said article to one's heirs after death? The answer lies in our modern ideal of property, based on the idea of discovery and production, in which what one finds is his by natural right, and what is produced belongs to either the producer, owner and employer, or both. Contract is a natural outgrowth of this theory. Contract presupposes a society in which all interactions are done with the backdrop of economic life having direct correlation with property and its production and usurpation. Contract also, of course, has a backdrop in tradition in culture, a backdrop of promises and the bond of one's word. But what contract has evolved into in our society is far different than a simple handshake and honor pledge. Contract now becomes, "in a commercial and industrial society, a claim or want or demand of society that promises be kept and that undertakings be carried out in good faith, a social interest in the stability of promises as a social and economic institution.. The legal idea, so far as there is one, is not of obligation but of property right to the creditor" (Pp. 133-34, 138). Contract is a technique of the property class to honor each other's debts and to keep the system of property alive, lest it be destroyed by its own deficiencies of logic and create an end to the affirmative society once and for all.
The negative community is where our society evolved from. With the beginning of the widespread acceptance of the idea of private property, society needed a clear cut and fixed system of rules. This was provided by the integration of conceptual natural law and legal reasoning. The resulting legal framework of society, with the function of legal philosophy within it being to rationalize those changes in law that naturally occur within a constantly evolving society, is one that has been with us for millennia, though, again, in different forms throughout the centuries. The affirmative community of private ownership brought with it many changes, among them the institution of administrative bureaucracies, a necessary evil from the philosophical perspective of Roscoe Pound. Individualism and the res communes of law, the only true public possession we all still share, are compatible in their likeness, that is, their similarities are that they are both based within the individuals ability to determine their reality. The negative community is a thing of the past, but perhaps, with the end of law, we will see its resurgence.
Tuesday, May 18, 2010
The Sweatshop Culture of Capital
The economic realities that force those in the lower strata of global society to accept employment in industries that are reliant on the quasi-slavery of sweatshops are the result of a greater symptomatic issue that lies within the capitalist economic role played by globalization. While thinkers such as Nicholas Kristof and Thomas Friedman extoll the fringe benefits that the sweatshop brings to impoverished, undeveloped nations, what the sweatshop- and in a broader sense, the influence of capital itself- really delivers to the people and nations it is customarily seen in is an upheaval in social norms and destruction of not only traditional ways of life, but also the unique cultures that existed beforehand. The sweatshop and the shifts in culture, economy and life that come with its arrival parallel the broader destruction capital leaves in its wake as it expands.
John Miller's article on Africa and sweatshops in Real World Macro, "Nike to the Rescue?", illustrates the sweatshop problem well. On the one hand, Miller recognizes the need for some economic stimuli for the beleaguered and destitute African populations, and knows this need will not be simply taken care of without some investment from wealthier nations. On the other hand, this investment need not be based upon multinationals setting up shop within these countries, using the cheap labor available until the workers collude to strengthen their bargaining position, then use the power of capital flight to move on to the next impoverished area of the world, and so on. The investment, rather, should come in the form of what the World Bank and IMF are ostensibly all about, that is, assisting developing nations to build their economies up from the ground and increasing the standard of living for their people.
But the World Bank and the IMF are notoriously deserving of the mistrust their overtures are greeted with in many, if not all, developing nations. The loans given by the World Bank and the IMF are frequently dependent on certain provisions that consistently have the result of depriving the populace of state support and selling national resources to the highest- and generally foreign- bidder. These, what Larry Peterson in his article "Wolfowitz and the World Bank: A Temporary Farce, but a Continuing Tragedy" defines as "austerity measures- cuts in health and education spending for instance", which lead to domestic bankruptcy of the national industries and hasten the looting of the carcass of what may have once been a poor, but somewhat stable, nation. The entire scam is perpetuated by a global debt trap.
The global debt trap is an ingenious and sadistic piece of business used by those nations with power to force their will on those nations who are weak and vulnerable. The trap is simple. Take Nation A, the rich nation, and Nation B, the poor one. Nation B is dependent on Nation A for certain goods it needs for the subsistence of its populace. Nation A can provide these goods, or, at least, can provide the capital needed in the form of a loan so Nation B can purchase these goods from other nations. The loans must be repaid, and therefore Nation B becomes more and more in the hole as it attempts to repay, but as the interest accrues, the debt becomes insurmountable. After a certain amount of time and capital loss, Nation B has no choice. It must go to the World Bank and the IMF. And these international banks impose "structural adjustment programs on countries which have no choice but to comply or risk their continued access to capital" (Peterson).
So here the sweatshop and the upheavals of capital come into play. With an economy already in shambles and the implementation of austerity measures completed, Nation B has no choice but to continue on the path of allowing itself to be looted ad infinitum by multinational companies which have been circling, like vultures, the corpse of the nation. The World Bank and IMF have exacerbated the situation by their forcing of privatization down the throats of nations without the necessary standing to deny it. No capital controls here, as industry clear cuts culture in its drive for cheap labor and resources. Indigenous populations are wrenched from their homes and livelihoods in order for industry to attain the resources their land sits atop and in order for more and more urban labor. The cultural transformations of capital are never pretty.
Capital cannot sustain cultures it encounters, rather, it must destroy them to survive. Whether through the introduction of labor division in the form of sweatshops, industrial production, the annihilation of the safety net or resource grabbing, capital's encounters with society are never pretty. For the introduction of capital into poor nations to be described as beneficial to those nations is nothing short of preposterous, yet this preposterousness is the hallmark of much of the New York Times' editorial board. Capitalism destroys all cultures it encounters, and in the spectrum of globalization, this destruction is increased.
John Miller's article on Africa and sweatshops in Real World Macro, "Nike to the Rescue?", illustrates the sweatshop problem well. On the one hand, Miller recognizes the need for some economic stimuli for the beleaguered and destitute African populations, and knows this need will not be simply taken care of without some investment from wealthier nations. On the other hand, this investment need not be based upon multinationals setting up shop within these countries, using the cheap labor available until the workers collude to strengthen their bargaining position, then use the power of capital flight to move on to the next impoverished area of the world, and so on. The investment, rather, should come in the form of what the World Bank and IMF are ostensibly all about, that is, assisting developing nations to build their economies up from the ground and increasing the standard of living for their people.
But the World Bank and the IMF are notoriously deserving of the mistrust their overtures are greeted with in many, if not all, developing nations. The loans given by the World Bank and the IMF are frequently dependent on certain provisions that consistently have the result of depriving the populace of state support and selling national resources to the highest- and generally foreign- bidder. These, what Larry Peterson in his article "Wolfowitz and the World Bank: A Temporary Farce, but a Continuing Tragedy" defines as "austerity measures- cuts in health and education spending for instance", which lead to domestic bankruptcy of the national industries and hasten the looting of the carcass of what may have once been a poor, but somewhat stable, nation. The entire scam is perpetuated by a global debt trap.
The global debt trap is an ingenious and sadistic piece of business used by those nations with power to force their will on those nations who are weak and vulnerable. The trap is simple. Take Nation A, the rich nation, and Nation B, the poor one. Nation B is dependent on Nation A for certain goods it needs for the subsistence of its populace. Nation A can provide these goods, or, at least, can provide the capital needed in the form of a loan so Nation B can purchase these goods from other nations. The loans must be repaid, and therefore Nation B becomes more and more in the hole as it attempts to repay, but as the interest accrues, the debt becomes insurmountable. After a certain amount of time and capital loss, Nation B has no choice. It must go to the World Bank and the IMF. And these international banks impose "structural adjustment programs on countries which have no choice but to comply or risk their continued access to capital" (Peterson).
So here the sweatshop and the upheavals of capital come into play. With an economy already in shambles and the implementation of austerity measures completed, Nation B has no choice but to continue on the path of allowing itself to be looted ad infinitum by multinational companies which have been circling, like vultures, the corpse of the nation. The World Bank and IMF have exacerbated the situation by their forcing of privatization down the throats of nations without the necessary standing to deny it. No capital controls here, as industry clear cuts culture in its drive for cheap labor and resources. Indigenous populations are wrenched from their homes and livelihoods in order for industry to attain the resources their land sits atop and in order for more and more urban labor. The cultural transformations of capital are never pretty.
Capital cannot sustain cultures it encounters, rather, it must destroy them to survive. Whether through the introduction of labor division in the form of sweatshops, industrial production, the annihilation of the safety net or resource grabbing, capital's encounters with society are never pretty. For the introduction of capital into poor nations to be described as beneficial to those nations is nothing short of preposterous, yet this preposterousness is the hallmark of much of the New York Times' editorial board. Capitalism destroys all cultures it encounters, and in the spectrum of globalization, this destruction is increased.
Monday, May 17, 2010
J.S. Mill Makes the Case for Totalitarian Government
John Stuart Mill's classic of libertarian philosophy, On Liberty, presents a bit of a logical conundrum to students of Mill's ideology. Mill's assertion that the only need for intervention in one's private affairs by the State is those actions taken by the individual which directly negatively impact the abilities of another individual to pursue his or her interests. This is the entire predicate for the argument in favor of the State from the libertarian ideology, that the State's role must be incredibly limited in order to foster political and economic freedom, while at the same time fulfilling the role of peacemaker and contract enforcer between the interests and dealings of individuals within society. This argument, simultaneously in favor and opposed to the concept of the State, falls under the weight of its own logic and one's interpretation of it.
"So long as it is at their own risk and peril", individuals should not be constrained from any actions (Mp. 58). Whether these actions have any effects, good or bad, on the individual in question is irrelevant to Mill as regards to the powers of the State. The State's power should be limited only to affect those actions that effect the actions or safety of other individuals, and thus, to take this to its logical conclusion, even a suicide could be perceived as an action which the State would not be able to hinder, as the effects of the action could be seen to affect only the individual in question. Yet, it is precisely a circumstance such as this that could be used by one of an oppositional point of view on the role of the State to argue in favor of more, not less, control over the individual. In fact, an argument for authoritarian governance is embedded within the entire concept.
Let us return to the hypothetical suicide. The individual in question has decided to end his own life, why does not matter, and therefore sets out to do so. Now, this person may have family. Are their rights and abilities not hindered by the loss of their family member? But let us assume, for the sake of argument, that this man is orphaned completely and has no family to speak of, and, to continue this line of thought further, no friends or any connections. Should this individual be allowed to cause himself to lose his own life? It would seem there is no chance of this action having an impact on any individuals outside of the one committing suicide. But a closer look at the situation shows that, indeed, the action of the individual of suicide leads to consequences upon the abilities of the individuals he may not even know to pursue their freedom and interests.
How is this possible, one might wonder, that the suicidal actions of one individual might affect the individual pursuits of another individual within society, despite potentially great distances between them? The answer lies within the makeup of society itself, once a society reaches a level of interconnectedness such that it would be at the level of industrial England. Within such a society, the people within it are increasingly dependent on the actions of those who also are within the society for subsistence. Thus, their individual pursuits are, from a certain point of view, somewhat dependent on the pursuits of others and the actions of others. So, to bring it back to our suicidal friend, his decision, though culturally amoral and tragic, has a very real possibility of affecting in a very negative fashion the individual desires and aims of another individual, whose life may not be parallel with, and whose path may never cross with, our poor depressed friend.
It is this extreme abstraction of the hypothetical that shows the lie in Mill's individualist manifesto, and sets up the argument for the authoritarian governmental control of every aspect of life that he deplored. If the reason for government is to protect the rights of the individual from molestation from the actions of other individuals, then it is apparent from our theoretical experiment that those with aims antithetical to the liberty of free men and women can use the very words of their champion in mid-nineteenth century Britain to propose the exact opposite of his utopia. For the rights of the individual to proceed along the path the individual sets out upon, the actions of other individuals must be constrained, otherwise they have the potential to disrupt the aims and desires of other individuals, yet, this disrupts the individual aims and desires for the individuals whose will is being put upon, and so on, until every interference in the affairs of each individual is wrapped up in an apologia that has its roots in the very theoretical work that wished to defeat it once and for all.
"So long as it is at their own risk and peril", individuals should not be constrained from any actions (Mp. 58). Whether these actions have any effects, good or bad, on the individual in question is irrelevant to Mill as regards to the powers of the State. The State's power should be limited only to affect those actions that effect the actions or safety of other individuals, and thus, to take this to its logical conclusion, even a suicide could be perceived as an action which the State would not be able to hinder, as the effects of the action could be seen to affect only the individual in question. Yet, it is precisely a circumstance such as this that could be used by one of an oppositional point of view on the role of the State to argue in favor of more, not less, control over the individual. In fact, an argument for authoritarian governance is embedded within the entire concept.
Let us return to the hypothetical suicide. The individual in question has decided to end his own life, why does not matter, and therefore sets out to do so. Now, this person may have family. Are their rights and abilities not hindered by the loss of their family member? But let us assume, for the sake of argument, that this man is orphaned completely and has no family to speak of, and, to continue this line of thought further, no friends or any connections. Should this individual be allowed to cause himself to lose his own life? It would seem there is no chance of this action having an impact on any individuals outside of the one committing suicide. But a closer look at the situation shows that, indeed, the action of the individual of suicide leads to consequences upon the abilities of the individuals he may not even know to pursue their freedom and interests.
How is this possible, one might wonder, that the suicidal actions of one individual might affect the individual pursuits of another individual within society, despite potentially great distances between them? The answer lies within the makeup of society itself, once a society reaches a level of interconnectedness such that it would be at the level of industrial England. Within such a society, the people within it are increasingly dependent on the actions of those who also are within the society for subsistence. Thus, their individual pursuits are, from a certain point of view, somewhat dependent on the pursuits of others and the actions of others. So, to bring it back to our suicidal friend, his decision, though culturally amoral and tragic, has a very real possibility of affecting in a very negative fashion the individual desires and aims of another individual, whose life may not be parallel with, and whose path may never cross with, our poor depressed friend.
It is this extreme abstraction of the hypothetical that shows the lie in Mill's individualist manifesto, and sets up the argument for the authoritarian governmental control of every aspect of life that he deplored. If the reason for government is to protect the rights of the individual from molestation from the actions of other individuals, then it is apparent from our theoretical experiment that those with aims antithetical to the liberty of free men and women can use the very words of their champion in mid-nineteenth century Britain to propose the exact opposite of his utopia. For the rights of the individual to proceed along the path the individual sets out upon, the actions of other individuals must be constrained, otherwise they have the potential to disrupt the aims and desires of other individuals, yet, this disrupts the individual aims and desires for the individuals whose will is being put upon, and so on, until every interference in the affairs of each individual is wrapped up in an apologia that has its roots in the very theoretical work that wished to defeat it once and for all.
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