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Referencing Michel Foucault in an article about optimizing future policing strikes me as downright eerie. Foucault’s work questions if not obliterates the legitimacy of your entire enterprise. I instead hope for a world in which the cops join revolution and/or get swept away by it. A riot in Athens might be the best portent for the role of the police in the coming decades.
@summerspeaker
Having in-laws and friends in Greece, I see nothing good about riots in Athens, nor anything responsible or admirable in supporting them.
What would be good is to get away from the ideological squabbling, where we simply repeat entrenched positions, and try to actually understand each other. For example, I would be interested to understand better how you came to hold your current views.
Posted by Intomorrow on 07/19 at 06:17 PM
Control freaks don’t spend decades clawing their way up the food chain to give it up just like that, summer. Technically you are right- but so what?: they don’t care what we think and there’s no way to communicate with them if they refuse to reconsider. Do you wish to spend the rest of your life arguing with them? One way does exist:
to immolate ourselves in drawing their attention—but some of us will pass on the option, thank you.
Having in-laws and friends in Greece, I see nothing good about riots in Athens, nor anything responsible or admirable in supporting them.
Having comrades across the planet, I feel the same way about the cops. NYPD and respectable types didn’t like that famous queer riot in 1969, yet even liberals now (perhaps incoherently and opportunistically) consider Stonewall an iconic part of progressive struggle. I don’t advocate anything that hurts human beings (like, say, throwing rocks), but I do encourage mass disobedience and expropriation.
What would be good is to get away from the ideological squabbling, where we simply repeat entrenched positions, and try to actually understand each other.
I feel I understand the statist position rather well - it’s a hegemonic discourse, after all.
Do you wish to spend the rest of your life arguing with them?
More than arguing, and ideally not my whole life.
Posted by Intomorrow on 07/19 at 07:57 PM
Only practical suggestioon coming to mind regarding cops is encouraging whistle blowers to do what Serpico did:
“...Serpico believed that his fellow partners knew about secret meetings that took place with police investigators. With no place left to go, Serpico contributed to an April 25, 1970, New York Times front-page story on widespread corruption in the New York City Police Department. This forced Mayor John V. Lindsay to take action by appointing a five-member panel to investigate police corruption. This panel ultimately became the Knapp Commission, named for its chairman Whitman Knapp.”
First of all I’m going to take your reference to “the statist position” to mean basically any discourse that supports some degree of hierarchical governance with limited coercion based loosely on the nation state model, including positions (such as my own) that see this only as a short-term solution, not a long-term ideal. Please tell me if this is incorrect.
On this basis, I dispute the notion that this is necessarily a “hegemonic discourse”, since that seems to imply that anyone taking this position must be motivated by a desire to maintain a hegemonic relationship over others. But even if it is, there is always more to understand about it, and about the reasons specific individuals (such as myself) might have for holding it, and also what might convince us to change our minds (which, from your reply to Intomorrow, I take to be your objective). Similarly, I would be in a better position to understand your POV if you gave me a more specific autobiographical account of how you came to hold it. Generic references to “comrades across the planet” don’t really tell me much.
You may consider it a waste of time to convince me to change my position, but I beg to differ, since my position, and also my reasons for holding, are typical of many people’s views, including some of the most influential. So if you really want to defeat this position, you need to understand why people like me cling on to it. And I mean understand it BETTER than you currently do, not merely state what you think you already understand.
Posted by Intomorrow on 07/20 at 08:55 AM
Let’s all look at both sides, statist vs. private sector; start with Russia: before 1991 Russia had a Communist dictatorship, now the situation is different and though I don’t want to simplify what the situation is like today in Russia, now the Mafiya has far more power—the Mafiya being a state within a state (or states within a state).
And segue to what Giulio has written concerning bureaucrats: he is correct; just a few days ago a social worker told me there is no way to change the system and he added, “I’ve got two kids, you know.”
But then the private sector is filled with businessmen who are going to tell you, “I’ve got two kids, you know.”
The whispered message, the one I hear is, “let’s not upset the apple cart.”
The idea that one can do nothing to “change the system” without putting loved ones in peril is one of the memes that make it so difficult to root out corruption. It doesn’t mean that Giulio is correct to portray public officials as unwaveringly corrupt and venal, but it does man that there is indeed a lot wrong with the system and that changing it is not a simple matter.
But “not simple” doesn’t equate to “impossible”, even with two kids. One may be disinclined to rock the boat very conspicuously and one may have very good reasons to be so disinclined (e.g. the two kids), but that doesn’t mean there’s nothing one can do. And one thing that everyone can do is to interrupt conversations that feed the “can’t do anything about it” meme. In some respects I consider those who complain about the system but are unwilling to do anything about it to be more destructive than those who profit from it selfishly.
That doesn’t apply to summerspeaker, of course: he wants to do something about it. He and I just have different views on what should be done. Summerspeaker seems to see the system as beyond repair, something that must be bull-dozed to allow for something new and better (more egalitarian, more anarchic) to rise in its place, while I find a more incremental approach to reform more promising. But I prefer his anarchism to the defeatism of “I’ve got two kids”.
For the record, I identify as genderqueer and prefer gender-neutral pronouns. While this tends to be tricky in spoken English, it’s not too hard to manage in writing - especially on a site supposedly associated postgenderism and the transgender movement.
On this basis, I dispute the notion that this is necessarily a “hegemonic discourse”, since that seems to imply that anyone taking this position must be motivated by a desire to maintain a hegemonic relationship over others.
I call it that to indicate its dominance. Hardly anyone questions the state in mainstream political discourse, they just argue about how and for whom it should wield that coercive power. Because of this dominance, I’m super familiar with all manner of statist positions ranging from straight-up authoritarian to democratic socialist (the electorally oriented variety; not all versions qualify as statist). I’ve held various statist positions myself in the past. I have lots of respect and sympathy for many socialists who work within the system.
But even if it is, there is always more to understand about it, and about the reasons specific individuals (such as myself) might have for holding it, and also what might convince us to change our minds (which, from your reply to Intomorrow, I take to be your objective).
To an extent. I offer my analysis and express my desires because I enjoy doing these things first and foremost. I always want allies, but I’m not into the dynamic of trying to convert people. And I don’t think internet arguments are likely to produce any sort of political uniformity among people with wildly divergent material circumstances and aesthetic ideals. Folks with lots to lose who appreciate or at least tolerate hierarchy aren’t going to come over to anarchism because of text on a computer screen. For that - if it’s even possible - my comrades and I will need to show that we create comfort and safety without state, and that we have to power to successfully resist being oppressed and exploited.
My own story isn’t terribly exciting. I grew up in a materially comfortable culturally middle-class family that included your typical parental authoritarianism, physical discipline, and emotional abuse along with Abrahamic religion. Looking back on it, you could say I’ve always been rebellious. I wasn’t interested in politics or much at all beyond selfish concerns and religious devotion until I read Howard Zinn’s A People’s History of the United States. Then, pushing popcorn for around minimum wage while attended college, I started hanging out with queer anarchist coworkers and broke with the straight conditioning to decide/discover I was queer myself.
Reading Shulamith Firestone’s The Dialectic of Sex furthered my opposition to all authority and hierarchy, which as Firestone writes begins in the family and compounds from there. Since moving to Albuquerque, I’ve been actively involved in anarchist revolutionary struggle through Food Not Bombs, Copwatch, and so on. I’ve been harassed by the police numerous times, both in the course of jobs coded as lower class and in activism. Some of my friends get beat up and locked up for nonsense on a regular basis, both here and across the world (notably in California and Colorado). Etc ad infinitum. To summarize, daily experience, accounts from comrades, and the critical scholarship I practice all affirm the horrors of the state and capital. Interaction with other revolutionaries establishes bonds of community and suggests the beautiful potential of new ways of living.
Thanks summerspeaker. I agree that internet arguments aren’t going to produce political uniformity. It sounds as if our respective initial upbringings were somewhat similar (i.e. unexceptional, as you point out), but we have different temperaments, and have had different influences. And I guess I have more to lose. Would like to get to know you better, in any case.
Posted by Intomorrow on 07/20 at 08:55 PM
“I consider those who complain about the system but are unwilling to do anything about it to be more destructive than those who profit from it selfishly.”
Yes, plus it isn’t hopeless.. from a moral perspective very bad but not hopeless. What the bureaucrat told me the other day can be read between the lines: the private sector is value-neutral and simply does not care; while we bureaucrats are at least willing to keep the lumpen proles alive—however our statist social contract is that we bureaucrats get far better benefits than the lumpens do, we have prestige, the lumpens do not, and the lumpens dare not complain lest we take something (not necessarily tangible, but also e.g. self-respect). So in this sense they are poverty pimps; there’s more to it yet that’s basically it.
What happened was (naturally this is merely one idiosyncratic diagnosis) the basically nostalgic American public, oriented towards 1776, became tired of change during the ‘60s- ‘90s, and now we are politically hypostasized in our moribund Rush Limbaugh vs. Ted Kennedy duopoly; our GOP vs. Democrat duopoly, etc. Ted Kennedy is dead, however Rush Limbaugh is very much alive and giggling merrily all the way to the bank.
Escapism. My friends in the Midwest live in their Clint Eastwood DVD “make my day punk” escapism; in their hunting deer ‘n elk world. “We believe everything the Bible says”, which means of course they are true fundamentalists. The lumpens, the civilized ones, live in their public housing/Section 8, TV Land/Nickelodeon, porn and ‘medical’—well, it is self-medication— marijuana and illicit opiates world.
The message in the Midwest is as you wrote, Pete, ‘don’t rock the boat, don’t rock the DVD player, don’t rock the gun laws. Leave us alone to shoot the bambis they say, don’t be bolshie. Bomb them furriners in the Mideast, we are in the Midwest and if they wont share their oil with us, we’ll shoot ‘em like those bambis in the woods, or like that there guy in Aurora who shot them moviegoers.
We’re tough customers, Sport.
Posted by Intomorrow on 07/20 at 11:29 PM
...don’t like to post twice in a row anymore, but must hasten to add the criticism of govt. is not directed at you in any way, Pete- or anyone else at IEET who might work for the government. Just for instance though the govt hasn’t done well with K-12 in the US, higher ed. is as good as can be expected taking into account ever-present turf wars.
Pete, you are not directly in involved in the welfare establishment, if you were to be involved you would make an effort to ameliorate the situation; plus you aren’t American thus there is no direct connection between your role in Europe and what occurs (or doesn’t) in America, and in the Midwest. Belgium is a relatively civilized nation.
From reading the news today you probably have a slightly better idea of what sort of tensions exist in the Midwest, the Batman (batty) mindset on the part of outlaws, and the Clint Eastwood ‘shoot the punk’ mentality of the straights.
I agree summerspeaker is someone to pay attention to; the prime disagreement with summer concerns timeframe, it is thoroughly mistaken to think institutions which have existed for thousands of years, emotions which have existed for millions, can be changed rapidly save for the most enlightened micro-society. Say you picked Monaco, as an example, or some other mini-nation, you could not only theoretically but in reality change such a country rather quickly if you thought about what to do very carefully, had connections, and were quite dedicated-persistent. And if anyone could do it, Pete, you could! Not that you’d need or want such a heavy responsibility.
“the prime disagreement with summer concerns timeframe, it is thoroughly mistaken to think institutions which have existed for thousands of years, emotions which have existed for millions, can be changed rapidly”
They can be changed rapidly (e.g. by an asteroid strike or nuclear holocaust), but improved? That’s a whole different ball game. First one has to achieve some kind of consensus on what improvements one is aiming for. That consensus also needs to be at least to some extent realistic: it doesn’t work if it is based on assumptions that are wildly out of touch with reality.
People like to criticise the “system”, but the truth is that any benign scenario in which humans live together (relatively) peacefully and happily involves a “system”. In this context, what I finrepost promising about the Occupiers et al is what summerspeaker refers to as “interaction with other revolutionaries establishes bonds of community [that] suggests the beautiful potential of new ways of living.” I disagree with many of the assumptions these people make, but if they are helping to demonstrate new, better ways of living together then they’re OK by me - as long as they don’t actually succeed in destroying what we’ve built up together already.
Posted by Intomorrow on 07/21 at 06:44 PM
“They can be changed rapidly (e.g. by an asteroid strike or nuclear holocaust)”
Right again, didn’t want to mention it last time, but what changed life most in the postwar period (aside from intangibles)?: the war itself; and the war also ended the worldwide economic depression of the thirties.
Vietnam War was the second big catalyst for change for better and worse, as you know.
Now, I’m sympathetic to summerspeaker’s interest in change, in the forty four years since 1968, the death grip has only relaxed superficially; however with the Right in America possessing the best Air Force in the world, we couldn’t bulldoze the system here no matter how we wanted to.
OWS is—or was if it no longer exists—an alternative to the political stagnation of the decade since 9-11. IMO we did pretty well in the ‘80s and ‘90s, yet now today, for starters, we are in Afghanistan, not the Russians. Welcome to extremely nonlinear change.
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