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Humanism and Anti-Humanism
We must avoid the mistake, that is, of directly identifying the ‘humanism’ which is the target of the anti-humanist polemic in France with the humanism of liberal theory, based as that is on metaphysical assumptions which phenomenology and existentialist theory quite explicitly reject. Inspired by Hegel, Husserl and Heidegger - to whose work they bring an ‘anthropologizing’ reading - the French humanists have wanted to distinguish their own theory from any philosophy rooted in the idea of a universal, predetermining ‘human nature’ or ‘essence’ of humanity. It is, indeed, a defining quality of their ‘humanism’ that it recognizes the historicity of human culture and the problems which it poses for any universalizing discourse about the ‘human condition’. Emphasizing the situatedness of the individual within society, it rejects the ‘isolated’ individual invoked by liberal theory together with the contrast between the ‘social’ and the ‘individual’ which such a viewpoint imposes. At the same time, however, it insists that individuals are autonomous within society in the sense that it is their actions which lie at the source of what is social. It is human beings who create the structures and institutions of society; they who are constitutive of social life; and they who are able, therefore, in the last analysis, to control its progress. The ‘structures of relations’ that, according to the anti-humanist argument, must be viewed as constitutive of human subjectivity, are themselves, according to the humanists, accountable ultimately to the constituting activity of those subjects.
While the thrust of the humanist thought with which we are here primarily concerned is thus opposed to the abstraction characteristic of liberal humanist theory, it still refuses to allow that any exhaustive analysis of what is historically specific - whether it is individuals or their objective circumstances of existence - can be given in terms of the determination of the ‘subjectless’ structures and relations: the distinctive role of human activity in the creation of historical conditions of existence remains, in this humanist conception, irreducible.
- Kate Soper, Humanism and Anti-Humanism
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Thus the filling of the time away from the job also becomes dependent upon the market, which develops to an enormous degree those passive amusements, entertainments, and spectacles that suit the restricted circumstances of the city and are offered as substitutes for life itself. Since they become the means of filling all the hours of “free” time, they flow profusely from corporate institutions which have transformed every means of entertainment and “sport” into a production process for the enlargement of capital. By their very profusion, they cannot help but tend to a standard of mediocrity and vulgarity which debases popular taste, a result which is further guaranteed by the fact that the mass market has a powerful lowest-common-denominator effect because of the search for maximum profit. So enterprising is capital that even where the effort is made by one or another section of the population to find a way to nature, sport, or art through personal activity and amateur or “underground” innovation, these activities are rapidly incorporated into the market so far as is possible.
- Harry Braverman, Labor and Monopoly Capital
On that note, here is a great song by The Radio Dept.
The Radio Dept. - Heaven’s On Fire from Thal on Vimeo.
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The most advanced methods of science and rational calculation in the hands of a social system that is at odds with human needs produce nothing but irrationality; the more advanced the science and the more rational the calculations, the more swiftly and calamitously is this irrationality engendered. Like Captain Ahab, the capitalist can say, “All my means are sane, my motives and object mad.”
- Harry Braverman, Labor and Monopoly Capital
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The second concept that is shaped by Polanyi’s holism is the notion of market society itself. For Polanyi, the distinction between the existence of markets in society and the existence of a market society is fundamental. The followers of the economistic fallacy consistently jump from the fact that markets existed in a particular society to the conclusion that the laws of supply and demand operated as they do in contemporary capitalism. But Polanyi devoted much effort to showing that markets could operate on very different principles. In many pre-capitalist societies prices were administratively set, so that supply and demand played a marginal role at best. Moreover, even when price-making markets existed, as during mercantilism, the systematic regulation of those markets meant that markets played a subordinate role in social life. Hence, market society was created only in the nineteenth century when these restrictions were eliminated and land, labor, and money were commodified. The issue is not the existence of markets, but the way in which markets are inserted into the social whole. The category of market society issued only to describe that social whole in which the market principle extends to and organizes land, labor, and money and structures society around the principle that these are true, not fictitious, commodities.
“Beyond the Economistic Fallacy: Karl Polanyi” - Fred Block, Margaret Somers -
Polanyi’s belief in the dominance of the social also led him to the conclusion that a society that elevated economic motivation to absolute priority could not survive. For this reason, he insists that the nineteenth-century self-regulating market was a utopian experiment that was destined to fail. This is one of Polanyi’s most important insights, and it provides the basis for his argument concerning the protectionist counter-movement. Pure human greed, left to its own devices, would place no limit on competition, Polanyi argues, and the result would be a destruction of both society and environment. Workers would be exploited beyond the point where they could even reproduce themselves, food would be systematically adulterated to expand profit margins, and the environment would be devastated by the pollution and the unrestricted use of resources. Moreover, even before these catastrophes, a society in which each individual pursued only his or her economic self-interest would be unable to maintain the shared meanings and understanding that are necessary for human group life. As with Durkheim’s emphasis on the noncontractual basis of contract, Polanyi saw that market transactions depend on collective goods such as trust and regulation that could not possibly be provided by market processes.
“Beyond the Economistic Fallacy: Karl Polanyi” - Fred Block, Margaret Somers -
A song for the austerity generation. “Voodoo Economics” - The Proletariat
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The political calculation shifted in the sixties and seventies from changing the division of the pie to making sure everyone had an equal chance to compete for a slice… Ironically, as the hope for a genuinely integrated manifestation of working-class identity rapidly faded, the actual sites of work were becoming more integrated than ever. By the end of the seventies, the changes were profound: diversity and inclusion, to return to historian Nancy MacLean, “seeped deep into the culture… From assembly lines and union halls to college lecture podiums and corporate boardrooms, African Americans and white women, especially, and Latinos, Asian Americans, and lesbians and gays to a lesser degree,” had “a presence and a voice as never before.”.. As fundamental as inclusion, identity, and diversity were, an emphasis on gender and racial equity alone tended to allow jobs, pay, and labor rights to fall out of the equation, leaving workers with a set of individual rights to non-discrimination amidst a more brutal economy - a multi-cultural neo-liberalism.. As a result, post-seventies struggle for diversity has been an inherent good but has simultaneously served as an unwitting “alibi” for the lost strain in American politics: the fight against economic inequality.
Jefferson Cowie, Stayin’ Alive: The 1970s and the Last Days of the Working Class -
To advance a historical anthropology of neoliberalism as it actually evolves in the countries where it has taken root – as opposed to how it portrays itself (the market rule model) or how it dissipates when it fails to crystallise into a coherent regime (the governmentality model) – we must acknowledge that it pertains to the register of state formation. Much like the ‘long sixteenth century’ saw the birth of the modern Leviathan in Western Europe, including the invention of poor relief and the penal prison, as part of the rocky transition from feudalism to mercantilist capitalism, our own century’s turn has witnessed the fashioning of a novel kind of state that purports to enshrine markets and embrace liberty, but in reality reserves liberalism and its benefits for those at the top while it enforces punitive paternalism upon those at the bottom. Instead of viewing the police, the court, and the prison as technical appendages for fighting crime, we must recognise that they constitute core political capacities through which the Leviathan governs physical space, cuts up social space, dramatises symbolic divisions and stages sovereignty. And so we must bring them to the centre of a renewed political anthropology of rule capable of capturing how the state marks out and manages problem territories and categories in its quest to make markets and to mould citizens who conform to them, whether they like them or not.
Loic Wacquant, Three steps to a historical anthropology of actually existing neoliberalism (via thepovertyoftheory) -
That joke isn’t funny anymore
Several months ago I wrote a post about a lesson I gave on the Occupy movement at my alma mater and how there was as much resistance coming from those students on the left as there was from the right. This got me thinking about The Daily Show and its reporting on Occupy as well as its general way of framing political issues.
In hindsight, I shouldn’t have been very surprised by Stewart or Colbert’s coverage of Occupy. Neither comedian has ever really offered a deep critique of our political or economic systems beyond the occasional recognition that money plays a significant role. The main reaction they go for is of the “yeah, that’s pretty fucked up” variety. In the new issue of The Baffler, Steve Almond writes about Stewart’s brand of depoliticized political humor, even going so far as to call his show a, “lucrative corporate plantation whose chief export is a cheap and powerful opiate for progressive angst and rage.” It’s a good piece and it touches on many of the barriers to political mobilization created by having a media system dominated by private interests. Perhaps nothing is more revealing than The Daily Show’s pantomiming of political action. Here is a portion of Almond’s piece in the Baffler:
Having convinced more than 200,000 such folks to get off their butts and crowd the National Mall—not to mention the two and a half million who watched the proceedings on television or online—Stewart’s call to action amounted to: “If you want to know why I’m here and what I want from you, I can only assure you this: you have already given it to me. Your presence was what I wanted.” Such is the apotheosis of the Stewart-Colbert doctrine: the civic “rally” as televised corporate spectacle, with special merit badges awarded for attendance.
Bill Maher was one of the few prominent voices to call his comrades out. “If you’re going to have a rally where hundreds of thousands of people show up, you might as well go ahead and make it about something,” he said. He went on to point out the towering naïveté of their nonpartisan approach, with its bogus attempt to equate the insanity of left and right: “Martin Luther King spoke on that mall in the capital and he didn’t say, ‘Remember folks, those Southern sheriffs with the fire hoses and the German shepherds, they have a point too!’ No. He said, ‘I have a dream. They have a nightmare!’ … Liberals like the ones on that field must stand up and be counted and not pretend that we’re as mean or greedy or shortsighted or just plain batshit as they are, and if that’s too polarizing for you and you still want to reach across the aisle and hold hands and sing with someone on the right, try church.”
Maher’s dissent, all but lost amid the orgy of liberal self-congratulation, echoed Mencken’s exhortation: one must challenge the quacks to get rid of them. The reason our discourse has grown vicious, and has drifted away from matters of actual policy and their moral consequence, isn’t because of some misunderstanding between cultural factions. It is the desired result of a sustained campaign waged by corporations, lobbyists, politicians, and demagogues who have placed private gain over the common good.
In a sense, these quacks have no more reliable allies than Stewart and Colbert. For the ultimate ethos of their television programs is this: the customer is always right. We need not give in to sorrow, or feel disgust, or take action, because our brave clown princes have the tonic for what ails the national spirit. Their clever brand of pseudo-subversion guarantees a jolt of righteous mirth to the viewer, a feeling that evaporates the moment their shows end. At which point we return to our given role as citizens: consuming whatever the quacks serve up next.
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On “Vibrancy”
Go read Thomas Frank’s new piece in The Baffler on “vibrancy” and gentrification. Do it now.
A poorly maintained and written undergraduate sociology blog. Take everything as gospel.
- Will Attwood-Charles
