tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-40633854872360632312024-03-12T20:56:30.213-07:00TEN THOUSAND RABBITSDock Curriehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09979072460617749796noreply@blogger.comBlogger31125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4063385487236063231.post-9542067063557014042023-04-08T23:07:00.007-07:002023-04-08T23:07:56.210-07:00Multipolarity and So-Called Ultra-Imperialism<p> </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj1bMxKv3xyjkYloz_yZExtPqwaqDTFVGBmLp7_vLUPf56BtRPPaFP-F_HlOQyAIaeh_HOG2Xx9fijhRoNK6wP3WKZs3sXcAXaMVKe18fuqckBTdakCSGm1T2lYdHm9zbSR0XXs9e3KhkcmfL1pNsFNFcF7skyytFiQkYdRTXtBWB-YXvVdNSoASOThcg/s576/Screen%20Shot%202019-02-18%20at%2011.58.28%20AM%20(1).png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="408" data-original-width="576" height="454" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj1bMxKv3xyjkYloz_yZExtPqwaqDTFVGBmLp7_vLUPf56BtRPPaFP-F_HlOQyAIaeh_HOG2Xx9fijhRoNK6wP3WKZs3sXcAXaMVKe18fuqckBTdakCSGm1T2lYdHm9zbSR0XXs9e3KhkcmfL1pNsFNFcF7skyytFiQkYdRTXtBWB-YXvVdNSoASOThcg/w640-h454/Screen%20Shot%202019-02-18%20at%2011.58.28%20AM%20(1).png" width="640" /></a></div><br /><p></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p></p><p align="justify" style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
What do we mean when we say “Multipolarity”? Is this term
analytically useful and commensurate with Marxist analysis and the
critique of political-economy? The trouble is that the pre-eminent
Marxist analysis of Imperialism, Lenin’s Imperialism: The Highest
Stage of Capitalism, was written and released during the First World
War, and therefore its analysis pertain to a situation in which there
was only Imperialism. This situation changed, partially by Lenin’s
own hand, with the foundation of the Soviet Union. Suddenly there
existed a situation which was irrevocably different to Lenin’s own
analysis, precisely because something unique had come into the world:
a state which reflected the interests of the working classes, namely,
industrial labourers and small peasant farmers. In some respects
Lenin’s analysis of Imperialism remains exactly true, eerily true,
right down to our present day, and yet in a crucial respect – the
existence of a Proletarian State – it is always-already obsolete,
and has been since shortly after it was written.</p>
<p align="justify" style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0cm;">What
is the risk of dismissing the analysis of multipolarity? What
interests does it serve to deny the analytic utility of
multipolarity? Well, for example, a churlish ultra-leftist might
reject the analysis of multipolarity, and advocate for a biblical
exegesis of Lenin’s original text, because they either denied the
class character of the Soviet Union, or, later, because they denied
the class character of the People’s Republic of China. For such an
ultra-leftist, a literal and unreconstructed reading of Lenin’s
text is advisable because the situation remains simply a contest
between competing imperialisms. But such a reading is not possible,
and crucially at odds with Lenin in a different way, in its
jettisoning the exact class character of imperialism which Lenin
articulates. While Lenin was writing in a situation in which no
proletarian state existed, their coming into existence would have
altered Lenin’s analysis of the situation, because imperialism is
the highest stage of capitalism, and a territorial-power
configuration dedicated to the abolition of the capitalist modes of
production and exchange in the last instance would, naturally,
function differently.</p>
<p align="justify" style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0cm;">At
the same time, can the analytic of multipolarity be abused or used in
a manner which is either analytically useless, or harmful? Of course.
It does so in instances where it is deployed as synonymous with what
Lenin rebuked in Kautsky, the belief in the possibility of perpetual
and enduring ‘super-imperialism’ or ‘ultra-imperialism,’
which is either the dominance of one imperialist hegemon, or an
agreement between and among imperialists for the joint division and
exploitation of the earth. Ironically, this supposition, or
postulate, becomes most prevalent in an era of inter-imperialist
rivalry, because during an era of untrammeled hegemony it is not even
a question. It only becomes a question for social theorists as
changes in the development of the forces of production alter the
balance of power between imperialist powers, such that what hadn’t
needed to be negotiated previously, because of an established balance
of power, becomes unsettled, and suddenly comes into question. It
goes like this: in spite of relative changes in the balance of
geopolitical power as a result of technological development,
capitalist powers can be politically persuaded to adopt mutually
beneficial and peaceful arrangements for the continuation of the
human species. Lenin said, correctly, that this was absolutely
impossible, that it was a pleasing fiction meant to delude and
distract the working class from their own salvation.</p>
<p align="justify" style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0cm;">"In
the realities of the capitalist system, and not in the banal
philistine fantasies of English parsons, or of the German ‘Marxist,’
Kautsky, ‘inter-imperialist’ or ‘ultra-imperialist’
alliances, no matter what form they may assume, whether of one
imperialist coalition against another, or of a general alliance
embracing all the imperialist powers, are inevitably nothing more
than a ‘truce’ in periods between wars. Peaceful alliances
prepare the ground for wars, and in their turn grow out of wars; the
one conditions the other, producing alternating forms of peaceful and
non-peaceful struggle on one and the same basis of imperialist
connections and relations within world economics and world politics."
(295)</p>
<p align="justify" style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0cm;">In
Lenin’s time, a single dominant economic hegemon, had been in
decline, but nevertheless was able to ensure what it asserted was a
relatively peaceful division of the world. In another article Lenin
emphasizes how false these supposed periods of “peace” actually
are, writing of the breakdown of so-called "“peaceful”
capitalism" that “even in that period, roughly between 1871
and 1914, “peaceful” capitalism created conditions of life that
were a very far cry from actual “peace”, both in the military and
the class sense. For nine-tenths of the population of the leading
countries, for hundreds of millions in the colonies and backward
countries, that epoch was not one of “peace” but of oppression,
suffering and horror, which was the more terrible, possibly, for
appearing to be a horror without end." In such a period, the
point is not that the so-called “peace” of “peaceful
imperialism” is real, as much as imperialism is in a position to
ensure its continuation irrespective of its falsity and oppression.
An era of the breakdown of the rule of a dominant economic and
geopolitical hegemon is, by contrast, “much more violent,
spasmodic, disastrous and conflicting, an epoch which for the mass of
the population is typified not so much by a ‘horror without end’
as by a horrible end." (104)</p>
<p align="justify" style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0cm;">In
our time, the United States is progressively declining as the world
economic hegemon, and its geopolitical relationships are becoming
belligerent, brittle, and warlike. There are open and loud calls from
prominent voices in the United States to enforce its ‘rules based
international order’ by the same gunboat diplomacy that the British
had conducted the Nineteenth Century Opium Wars. Is it a progressive
development that, as a result of the development of the forces of
production and exchange, and the concomitant international balance of
power, the United States is less and less able to unilaterally assert
its dominance over the face of the globe? Maybe, but not necessarily
on its own, if it only meant that this power fell into the hands of
other imperialist poles equally or moreso committed to the capitalist
modes of production and exchange. Power being distributed in the
hands of several capitalist imperialisms, each with their accumulated
layers of chauvinism and reaction, is not necessarily an improvement
or progress from fiat dominance by one capitalist imperialism and its
layers of chavinism and reaction. The ‘peace’ which results from
each of these kinds of arrangements, for the overwhelming
preponderance of humanity, is equally false.</p>
<p align="justify" style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0cm;">The
emergence of the People’s Republic of China as a competing economic
hegemon, however, is genuinely novel and unique, just as the
emergence of the Soviet Union had been novel and unique. Economic,
social, and civilizational success by a Proletarian power formation
is not reducible to an analysis which only features Imperialisms
precisely because its development works at cross purposes to those of
Imperialism. Its emergence reflects a genuine, inspiring, noble
effort towards the transcendence of the capitalist modes of
production and exchange. And sometimes people deploy the term
‘multipolarity’ to reflect the declining ability of the United
States to guarantee these modes of production and exchange in the
face of a power bloc coming into existence around a state which is
dedicated to their abolition. That is analytically unique, and worth
indexing in a manner which social scientists can refer to as a
delineated phenomenon.</p>
<p align="justify" style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0cm;">So,
if what is meant by ‘multipolarity’ is simply a hope in
imperialism being attenuated because of the emergence of
inter-imperialist rivalry, then this is exactly synonymous with what
Lenin correctly pilloried as Kautsky’s ‘superimperialism’ or
‘ultraimperialism’ and ought to be dismissed as a bourgeois
chauvinist fantasy. However, if what is meant by multipolarity is a
concrete analysis of the world system focusing on the element which
was not present when Lenin was writing, namely a Proletarian State in
its own development, where that Proletarian States is able to
challenge the economic domination of the Imperialist States, then it
is a vital and necessary analysis. In this latter case, Multipolarity
is not synonymous with ‘peaceful’ ultra-imperialism, but rather
synonymous with the epoch of the transition from capitalism to
communism, the becoming obsolete of the capitalist modes of
production and exchange.</p>
<p align="justify" style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0cm;">So
the problem is that the term ‘Multipolarity’ can imply both
something which is erroneous and already correctly rejected by
materialist analysis, the theory of so-called ‘ultra-imperialsm,’
as well as something which is correct and novel with respect to our
most thorough materialist analysis, the emergence and development of
a Proletarian power formation, which challenges the continued
existence of the capitalist modes of production and exchange. The
tension between the former, banal, erroneous connotation, and the
latter, novel and vital substance, makes the handling of the term
“Multipolarity” in a materialist manner a challenge.</p><p></p>Dock Curriehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09979072460617749796noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4063385487236063231.post-11056880811564528602023-02-25T02:11:00.006-08:002023-02-25T02:14:36.416-08:00Cynicism and Stupidity on the Frontiers of NATO<p> </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiTk-_xOVME-dAOl8jHu0ReeQ6xYjwLps-A7JR50ratQK8b2i1YcquwJwt2eCNXeB2j1lsfBDRTL8st8V73SzVSdhZSHC3CrcCMaOHJrhIuQtAWqsarvmGaopRSRiYolHj7cqyTt_kgfs8gqQmiy2OViLfkbqbD89L8XW_kqtbuqTGEYePMLQQU6Z8ZYg/s1508/Fpld7hMXsAARzME.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1056" data-original-width="1508" height="448" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiTk-_xOVME-dAOl8jHu0ReeQ6xYjwLps-A7JR50ratQK8b2i1YcquwJwt2eCNXeB2j1lsfBDRTL8st8V73SzVSdhZSHC3CrcCMaOHJrhIuQtAWqsarvmGaopRSRiYolHj7cqyTt_kgfs8gqQmiy2OViLfkbqbD89L8XW_kqtbuqTGEYePMLQQU6Z8ZYg/w640-h448/Fpld7hMXsAARzME.jpg" width="640" /></a></div><br /><p></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p style="line-height: normal; margin: 0cm; text-align: justify;">I hate cynicism and
stupidity. I hate cretins who parade their stupidity and low, incompetent,
ignorant, chauvinist thought and thinking around as though they were profound
somehow. One of the reasons I will always have time for Peter Sloterdijk, the
philosopher, for whatever his other intellectual failings, is his incisive
diagnosis and ruthless assault on cynical reason, the basic operating system of
the modern cynical cretin.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p style="line-height: normal; margin: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p style="line-height: normal; margin: 0cm; text-align: justify;">I can think of no
finer example of such stupidity and cynicism, such cynical, cretinous reason,
than the sneering, posturing resolution, spearheaded by the United States and
passed yesterday at the United Nations, A/ES-11/L.7 “Principles of the Charter
of the United Nations underlying a comprehensive, just and lasting peace in
Ukraine.” I want to tell you about this resolution because I think it is
exemplary of the total falsification of recent history going on right now, not
to mention the absolute orgy of historical revisionism and effectively
holocaust denial which has accompanied it.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p style="line-height: normal; margin: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p style="line-height: normal; margin: 0cm; text-align: justify;">This resolution
purports to emphasize the need to – quote “reach, as soon as possible, a
comprehensive, just and lasting peace in Ukraine in line with the principles of
the Charter of the United Nations."<o:p></o:p></p>
<p style="line-height: normal; margin: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p style="line-height: normal; margin: 0cm; text-align: justify;">But that is <b>not
what the US promoted resolution does</b>, because of a cynicism, because of a
stupidity. What cynicism, what stupidity? It is that the resolution expresses
its “commitment to the sovereignty, independence, unity and territorial
integrity of Ukraine within its internationally recognized borders, extending
to its territorial waters.” Why is this stupid, you might ask, why is that
cynical?<o:p></o:p></p>
<p style="line-height: normal; margin: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p style="line-height: normal; margin: 0cm; text-align: justify;">It is stupid and
cynical for two reasons, first the General, and then the Particular:<o:p></o:p></p>
<p style="line-height: normal; margin: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p style="line-height: normal; margin: 0cm; text-align: justify;">(1) The notion of
the United States relying on and promoting itself as the champion of the notion
of the inviolable sanctity of the sovereignty, independence, unity and
territorial integrity of other nations is absurd and offensive. Maintaining
this charade requires the compulsory adoption of the memory of a goldfish. The
US posturing as the champion of these principles is absolutely farcical beyond
farcical given the overwhelming and habitual violations of these principles by
the United States itself, even just in the past twenty years.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p style="line-height: normal; margin: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p style="line-height: normal; margin: 0cm; text-align: justify;">The United States,
a barely 250 year old genocidal settler-colonial state, whose land was obtained
entirely and unambiguously by primitive accumulation by dispossession – that
is, theft, plunder and violence – is going to lecture and hector the world on
the sacred principles of territorial non-intervention. Okay. . . <o:p></o:p></p>
<p style="line-height: normal; margin: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p style="line-height: normal; margin: 0cm; text-align: justify;">The United States
which twenty years ago illegally invaded Iraq and which has occupied it, on
again off again for the past twenty years, is going to get up on its high horse
about the sacred inviolability of sovereignty and internationally recognized
borders, is it? Three years ago Iraq’s democratically elected and sovereign
parliament voted 170-0 to expel US troops! How did the US respond? By telling
the Iraqis that if they expelled US troops the US would destroy their central bank
and leave them worse off that the worst days of the war! That United States,
now, is going to herald itself as the champion of the territorial integrity and
sovereignty of poor, mistreated peripheral states.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p style="line-height: normal; margin: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p style="line-height: normal; margin: 0cm; text-align: justify;">The United States
which operates a network of totally illegal unilateral economic sanctions to
coerce less affluent states, that United States is going to ride in on its
mighty tiny high high horse as the deliverer of the weak and vulnerable? <o:p></o:p></p>
<p style="line-height: normal; margin: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p style="line-height: normal; margin: 0cm; text-align: justify;">The United States
of the drone war over the skies of Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Syria, Pakistan
and Yemen. The United States which killed 500,000 Iraqis and which displaced
tens of millions of others. Which raided Afghanistan for its resources and left
it a desicated heap in the hands of same Taliban they had 'liberated' it from.
That United States is going to hector and lecture from the pulpit on the
subject of respecting the sovereignty of other nations, is it?<o:p></o:p></p>
<p style="line-height: normal; margin: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p style="line-height: normal; margin: 0cm; text-align: justify;">Incredible. Cynical
for those who manufacture such heinous, insidious codswallop, and stupid on the
part of those why buy it. It is hypocrisy incarnate, the Great Satan chiding
and scolding, and a passive audience applauding the irrational spectacle. As
China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs noted this week:<o:p></o:p></p>
<p style="line-height: normal; margin: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; margin-left: 51.05pt; margin-right: 59.55pt; margin-top: 0cm; margin: 0cm 59.55pt 0cm 51.05pt; text-align: justify;">"The US is the No.1
violator of sovereignty and interferer in the internal affairs of other
countries. Since the end of WWII, the US has sought to subvert 50+ foreign
governments, interfered in elections in 30+ countries & attempted
assassination on 50+ foreign leaders."<o:p></o:p></p>
<p style="line-height: normal; margin: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p style="line-height: normal; margin: 0cm; text-align: justify;">And (2) – the
second reason why this position being promoted by the US and its vassal states
is stupid and cynical – is that one of the many particular egregious violations
of sovereignty, independence, unity and territorial integrity of other states
by the United States over the past twenty years was the illegal and totally
undemocratic coup d'état which the United States orchestrated in Ukraine in
2014.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p style="line-height: normal; margin: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p style="line-height: normal; margin: 0cm; text-align: justify;">I’m going to read
to you an excerpt from a piece by the Marxist Socialist Historian and Ecologist
John Bellamy-Foster, written last year. If you have the time I encourage you to
read it for yourself, it is called “The US Proxy War in Ukraine.” I think this
piece is important, very important, because I view Mr Bellamy-Foster as the
kind of deep, substantive, historically grounded thinker which the cretins and
ghouls, spooks, plutes, NeoCons and chauvinists are trying to drown out and
censor right now. His piece is a properly historical-materialist analysis of
the present conflict and its antecedents. In this piece, Bellamy-Foster writes:<o:p></o:p></p>
<p style="line-height: normal; margin: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; margin-left: 51.05pt; margin-right: 59.55pt; margin-top: 0cm; margin: 0cm 59.55pt 0cm 51.05pt; text-align: justify;">"The proxy war started in
2014 when the Maidan coup, engineered by the United States, took place in
Ukraine, removing the democratically elected president, and putting
ultra-nationalists largely in control. The immediate result though was that
Ukraine began to break apart. Crimea had been an independent, autonomous state
from 1991 to 1995. In 1995 Ukraine illegally tore up the Crimean Constitution
and annexed it against its will. The Crimean people didn’t consider themselves
part of Ukraine, and were largely Russian speaking, with deep cultural
connections to Russia. When the coup occurred, with Ukrainian
ultra-nationalists in control, the Crimean population wanted out. Russia gave
them an opportunity with a referendum to stay in the Ukraine or join with
Russia. They chose the latter. However, in the eastern Ukraine the primarily
Russian population was subjected to repression by ultra-nationalist and
neo-Nazi Kyiv forces. Russophobia and extreme repression of the
Russian-speaking populations in the East set in—with the infamous case of the
forty people blown up in a public building by neo-Nazis associated with the
Azov Battalion. Originally there were a number of breakaway republics. Two
survived in the Donbass region, with dominant Russian-speaking populations: the
republics of Luhansk and Donetsk.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; margin-left: 51.05pt; margin-right: 59.55pt; margin-top: 0cm; margin: 0cm 59.55pt 0cm 51.05pt; text-align: justify;"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; margin-left: 51.05pt; margin-right: 59.55pt; margin-top: 0cm; margin: 0cm 59.55pt 0cm 51.05pt; text-align: justify;">A civil war thus emerged in
Ukraine between Kyiv in the West and Donbass in the East. But it was also a
proxy war with the U.S./NATO supporting Kyiv and Russia supporting Donbass. The
civil war started right after the coup, when the Russian language was basically
outlawed, so that individuals could get fined for speaking Russian in a store.
It was an attack on the Russian language and culture and a violent repression
of the populations in the eastern parts of the Ukraine.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; margin-left: 51.05pt; margin-right: 59.55pt; margin-top: 0cm; margin: 0cm 59.55pt 0cm 51.05pt; text-align: justify;"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; margin-left: 51.05pt; margin-right: 59.55pt; margin-top: 0cm; margin: 0cm 59.55pt 0cm 51.05pt; text-align: justify;">Initially, there were about
14,000 lives lost in the civil war. And these casualties were in the eastern
part of the country, with something like 2.5 million refugees pouring into
Russia. The Minsk Agreements in 2014 and 2015 led to a ceasefire, mediated by
France and Germany, and supported by the United Nations Security Council. In
these agreements the Luhansk and Donetsk Republics were given autonomous status
within Ukraine. But Kyiv broke the Minsk agreements again and again, continuing
to attack the breakaway republics in Donbass."<o:p></o:p></p>
<p style="line-height: normal; margin: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p style="line-height: normal; margin: 0cm; text-align: justify;">One really has to
be serious here, an illegal and undemocratic coup is the single most violent
and consequential violations of sovereignty which can possibly occur, it is the
absolute seizure of political authority. In 2014 the US orchestrated the
illegal deposing of the duly elected President of Ukraine, who was from the
eastern regions now in question, and the installation of an extreme right-wing,
ethnonationalist, white supremacist government.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p style="line-height: normal; margin: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p style="line-height: normal; margin: 0cm; text-align: justify;">Imagine, I really
want you to imagine, if by means of foreign funding, support and coordination,
the Ottawa Convoy protesters had managed to depose Trudeau and assume
dictatorial control of the government and its entire state machinery. They
immediately abrogate all our Constitutional obligations towards indigenous
peoples, and begin a campaign of racist terror as state policy. Imagine then that
the peripheries of Canada object, and say ‘no, we want nothing to do with this
criminal, illegal regime which has sprung up and been recognized by foreign
saboteurs.’ Would the international community campaign passionately for and
insist upon maintaining such a nightmare government’s “territorial integrity?”
That is what is being proposed here. Insisting on the ‘territorial integrity’
of Ukraine means forcing the eastern regions to live under an illegal coup
government which came into existence as a result of a US orchestrated coup in
2014 and which immediately proceeded to ban Russian as a language, bomb
predominantly Russian cities which ceased to recognize them as a Government,
and ethnically persecute the Russian speaking and culturally Russian minority
in the east.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p style="line-height: normal; margin: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p style="line-height: normal; margin: 0cm; text-align: justify;">After the 2014 coup
it was a primitive accumulation goldrush for the United States in terms of
buying up Ukrainian resource industry and assets on the cheap. It was a deluge
of shitty American failsons on a profiteering crusade. That is really what the
issue with Hunter Biden is, for example – not the coked up gun and dick pics on
his laptom – but that he was sent along with so many other McKinsey caste
losers to hover up resources in the aftermath of a coup orchestrated, in part,
by his father.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p style="line-height: normal; margin: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p style="line-height: normal; margin: 0cm; text-align: justify;">Ignoring this,
trying to edit out or obscure the last decade of Ukraine’s history and its
primary causes, doesn’t actually contribute to the promotion or achievement of
peace at all. There is so many lies and falsehoods, such a suffocating cloud of
amnesia going on right now regarding the now decade-long war in Ukraine. The US
started this war in 2014 with an illegal and undemocratic coup, it should end
with a peace agreement, but that won't come from one-sided Western jingoism.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p style="line-height: normal; margin: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p style="line-height: normal; margin: 0cm; text-align: justify;">Because of these
two reason, because the United States promoting itself as the champion of the
inviolable sanctity of the sovereignty of states is absurd, and because the US
has specifically and overwhelmingly been interfering with Ukraine and Russia’s
sovereignty for the past ten years, the United Nations General Assembly
resolution promoted by the United States is stupid and cynical, a product of
cretins, for cretins.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p style="line-height: normal; margin: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p style="line-height: normal; margin: 0cm; text-align: justify;">That is why it is
stupid and cynical, stupid on the part of those who uncritically believe it,
and cynical on the part of those who don’t, but say so because they profit by
saying so, because while the US calls their resolution “Principles of the
Charter of the United Nations underlying a comprehensive, just and lasting
peace in Ukraine” – its actual effect is the opposite of that, to retrench
positions and mischaracterize one another in a belligerent and warlike way. The
US is saying ‘peace’ when, for all practical purposes, they mean ‘war.’ This is
THE MOST GROTESQUE CYNICISM! And Joe Biden, and Tony Blinken, and Victoria
Nuland, Chrysia Freeland and Victoria Nuland are all THE MOST GROTESQUE CYNICS!
To try to warp the meaning of Peace to mean more war, expanded war, exacerbated
war, more arms transfers, more arms production, profits for Raytheon, profits
for Lockheed Martin – ‘MAKE PEACE, MAKE A BUCK FOR NORTHROP GRUMMAN AND GENERAL
DYNAMICS!’ - that’s not peace, that’s war.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p style="line-height: normal; margin: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p style="line-height: normal; margin: 0cm; text-align: justify;">Yesterday on the
CBC they had on a figure from the “Canadian Centre for Global Affairs.” It is
hardly the first time they’ve had someone from the CCGA on the air to intone on
foreign affairs. Murray Brewster, currently enthusiastically promoting the war
from the Kiev forces frontlines, has had the CBC publish literally hundreds,
literally hundreds, of articles over the years advocating for increased
military expenditure where the only cited source is a figure from the Canadian
Centre for Global Affairs. Do you think that in any of Murray’s articles, or on
TV yesterday, they ever informed the audience that the Canadian Center for
Global Affairs is funded by, among others, BAE Systems, General Dynamics, the
Department of National Defence and Lockheed Martin? No, of course not, in spite
of having been specifically told to do so by an otherwise completely toothless
CBC Ombudsman, Jack Nagler.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p style="line-height: normal; margin: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p style="line-height: normal; margin: 0cm; text-align: justify;">This war is stupid
and cynical. There are those who are manufacturing and selling the war, which
is cynical, and there are those who are passively consuming the war, as
spectators, which is stupid.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p style="line-height: normal; margin: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p style="line-height: normal; margin: 0cm; text-align: justify;">We are being sold
this war by those who profit by its prolongation and exacerbation, and they are
selling it and promoting it falsely under the banner of ‘peace.’<o:p></o:p></p>
<p style="line-height: normal; margin: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p style="line-height: normal; margin: 0cm; text-align: justify;">That is the most
cynical lie, and its promoters not only manufacture this lie, but manufacture
the stupidity in the populace necessary for them to passively receive this lie.
They blight out basic truths, like that the US orchestrated an illegal and
undemocratic coup in 2014, like that the US is one of the most predatory and
insane forces on the planet today, that they regularly and habitually violate
and warp the sovereignty, independence and integrity of other nations for their
own narrow gain, they obscure these truths from view, demonize them, stigmatize
them, censor them.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p style="line-height: normal; margin: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p style="line-height: normal; margin: 0cm; text-align: justify;">This is more than
just kulturkampf, the military-political wings of the richest imperial states,
whose weapons and resource industries profit by the prolongation and
exacerbation of the war, have a direct strategic and financial impetus to
criminalize inconvenient speech and expression.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p style="line-height: normal; margin: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p style="line-height: normal; margin: 0cm; text-align: justify;">Consent is being
manufactured for catastrophic, clash of civilizations, absolute war. If you
oppose it, or criticize it in any way, you are informed you are the minority
and should be quiet. DON'T! Speak out against this madness now. Oppose the war!
Oppose Western intervention! Oppose this proxy war. This is a border dispute.
The post-coup Kiev regime abused and ethnically oppressed the eastern regions for
eight years, in contravention of the peace agreements which they signed and
agreed to. There is no reason why this conflict cannot be resolved by means of
a negotiated peaceful settlement. Oppose this garbage proxy war. Oppose this
war. Oppose the war in Ukraine. Oppose the US using Ukraine as a proxy against
Russia. Oppose its prolongation and exacerbation. Oppose weapons transfers.
Fight against the spiraling out of control of yet another garbage,
propagandized US proxy war. Oppose this war. Oppose this garbage US proxy war.
Oppose its mystification, oppose the lie that this war began in 2022, as
opposed to in 2014 when the US orchestrated an illegal coup. Oppose weapons
transfers. Oppose the exacerbation and prolongation of the war by profiteers.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p style="line-height: normal; margin: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p style="line-height: normal; margin: 0cm; text-align: justify;">Having relied on
the authority of John Bellamy-Foster I’m going to end with some of his words.
He said of the present moment:<o:p></o:p></p>
<p style="line-height: normal; margin: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; margin-left: 51.05pt; margin-right: 59.55pt; margin-top: 0cm; margin: 0cm 59.55pt 0cm 51.05pt; text-align: justify;">“All of this is a lot to be
absorbed in a short time. But I think it’s important to understand the two
prongs of the U.S./NATO imperial grand strategy in order to understand why the
Kremlin considers itself threatened, and why it acted as it did, and why this
proxy war is so dangerous for the world as a whole. What we should keep in mind
right now is that all of this maneuvering for absolute world supremacy has
brought to us to the brink of a global thermonuclear war and global omnicide.
The only answer is to create a massive world movement for peace, ecology, and
socialism."<o:p></o:p></p>
<p style="line-height: normal; margin: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p style="line-height: normal; margin: 0cm; text-align: justify;">Thank you, love and
solidarity for everyone who’s made it out to support real, actual peace today.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>Dock Curriehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09979072460617749796noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4063385487236063231.post-33098469761192723492023-02-17T02:50:00.005-08:002023-02-17T02:59:34.692-08:00The Wages of the Spectacle – Panegyric for Sy Hersh<p> </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjSS4LsNrzUWCb4WPcn_le2udWOXgiLwG3XH56llAYp_LBBgoDzh4y9zHiIpF4pZL9BaEAw84hXI53yjCpUqbvdBQMhNsrnjIK7KK12LRlccZxyBkoWo8mNLx8HRw2bOxSFwU3ZfWqJaVys8swicijn7J_vKn_nCoAKe6O9PZ0ZLTu4cI9kFhNXn47Lew/s1021/Hersh.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="641" data-original-width="1021" height="402" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjSS4LsNrzUWCb4WPcn_le2udWOXgiLwG3XH56llAYp_LBBgoDzh4y9zHiIpF4pZL9BaEAw84hXI53yjCpUqbvdBQMhNsrnjIK7KK12LRlccZxyBkoWo8mNLx8HRw2bOxSFwU3ZfWqJaVys8swicijn7J_vKn_nCoAKe6O9PZ0ZLTu4cI9kFhNXn47Lew/w640-h402/Hersh.jpg" width="640" /></a></div><br /><p></p><p><br /></p><p></p><p style="line-height: normal; margin: 0cm; text-align: justify;">Does the Spectacle
mandate that you be a passive Spectator? No, in fact the Spectacle invites
intervention, it just invites a multiplicity of wrong interventions, based on
deficient, distorted information. And in this way one remains a Spectator to
the Situation, even while active, in being unable to actually change or substantively
inflect upon the Situation. The Spectacle alternately invites Spectatorship, on
the one hand, and incorrect, deluded, or mystified intervention, on the other,
and in this way the Spectacle perpetuates itself with us inside it. What is it
that the Spectacle is meant to obscure, or make impossible? Lucid, concerted,
knowing intervention into the Situation. The more historically situated and
contextualized the intervention, the more the Spectacle seeks to demonize,
stigmatize, and exclude it. Why? Because lucid, historically situated knowledge
of the Situation threatens to diagnose and oppose the Spectacle in a way that
knowledge gained by mere naive sense – that is, the empiricism accrued by a
subject naively developing within a contemporary Capital-Nation-State – cannot.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p style="line-height: normal; margin: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p style="line-height: normal; margin: 0cm; text-align: justify;">One shouldn’t be
paralyzed by the fear of wrong intervention into not acting, not speaking,
especially when it is vital and necessary to do so, but at the same time one
should be cognizant that the Spectacle invites, and rewards, stupid,
ill-informed acts and speech. We are suffocated and bamboozled by an
overproliferation and over-amplification of insipid, cretinous acts, and
insipid, cretinous speech, and it does not threaten the Spectacle to
inadvertently perpetuate that low, shallow thought. This, incidentally, is the
phenomenon most specifically diagnosed in Gilles Châtelet’s exemplary text To
Live and Think Like Pigs: The Incitement of Envy and Boredom in Market
Democracies tr Robin MacKay (London: Urbanomic, 2014).<o:p></o:p></p>
<p style="line-height: normal; margin: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p style="line-height: normal; margin: 0cm; text-align: justify;">For whose benefit
is the Spectacle? It is tempting to say ‘for the owning class, of course.’ But
that isn’t true, or isn’t complete at any rate. The Spectacle exists to
perpetuate a number of anachronistic and obsolete categories, including the
owning class of the richest imperialist states, the bureaucracy of their
respective states, as well as diffusely the bigots and hatemongers of society
as they misdirect the anger which ought to be directed towards the first two
categories onto the heads of the marginalized and the vulnerable. The Spectacle
deflects responsibility for the actual, it invents pseudo-villains and
pseudo-cures, it is a reality denying and reality distorting machine. <o:p></o:p></p>
<p style="line-height: normal; margin: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p style="line-height: normal; margin: 0cm; text-align: justify;">For every
imperialist owning class of the richest imperialist states there are chauvinist
popularizers of reaction, bloviating balding, frustrated white men who view
their exclusion of other voices as a noble self-sacrifice to keep the partisan,
activist mob at bay. Those who envision themselves as the last intellectual
bastion of sanity in a world gone mad. Jordan Peterson in the West is a
prominent example, but perhaps the paradigmatic example is France’s
Bernard-Henri Lévy, Nouveaux Philosophes. Whether on television or in print,
these popularizers of reaction are small-minded self-involved chauvinist
tyrants and charlatans, mashing together mismatched concepts in an effort to
bamboozle the public. Gilles Deleuze was asked once, "what do you think of
the "new philosophers,"" and he responded "nothing, I think
that their thought is worthless." He says they use concepts which are
"coarse as a hollow tooth. . . grotesque melanges, superficial dualisms:
the law and the rebel, power and the angel." And, secondarily, Deleuze
says, "the weaker the content of the thought, the more important the
thinker becomes, the more the subject of enunciation asserts its importance in
relation to the empty utterances." There is an omnipresent generalized
appeal to authority. Between these two procedures, the superficial and
erroneous use of shallow concepts, and the generalized appeal to authority, the
'New Philosophers' "sabotage work." The Spectacle promotes and
rewards stupidity, it disproportionately platforms and amplifies it, precisely
because the overwhelming majority of means of communication are privately owned
mouthpieces, and the few that are not are nonetheless <o:p></o:p></p>
<p style="line-height: normal; margin: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p style="line-height: normal; margin: 0cm; text-align: justify;">The Spectacle
requires the promotion of stupidity and the censorship of knowledge. This is
particularly apparent in the case of Julian Assange, where from Assange we now
know about the American treatment of prisoners of war at Guantanamo Bay,
civilian murders by American troops in Iraq, and the expansion of the drone-war
throughout the middle-east, but particularly in Yemen, and because of these
revelations, the US has Assange kept in captivity by UK authorities, in
abominable conditions, pending the resolution of his legal appeals process. For
the Crime of revealing true information to the international public, the United
States is individually persecuting Assange. But it is also true, in the cases
of Jeremy Corbyn, a politician, Steven Donziger, a lawyer, and Seymour Hersh, a
journalist. Each of these figures was subject to relentless, erroneous,
unjustified character assassination precisely because they had exposed the
Spectacle to historically grounded knowledge about the Situation. In the case
of Corbyn it was knowledge to the effect that society is unequally structured
to benefit a tiny ruling class at the expense of a dispossessed and
impoverished underclass. In the case of Mr Donziger, it was that Chevron had
severely ecologically degraded key portions of the Amazon river basin. And in
the case of Sy Hersh it is, most recently, that the United States committed
infrastructural terrorism against the Nordstream2 Pipeline in order to compel
Germany and the EU into greater compliance with its world hegemonic project.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p style="line-height: normal; margin: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p style="line-height: normal; margin: 0cm; text-align: justify;">The case of Hersh
is particularly enlightening. In our shallow, superficial discourse in the West
today, there is very little in the way of the weighing of speech and thought.
Because of the profusion of superficial, puff thought among the kept televisual
lackeys in the most affluent imperialist states, the contending thought is
never subject to real verification, that is thoroughgoing scrutiny. Rather
contentions and allegations simply drift across our screens, this outlet says
this, that outlet says that, and they say it until whatever phenomenon or
personages has drifted from the memory of the public whose brains they have
turned to mush. <o:p></o:p></p>
<p style="line-height: normal; margin: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p style="line-height: normal; margin: 0cm; text-align: justify;">For the liberal
bobble-heads in the West, anything which doesn’t accord with the
prescribed NATO/Atlantic-Council version of “the truth” is labelled
“disinformation,” or “a Kremlin-and-or-Chinese talking point” effectively
irrespective of its empirical validity. They have said this with respect to the
precipitous and provocative encroachment of NATO against Russia, they have said
it with respect to the US orchestrated coup in Ukraine in 2014, as they say it
with respect to the reasonable expectations of the signatories of the Minsk
Peace Accords. But saying this about one of the most decorated and
interrogative journalists of a generation is more difficult. When an American
liberal today denigrates Seymour Hersh, to try to deny the allegations he has
recently made with respect to the United States having bombed the Nordstream 2
pipeline, they oppose themselves to a figure which revealed US perpetrated
massacres in Vietnam, the prison abuses at Abu Ghraib, and the RAT-line in
Syria, by which America armed Al-Qaeda proxies through intermediaries in Turkey
in what was later revealed to have been a 1 Billion dollar CIA project named
Timber Sycamore.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p style="line-height: normal; margin: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p style="line-height: normal; margin: 0cm; text-align: justify;">The Spectacle
tolerates incredible, almost unimaginable amounts of both insipid, empty
speech, as well as false speech which promotes erroneous action and the
perpetuation of the Spectacle. What it cannot countenance is truth, digested,
historically grounded and contextualized truth, and its expression is
demonized, stigmatized and reviled from by the Spectacle, and in particular the
privately owned means of communication in the richest imperialist states, and
their atrophied, emaciated public institutions of expression, if any. In this
way, what the Spectacle and its technocratic institutions, the Atlantic Council
and its Digital Forensic Research Lab in particular, decry as “disinformation”
is, more often than not, information. And what they promote as information is
chauvinist, imperialist disinformation. The promotion of this present conflict
in the West requires the strict policing of an almost incredible shortfall of
even recent historical knowledge, the demonization and stigmatization of even
basic inferences from the actual Situation.<o:p></o:p></p><br /><p></p>Dock Curriehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09979072460617749796noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4063385487236063231.post-68564274255461034072023-02-13T03:29:00.007-08:002023-02-13T17:27:13.072-08:00What Peace in Ukraine Requires<p> </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEimnAH9ZFh1Mtu2ZrlUnctcF-vNPJjC43pAMoJmGa2emWlNt_k2dMR7IF4uSxNHrcYIttHMrY0U1ul2hfTNSgLOYEEW98bU-0QlhQGScd3xwoHuxTY3xLBDQg_sYBtdvwz0d4GqR7Lif_RJsSEmoEsFwBbA4P5f2OM84RxrxuGknHoXGDk-d8IkLk0TCg/s1414/Moris%20Graves%20-%20Black%20Waves.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="720" data-original-width="1414" height="326" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEimnAH9ZFh1Mtu2ZrlUnctcF-vNPJjC43pAMoJmGa2emWlNt_k2dMR7IF4uSxNHrcYIttHMrY0U1ul2hfTNSgLOYEEW98bU-0QlhQGScd3xwoHuxTY3xLBDQg_sYBtdvwz0d4GqR7Lif_RJsSEmoEsFwBbA4P5f2OM84RxrxuGknHoXGDk-d8IkLk0TCg/w640-h326/Moris%20Graves%20-%20Black%20Waves.jpg" width="640" /></a></div><br /><p></p><p></p><p style="line-height: normal; margin: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><br /></p><p style="line-height: normal; margin: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><br /></p><p style="line-height: normal; margin: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><br /></p><p style="line-height: normal; margin: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><br /></p><p style="line-height: normal; margin: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><br /></p><p style="line-height: normal; margin: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><br /></p><p style="line-height: normal; margin: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><br /></p><p style="line-height: normal; margin: 0cm; text-align: justify;">I – Peace in
Ukraine is Possible and Desirable<o:p></o:p></p>
<p style="line-height: normal; margin: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p style="line-height: normal; margin: 0cm; text-align: justify;">Contrary to the
increasingly belligerent, jackbooted chorus in the West, peace in Ukraine is
both possible and desirable. It is only a tiny, predatory minority, the owning
classes in the richest Imperialist states, who desire and promote the
prolongation and exacerbation of this decade long conflict. This war can end in
a peaceful, negotiated settlement, and should end that way, and it cannot
arrive at that destination, as the jingo chauvinists in the West maintain, by
inflaming the belligerents and flooding the conflict with advanced weaponry.
Tens of thousands on both sides have already perished in this war, it is
senseless, stupid, irrational and repulsive that the conflict be allowed to
continue. Peace in Ukraine today requires three things: (1) An Immediate
Ceasefire; (2) Intervention by a Broad Array of Non-Aligned Parties; and (3)
The Direct Participation of the Proximate Aggrieved Parties.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p style="line-height: normal; margin: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p style="line-height: normal; margin: 0cm; text-align: justify;">II – Peace in
Ukraine Requires (1) an Immediate Ceasefire, (2) Intervention by Non-Aligned
States, and (3) Direct Participation of the Aggrieved Parties<o:p></o:p></p>
<p style="line-height: normal; margin: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p style="line-height: normal; margin: 0cm; text-align: justify;">(1) An Immediate
Ceasefire<o:p></o:p></p>
<p style="line-height: normal; margin: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p style="line-height: normal; margin: 0cm; text-align: justify;">There are those in
the West who have come to promote the carnage of the war in Ukraine as a holy
and inviolable necessity. All manner of advanced death-dealing machines must be
flooded to Ukraine without delay. Fatheaded bloviating men who pontificate how
glorious it is for others’ children to die in this flesh devouring permanent
war economy zone. Ukrainian forces are beating up children to send them to the
front lines to get atomized within hours. Is the same thing not occurring in
Russia? To a lesser extent, yes, it is, where mobilization of a semi-reserve
professional elite within Russian society is being met with resentment by that
affected professional caste that the lower ranks of Russian society ought to be
conscripted. Nevertheless the problem is more acute on the Ukrainian side,
where Ukrainian fighting bodies are starting to be used up as a total resource.
There exists a human life-extinguishing zone, and both sides revile from it, as
well they should.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p style="line-height: normal; margin: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p style="line-height: normal; margin: 0cm; text-align: justify;">Russia has largely
been able to outsource the last few months of the war to a Private Military
Contractor, Wagner Group. Between international hires and redemptive prison
labour, Wagner has effectively fought the battle of Bakhmut/Artemvisk for the
past six months, and all of Ukraine’s resources have been tied up in retaining
this territory. But why outsource the ‘Special Military Operation’? Was it to
abandon it to private hands in hopes that they could better manage the affair
than the Russian Federal Assembly? No. This was to buy Russia time. Time for Uralvagonzavod
to ramp up production of T-90Ms and Armatas. Time to fortify the entire
Novorossiya territory with massive military earthworks making the territory
easier to defend. Russia has liberated the regions it came to liberate, the
Donestsk People’s Republic, the Luhansk People’s Republic, and the land bridge
to Crimea, and has spent the past six month retrenching these positions against
Kiev/NATO incursion. Moreover it has spent the past six months planning out and
supplying itself for its next offensive phase of the war, gradually making its
way up along the east bank of the Dnipro river, “liberating” larger cities like
Kharkov or Dnipropetrovsk before marching on Kiev in earnest.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p style="line-height: normal; margin: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p style="line-height: normal; margin: 0cm; text-align: justify;">I put “liberating”
here in scare-quotes. Why? Because unlike the liberation of the regions which
Kiev had been making war on for the past eight years, Donetsk and Luhansk,
cities further into the territorial body of Ukraine demonstrably do not want to
be part of Russia. That does not change the hard power fact that Russia can do
this if it chooses to, progressing slowly through siege warfare to the ultimate
defeat of Ukraine as a State.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p style="line-height: normal; margin: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p style="line-height: normal; margin: 0cm; text-align: justify;">But our ‘military
experts’ here in the West disagree. They say that the NATO countries can
procure or produce sufficient munitions and military hardware to prosecute a
prolonged military campaign. They say that they can get these arms to Ukraine,
and that Ukraine ought to keep fighting. Their progressively losing territory,
and bodies, is merely a short term shortfall which will be made up for in
deliveries of the most death-dealing of contemporary armaments, F-16s,
Typhoons, Leopards, Abrams, HIMARS, MANPADS, weapons with which Kiev might
strike deep into Russian territory. If there is a death-dealing machine, it has
all been promised to Zelensky and associates.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p style="line-height: normal; margin: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p style="line-height: normal; margin: 0cm; text-align: justify;">So each side is not
exhausted and is in effect spoiling for a prolonged, bloody, intractable fight.
The foreign policy blob of Washington and its associated vassal states is
committed to perpetual subsidization of weaponry for Ukraine, while Russia,
aggrieved not only by NATO expansion, not only by the coup which the US
perpetrated on Ukraine in 2014, but the eight year long civil war against the
eastern regions, is committed to these regions’ liberation from oppression by
and terrorism from the US proxy regime in Kiev.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p style="line-height: normal; margin: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p style="line-height: normal; margin: 0cm; text-align: justify;">Indeed none other
than that venerable American State-Thought machine the RAND Corporation
recently identified this as the aporia of "Mutual Optimisim About the
Course of the War" as the primary and overriding "Impediment to
Ending the Conflict." The RAND Corporation report found that <o:p></o:p></p>
<p style="line-height: normal; margin: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p style="line-height: normal; margin: 0cm; text-align: justify;">"Both Sides
believe that their relative power, and thus ability to prevail, will improve
over time. The centrality of Western assistance to Ukraine's war effort, and
the uncertainty about the future of that assistance, has led Moscow and Kyiv to
different conclusions about which of the two will gain the upper hand over
time. The conflict is therefore not resolving the information problem in the
way that the literature leads us to expect; both sides have grounds for
optimism about the possibility of making gains by continuing to fight.
Historically this kind of mutual optimism has made wars difficult to end."<o:p></o:p></p>
<p style="line-height: normal; margin: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p style="line-height: normal; margin: 0cm; text-align: justify;">What is being
proposed, and indeed promoted, is at least a months long, if not
years long, or decades long campaign of war between the US and NATO, one side,
and Russia on the other, in which hundreds of thousands of troops, to say
nothing of civilian casualties, will die. Initially with predominantly the
bodies of the proxy state in Kiev, but who is to say that would remain the
case? Presently troops are withdrawn from the Kiev proxy state to be trained in
Western states on advanced armaments, and there are already calls to supplement
Kiev’s troops with Western troops. How easily we might stumble across that
Rubicon over the coming months of unparalleled carnage and destruction?<o:p></o:p></p>
<p style="line-height: normal; margin: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p style="line-height: normal; margin: 0cm; text-align: justify;">It does not have to
be this way. It does not have to be that hundreds of thousands of young lives,
full lives, actual lives, have to be mulched up by great hulking war
apparatuses in a slow, churning cacophony of exploded munitions. There must be
a peace, there must be a peace process, and an equitable and rational
assessment of how to reconcile the opposing local populations. There must be an
immediate ceasefire. Nor, for that matter does it have to be the case that
thousands of lives are lost today along the eastern front of the war. In the
battle for Bakhmut/Artemvisk the average life-span for a Ukrainian conscript is
4 hours. It is consuming thousands of lives per day. Blown to bits like so much
gore in a reality that is, frankly, unimaginable in its horror.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p style="line-height: normal; margin: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p style="line-height: normal; margin: 0cm; text-align: justify;">(2) Intervention by
a Broad Array of Non-Aligned Parties<o:p></o:p></p>
<p style="line-height: normal; margin: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p style="line-height: normal; margin: 0cm; text-align: justify;">Intervention by a
broad array of neutral and unaligned parties. Anyone who is actively
transferring weapons and armaments to the conflict are disqualified. This would
mean that neutral third countries like China, Brazil and India would mediate
the conflict. And, of course, one would already hear the pained cries from the
Western warkhawks that ‘China is not neutral!’ Except they are, at least
insofar as this conflict goes. China could end this conflict tomorrow with a
single swift deployment of manpower and equipment, it could directly and
reliably supply military hardware to Russia which could end this conflict in a
matter of weeks, with the result being the total military defeat of the regime
in Kiev and its forcible depoliticization, and yet it doesn’t. Why doesn’t it?
Because, reliable China, that repository of technocratic rectitude, condemns
the unilateral violation of sovereign territory. It has condemned Russia for
the invasion of February 2022. Nevertheless, while for the active belligerents
against Russia right now, the US, the EU, UK, and Canada, the inquiry ends
here, for the unaligned countries it does not. Why, they ask has this situation
arisen? Why did Russia feel compelled to invade Ukraine? The unaligned
countries refuse to endorse and support either Russia, or indeed Kiev, because
they know that no one in the story of this conflict is innocent, and that all
of the active belligerents are responsible for its genesis. They know that the
overwhelming majority of the world, the labouring masses of the world, have
nothing to gain, nothing to profit from this war at all. They know that those
who promote the exacerbation and prolongation of this war most loudly do in
fact have a financial stake in its exacerbation and prolongation. This is what
makes them singularly qualified to intervene, because they refuse to merely
choose between the binary narratives of the conflict as manichean good versus
evil narratives.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p style="line-height: normal; margin: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p style="line-height: normal; margin: 0cm; text-align: justify;">The corollary is
that belligerents to this conflict, with both Russia and the United States
first among them, ought to play as little of a directing role as possible. The
belligerence within the United States towards Russia is no less than the
belligerence which exists towards the United States in Russia, and no more
justified or rational. Indeed it has been revealed this month by veteran
Journalist Sy Hersh that it was the United States which surreptitiously
destroyed several of the Nordstream 2 pipelines. The US is not merely supplying
material to Kiev, it is an active belligerent in the conflict.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p style="line-height: normal; margin: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p style="line-height: normal; margin: 0cm; text-align: justify;">(3) The Direct
Participation of the Proximate Aggrieved Parties<o:p></o:p></p>
<p style="line-height: normal; margin: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p style="line-height: normal; margin: 0cm; text-align: justify;">If there is to be a
meaningful and durable peace, it has to be the peace of the local populations
who have been aggrieved by the exacerbation of the situation by the broader
powers and belligerents. Since 2014, the state in Kiev has been at war with the
two breakaway republics in the eastern regions, the People’s Republic of
Donetsk, and the People’s Republic of Luhansk. It is between these parties,
Kiev on the one side, and the self-declared republics in the eastern regions,
as well as Crimea, including along the landbridge to Crimea, that peace has to
be made. Russia has interests in such negotiation, as do the US and its
immediate vassal states, but if there is to be a peace, it will have to be
between the erstwhile state of Ukraine and the regions in the east which no
longer wish to remain in Ukraine.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p style="line-height: normal; margin: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p style="line-height: normal; margin: 0cm; text-align: justify;">Crimea immediately
voted to leave Ukraine and join Russia after the 2014 coup, which was
immediately, of course, recognized by Russia. The West disputes and denigrates
this vote, as it does every international plebecite which demonstrates popular
contempt for the United States, but it is nonetheless the case that an
overwhelming majority of Crimea turned out to vote, and voted to leave immediately.
These other two republics of the eastern regions, however, were stranded within
the asserted territory of the Kiev regime. It has to be remembered what a
traumatic, provocative event the 2014 Maidan coup was – the duly elected
President of Ukraine, elected predominantly by the eastern regions, as
politically opposed to the parties favoured by the west of Ukraine, was removed
from office in an undemocratic coup. The eastern regions, the People’s Republic
of Donetsk and Luhansk, ceased to recognize the state in Kiev as a legitimate
political authority. It is precisely because of the civil war which arose as a
result of the US orchestrated coup of 2014 that the US proxy regime in Kiev was
compelled to sign the Minsk peace agreements, which pledged that Kiev would (a)
withdraw militarily from the eastern regions, (b) recognize the territorial
autonomy of the eastern regions, and (c) implement economic development for the
eastern regions. Of course Kiev did none of these things, and rather continued
to degrade conditions of life for the eastern regions. In 2014, Petro
Poroshenko, the mad racist chocolate baron who initially assumed power in the
post-coup regime in Kiev, declared that “We will have jobs, they will not. We
will have pensions, they will not. We will have support of children and
pensioners, they will not. Our children will go to kindergartens and schools,
theirs will be sitting in cellars.” This was the policy pursued for the
following eight years, and continued under Vlodimir Zelensky, though he ran on
a platform of doing otherwise.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p style="line-height: normal; margin: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p style="line-height: normal; margin: 0cm; text-align: justify;">Last month a
pro-Ukrainian reporter was was bothering an older lady from an eastern city
still under the control of Kiev. She said to this lady 'the Day of Ukrainian
Unity is this Weekend.' The lady shrugs and says, 'I don't know.' The
pro-Ukrainian reporter insists: "Unity of Ukraine is not important in your
opinion?" And the lady thinks to herself and then says "Why
Ukrainians? The whole world is for peace. So that people are kind." And
the pro-Ukrainian reporter insists "but we're at war and need to unite to
win against the Russians." The lady appears visibly annoyed, she doesn't
want to have the argument, she says 'I don't know, I'm not into politics."
And the pro-Ukrainian reporter says "war is politics?" And the lady
says "yes, politics of course." So the pro-Ukrainian reporter says
"politics of what country?" and the lady says "all countries,
America's, Ukraine's, Russia's." And here the pro-Ukrainian reporter
insists: "Who is the aggressor? Who started the war?" And the lady
says, without a moment's hestitation, "Ukraine." Incredulous, the
pro-Ukrainian reporter says "Ukraine started the war?" and the lady
says "yes." The pro-Ukrainian reporter asks "against whom did
Ukraine start the war?" and the lady says "2014 against its own
people." Again, incredulous, the pro-Ukraine reporter says "Ukraine
attacked itself?" and the lady, again, without hesitation, says "yes.
Whose people are in the Donbas?"<o:p></o:p></p>
<p style="line-height: normal; margin: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p style="line-height: normal; margin: 0cm; text-align: justify;">There exists a
population within Ukraine for whom Zelensky, fighting this war with perpetual
and indiscriminate Western assistance is a hero, a champion for freedom and
democracy, and, at the same time, there exists a population within the disputed
eastern regions for whom Zelensky is a pathetic idiot, who is waging a war in
total contravention of his central election promise to end and resolve the then
eight year long civil war, and who is selling himself, and Ukraine, to the
Americans, at the expense of Ukrainian bodies. This latter population is
specifically targeted for reprisal by the proxy regime in Kiev, silenced,
censored, banned from Parliament, arbitrarily arrested and tortured. If there
is to be a meaningful peace, both those who are culturally Ukrainian and those
who are culturally Russian, those on both sides of the now decade-long civil
war, must have a prominent and central position in the negotiations. Not Kiev
on one side and Russia on the other, nor Russia on one side and the US on the
other, but rather Kiev on one side and the People’s Republics of Donetsk and
Luhansk on the other.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p style="line-height: normal; margin: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p style="line-height: normal; margin: 0cm; text-align: justify;">These are the
parties between whom peace has to be made. Bracket aside the territorial
distribution question. Prior to the US orchestrated coup of 2014, it remained
possible for culturally Russian and culturally Ukrainian populations to live
together in peace within the eastern regions. As a result of the precipitous
increase in hostilities, as a result of the 2014 coup, and as a result of the
eight years of civil war perpetrated by Kiev against the eastern regions
thereafter, that is no longer possible. A peace settlement has to be realistic
about what can be achieved in terms of healing the wounds which have
accumulated over the past decade as a result of this conflict. It needs to put
these parties into dialogue with one another while finding a way to, for the
immediate future, keep them apart within an intelligent and rational
territorial distribution. <o:p></o:p></p>
<p style="line-height: normal; margin: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p style="line-height: normal; margin: 0cm; text-align: justify;">III – Rage Against
the Demonization and Denigration of Peace<o:p></o:p></p>
<p style="line-height: normal; margin: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p style="line-height: normal; margin: 0cm; text-align: justify;">Those who oppose
the cessation of hostilities often purport to be working in the ultimate
interests of peace. NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg made this claim,
for example, on January 5, 2023, stating that: “Weapons are – in fact – the way
to peace.” This is a dangerous, cynical lie, the purpose of which is to
legitimate NATO military expenditure and expand the territory of accumulation
and extraction by the US and its immediate vassal states.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p style="line-height: normal; margin: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p style="line-height: normal; margin: 0cm; text-align: justify;">In the Western
countries calls for peace, for a negotiated end to the war, are demonized,
denigrated and censored by the mouthpieces of the owning class, the privately
owned means of communication. The New York Times, CNN, MSNBC, The Economist,
the Atlantic, all promote the prolongation and exacerbation of this war, and
alternately stigmatize or ignore calls for the war to end. Basic, true
information is labelled ‘disinformation’ by the lapdogs of the US State
Department, the Atlantic Council and their associated personages. <o:p></o:p></p>
<p style="line-height: normal; margin: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p style="line-height: normal; margin: 0cm; text-align: justify;">In opposition to
this stultified heap, which monologically preaches the merit in perpetual subsidization
of a US proxy state to conquer territory it never controlled in the first
place, calls must grow to end this irrational proxy war. The Western public
must demand an immediate end to the carnage, an immediate ceasefire, the
abolition of the Bakhmut meat-blender, they must demand that peace negotiations
be directed and led by non-aligned parties, and that the US and Russia be
recognized as active belligerents who must themselves make peace, and the
public must demand a peace process which really and substantively heals the
wounds of the last ten years of civil war and great power struggle.<o:p></o:p></p><br /><p></p>Dock Curriehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09979072460617749796noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4063385487236063231.post-27781704445416202162022-11-11T12:54:00.002-08:002022-11-11T13:12:34.693-08:00What Do We Mean When We Say We Remember?<p> </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEih9iiY41qaNatxphprX7PV-QtR5YkoiL0rH34zqjgeWu-y2LI8HBR9TjgkuKH-aIha0O_X_va3Zqt3CLURbq12lTxfGvklhOGZSQ8b2MikZJdC5JRuPTznnO4Jx2usQRziSiFUzT2vttMo52uezC6eiobkOMi6hElsETFwMhjPCVEc97DoqjRWYLidRA/s979/white%20poppy%202.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="537" data-original-width="979" height="352" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEih9iiY41qaNatxphprX7PV-QtR5YkoiL0rH34zqjgeWu-y2LI8HBR9TjgkuKH-aIha0O_X_va3Zqt3CLURbq12lTxfGvklhOGZSQ8b2MikZJdC5JRuPTznnO4Jx2usQRziSiFUzT2vttMo52uezC6eiobkOMi6hElsETFwMhjPCVEc97DoqjRWYLidRA/w640-h352/white%20poppy%202.jpg" width="640" /></a></div><br /><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p></p><p align="justify" style="background: transparent; line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0cm; margin-left: 2cm; margin-right: 2.8cm;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; text-align: left;">"These
comments are sure to be welcomed by fifty or sixty people; a large
number given the times in which we live and the gravity of the
matters under discussion." [Guy Debord, Comments on the Society
of the Spectacle (1988)]</span></p>
<p align="justify" style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">On
October 24, 2022, Melanie Joly, Liberal Minister for Foreign Affairs
wrote that “we mark the 77th anniversary of the Charter of the
United Nations, the document that created the UN.” The same day
Canadian Ambassador to the UN, Bob Rae tweeted out "Happy UN
Charter day. Worth fighting for!" [exclamation point!] Comrades,
have you ever heard anything so nakedly cynical in your entire lives?</span></span></p>
<p align="justify" style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">What
are the very first words of the Preamble to the UN Charter? Does
anyone know? Everyone should. These words should be branded on the
hearts and minds of everyone who loves <u>peace</u>. It reads: "We
the people of the United Nations determined to save succeeding
generations from the scourge of war, which twice in our lifetime has
brought untold sorrow to mankind."</span></span></p>
<p align="justify" style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">In
his statement on so-called ‘Veterans Week,’ this past week, Prime
Minister Justin Trudeau wrote, quote: "In times of war, in
military conflicts, and in times of peace, we’ve counted on our
women and men in uniform." Hashtag 'Canada Remembers.' What does
this even mean? ‘Counted on them’ to what end?</span></span></p>
<p align="justify" style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">What
is it which Canada Remembers? Does Canada remember that the two world
wars directly consumed one hundred and forty-five millions souls, and
tens of millions more who died from the destabilization,
displacements, degradations of conditions of life and rampant
illnesses which the world wars gave rise to? What is being remembered
when we remember on remembrance day? Is it blonde haired blue-eyed
hometown boys dying in the trenches for freedom and democracy? Is it
Paul Gross in Passchendale (2008) in a pornographic aestheticization
of Sir Douglas Haig shoving 150,000 men into a mud coated
meat-grinder? Why were the wars?</span></span></p>
<p align="justify" style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">This
past week Kentuky Fried Chicken apologized because its German chains
had somehow sent out an app alert which read - and I quote - "It's
memorial day for Kristallnacht! Treat yourself with more tender
cheese on your crispy chicken. Now at KFCheese!" Incredible.
Incredible! Akin to Robert Musil’s ‘A Racehorse of Genius.’ A
phrase which immediately decontextualizes its referents beyond all
recognition. It’s the anniversary of Kristallnacht, be sure to
remember with fried chicken.</span></span></p>
<p align="justify" style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">This
is how ‘remembrance’ occurs for us today. As a totally
recuperated pastiche, with the most heinous crime known to man, the
foundation stone of the Holocaust, being casually juxtaposed into an
advertizement for fried chicken. There is <u>infinitely more truth in
this than falsity</u>. The truth is in the desensitization and
decontextualization of the Holocaust which it is exemplary of. This
ad is representative of the anaesthetic quality of the spectacle, how
it inures and makes one numb to the horrors of the twentieth century
by evacuating them of any meaning.</span></span></p>
<p align="justify" style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">I
remember that this past month, 52 nations – most pale as ghosts, or
otherwise honorary whites – voted AGAINST a UN resolution to
condemn the glorification of Nazism, neo-Nazism and other forms of
racial discrimination. More open ambivalence towards the
glorification of historical fascism than at any point save for the
1930s. In. . . uh. . . I guess, solidarity with Ukraine?</span></span></p>
<p align="justify" style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">What
do we mean when we say we remember?</span></span></p>
<p align="justify" style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">I
remember that settler-colonialism inflicted tens of millions of
deaths on the pre-Columbian indigenous populations of what are called
North and South America. I remember that this was, and remains, the
most heinous genocide known to human civilization, and that the
Holocaust is merely a rationalized form of colonial depopulation,
imbued with twentieth century technology. I remember that our state,
Canada, continues its genocide against indigenous peoples to this
day, and that this is reflected in indigenous populations’
overrepresentation in the criminal justice system, in poverty and
desperation of First Nations communities, and the development of the
Residential School System into the Ministry of child and family
services.</span></span></p>
<p align="justify" style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">I
remember that Britain was an enthusiastic participant in the slave
trade until 1807, and only abolished slavery throughout the Empire in
1833. Between 1640 and 1807 more than three million Africans were
trafficked to the colonies under the aegis and flag of the British
Empire. The funds generated by this trade were used to found the Bank
of England.</span></span></p>
<p align="justify" style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">I
remember that in the 1870s British rule starved five million people
in India to death as its bountiful grain was was plundered and
exported for profit. I remember that it was the British who first
rationalized the use of concentration camps in the Boer War. I
remember that tens of millions of Africans were exterminated by
various colonial powers in the so-called ‘scramble for Africa’
between 1890 and 1914.</span></span></p>
<p align="justify" style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">I
remember that while Hitler exterminated six million Jews, three
million Poles, and three million captured Soviet citizens, Winston
Churchill concertedly starved four million Bengalis in 1943. I
remember that he said of the famines, occurring under intense grain
import sanctions imposed by Britain, that the famines were the
Bengalis own fault for breeding too much.</span></span></p>
<p align="justify" style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">What
are the wars? What do we mean when we say we remember the wars?</span></span></p>
<p align="justify" style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">In
the meeting of the Reichstag of December 2, 1914, Karl Leibknecht was
the only member to vote against the provision of war credits. It is
often misunderstood to be the case that Liebknecht spoke at this
meeting, he didn't. He was forbidden to do so by the President of the
Reichstag. Instead, the text of his reasons for voting against the
provision of war credits was circulated to the German Press, all of
whom declined to print it. We receive Liebknect's remarks,
historically, from their printing in foreign presses.</span></span></p>
<p align="justify" style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">Liebknecht
wrote that "this War, desired by none of the people concerned,
has not broken out in behalf of the welfare of the German people or
any other. It is an Imperialist War, a war over important territories
of exploitation for capitalists and financiers."</span></span></p>
<p align="justify" style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">Liebknecht
wrote of the social chauvninists of the day, who rationalized their
calls for belligerence under the banner 'Against Czarism!,' that such
slogans had been quote "invented for the occasion. . . to
exploit the noblest inclinations and the revolutionary traditions and
ideals of the people in stirring up hatred of other peoples."</span></span></p>
<p align="justify" style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">The
same is true of Social Democrats and the American Empire today. Those
who marshal together lofty phrases and high-minded ideals in the
service of the model of reaction, the United States.</span></span></p>
<p align="justify" style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">I
remember that the United States stands before us today dripping from
head to foot in the blood of over a million Iraqis, and several
decade or longer occupations, just in the past twenty years. I
remember that the United States lied us into these wars by claiming
that Iraq had ‘weapons of mass destruction’ which never
materialized.</span></span></p>
<p align="justify" style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">I
remember that it was the US who gave rise to Al Qaeda, the force that
perpetrated 9/11, by arming, training and facilitating extremist
groups as a cudgel against the Soviet Union in Afghanistan, and that
the response to even the slightest blowback from doing this – a
tiny sampling of what the US habitually inflicts on other countries,
over decades and decades – was unimaginable carnage. In the <u>first
month</u> of the Iraq War the US directly killed 15 thousand Iraqi
civilians.</span></span></p>
<p align="justify" style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">I
remember that it was the United States which engineered and
inaugurated the now eight year long civil war in the Donbas. I
remember that the US doesn’t care about the societal catastrophe
they inflict, so long as it secures more territory for accumulation.</span></span></p>
<p align="justify" style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">I
remember the regime in Kiev openly celebrating perpetrators of the
Holocaust in the street for the past eight years. I remember that the
figures lauded as the ‘Heroes of Ukraine’ in ‘Glory to Ukraine,
Glory to the Heroes’ killed - by the conservative figures of Raul
Hilberg, in the volumes of The Destruction of the European Jews -
between 700,000 and 900,000 Jews, Poles, and other ethnic minorities
over the course of the Second World War.</span></span></p>
<p align="justify" style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">I
remember the mad chocolate baron, Poroshenko, speaking of the Donbas,
saying “We will have jobs, they will not. We will have pensions,
they will not. We will have support of children and pensioners, they
will not. Our children will go to kindergartens and schools, theirs
will be sitting in cellars." I remember their failure, or
refusal, to implement the peace agreements which they agreed to.</span></span></p>
<p align="justify" style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">I
remember that the international working class has no stake in this
present war. I remember that this war, like the First World War, is
an imperialist war, a war fought by monopolist blocs for territories
of extraction. I remember that the pious banners flown in support of
the present war are as cynical as they were at the outset of the
twentieth century!</span></span></p>
<p align="justify" style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">There
is no profit to the international working class in the prolongation
or exacerbation of this war, in subsidizing and escalating a war of
aggression to conquer and subdue the eastern regions! The watchword
of the international proletariat must be peace! Peace now! Peace
without pre-conditions, peace without the prosecution of further war
as some kind of prerequisite!</span></span></p>
<p align="justify" style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">One
year after the outbreak of hostilities in the First World War,
Leibkneckt wrote that "The masses in the warring countries have
begun to free themselves from the official webs of lies. . ."
and that "The mad delusions about the ‘holy aims’ of the war
have given way more and more, the enthusiasm for the war has
dwindled, the will for a rapid peace has grown powerfully all over. .
. The enemies of the people are counting on the forgetfulness of the
masses – we counter this with the solution: Learn everything, don’t
forget anything!"</span></span></p>
<p align="justify" style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">If
it is to pierce through the spectacle which surrounds us and numbs
us, anesthetizes us to the reality of history, this is what I believe
remembering has to mean: Learn everything, don’t forget anything!</span></span></p><br /><p></p>Dock Curriehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09979072460617749796noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4063385487236063231.post-78856295365223456002022-02-27T01:52:00.005-08:002022-02-27T02:24:32.128-08:00Spectacle, Simulation and Sycophancy in the Liberal Imperialist West<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEgDxQOitfVcLlcqwgPHmMvCse2ExHdENBRQ2VTh8LHPpcc90SYhQuYR2FNLP_k6NJaCwuXuN5WxlEVc28JUMy_Aul5DxRg-QtgukkFEzgvt_bAeN92Hdseg5m2fw4Mq-dvmFNakXlZLo0WJKJ3HpW6DbABMJbci3ucwWFsONbLxwHRI4JPNnvQS0oSosQ=s1123" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="687" data-original-width="1123" height="392" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEgDxQOitfVcLlcqwgPHmMvCse2ExHdENBRQ2VTh8LHPpcc90SYhQuYR2FNLP_k6NJaCwuXuN5WxlEVc28JUMy_Aul5DxRg-QtgukkFEzgvt_bAeN92Hdseg5m2fw4Mq-dvmFNakXlZLo0WJKJ3HpW6DbABMJbci3ucwWFsONbLxwHRI4JPNnvQS0oSosQ=w640-h392" width="640" /></a></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><p align="justify" style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0cm;">Uncritical sycophancy towards the United States and its geopolitical
interests is not journalism. If this is what you do, reproduce the
narrative and world perspective of America, and call it ‘journalism,’
you are a fraud. At the best of times, Canadian media is a sleaze-den
of nihilist cretins, stepping over one another to grovel before
existing power in society and more acutely tap into the precise kind
of stupid which gets them paid to express it. The conflict in
Ukraine, however, has driven this gibbering heap into the most absurd
and incredible frenzy. The fearsome eastern man has come to take
their homes and brutalize their families, or what amounts to the
same, the barbarian slav threatens and menaces a kind of affluent
white herrenvolk polity which, in that respect, resembles their own
settler-state. This is what Ukraine stands for right now, and it is
why it is both the apex of international white supremacist militant
organization, and the cause celebre of the Western chattering
classes. This cacophonous melange of idiots and bumpkins is convulsed
and howling for blood.</p>
<p align="justify" style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0cm;">The
worst of the freaks, bobbleheads and dummies who populate Canada’s
mediasphere is Justin Ling, a shambling opportunist lich, a
sniveling, grovelling apologist and propagandist for existing state
power in Canada as an imperialist vassal state. A grown up Randall J.
Weems from the show Recess tattletale. A NARC bottom-feeder having
floated up from the depths of the ghouls and cretins at the Halifax
Security Forum. Every form of liberal imperialism and chauvinist
opportunism which has presented itself in the past decade, that
slithering Iago, Ling, has thrown himself into it. He cheerled for Al
Qaeda in Syria, he endorsed the US-orchestrated coup against Evo
Morales and its comprador fascist ringleader Jean Áñez, and, most
importantly, he has made a career out of deflecting and running
interference against legitimate criticism of Canadian Liberal Deputy
Prime-Minister Chystia Freeland and her Nazi-collaborationist
heritage and orientation.</p>
<p align="justify" style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0cm;">It
is important, especially for the present context, to emphasize the
power which Chrystia Freeland exercises over the Government and its
foreign policy. The Liberal’s foreign policy is effectively decided
by Freeland by fiat, and exercised, right now, by Melanie Joly. This
is important because the extent to which the Liberal Government has
endorsed extremely reactionary historical narratives promoted by a
far right wing Ukrainian diaspora in Canada has been a matter of
intense domestic controversy for years. While there are many parts to
this story, it is perhaps best captured by a 2017 story from the
Ottawa Citizen’s David Pugliese, “<a href="https://ottawacitizen.com/news/national/defence-watch/chrystia-freelands-granddad-was-indeed-a-nazi-collaborator-so-much-for-russian-disinformation">Chrystia Freeland’s granddadwas indeed a Nazi collaborator – so much for Russiandisinformation.</a>” As Pugliese noted, Freeland's grandfather Michael
Chomiak "fled with his Nazi colleages as the Russians advanced
into Poland." For description of the content of Chomiak’s
publication, Pugliese cites the Los Angeles Holocaust Museum:
"soliciting Ukrainian support for the German cause,"
"silencing the mass killing of Jews in Galicia" and
"official Nazi propaganda." <span style="text-align: left;">This
story was journalism. It challenged power and asserted truth. That is
journalism.</span></p>
<p align="justify" style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0cm;">Well,
of course Ling reviled from it immediately, and has vociferously ever
since. It told inconvenient truths about one of the most prominent
boots on Ling’s licking roster. Exposure of such truths is anathema
to the function of journalism as Ling understand it: to reproduce the
approved and official view of state power, as inviolable truth, and
never to subject even a single utterance of extant political power to
even the slightest breeze of scrutiny. To Ling, highlighting the
family history of Freeland is ‘Russian disinformation.’ Entirely
true, relevant to the circumstances, so how is it possibly
‘disinformation’? Simple. This information has not been approved
by the official and approved approval agencies of the imperialist
states – the Atlantic Council, DFRLab, Bellingcat, a whole universe
of liberal imperialist NGOs whose sole purpose is to police fidelity
to the geostrategic objectives of the United States and NATO. To
‘journalists’ like Ling, the thing asserted as truth by this
panoply of agencies is truth, irrespective of its objective,
empirical validity, or lack thereof. Ling cheerled for Al-Qaeda
because these bodies told him to, he held the US-orchestrated coup
against Evo Morales legitimate because these bodies instructed him
this to be the case, and he calls things like pointing out observable
facts about the world situation and its players and characters
‘disinformation,’ even when they are true, if they offend the
state-sanctioned narrative of truth he subscribes to.</p>
<p align="justify" style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0cm;">This
story is well worth remembering today, as the Liberal Government is
in a desperate, otherwise inscrutable frenzy to provoke and
exacerbate war in Eastern Europe. In these circumstances, the
erroneous deployment of ‘disinformation’ is itself driven out of
all proportion, and applied to any constellation of facts which does
not directly serve the war effort of NATO. To bobble-heads like Ling,
ensconced in their platform bunkers, every single thing asserted by
the US and its immediate vassal states is de facto truth, and
everything and anything which contradicts such assertions is de facto
false. The most wild and unbelievable of assertions are made
concerning the conflict in Ukraine, and barely any of such assertions
are subject to any criticism or scrutiny whatsoever, so long as it
accords with NATO dictates. It is not merely that this view, call it
‘Ling-brain-on-war,’ I guess, merely censors competing accounts,
but it moreover mass produces untruth, a vast geyser of demonstrably
false horseshit which is permitted to spew on the largest
communications mouthpieces, going unchecked solely in virtue of it
being convenient in the moment of a jingoistic push for war.</p>
<p align="justify" style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0cm;">On
February 26, on CBC News, host Natasha Fatah conducted a lengthy
interview with a Ukrainian partisan in Canada collecting money to
send weapons to Western Ukraine. This ‘interview’ was incredible
for both its length and the extent to which it merely provided a
platform for this Ukrainian partisan to extol the virtues of
Ukrainian militarism and implore NATO to put boots on the ground in
Ukraine. Each question from Fatah was a soft-ball ‘yes, aren’t
they brave,’ ‘so you say you would like boots on the ground?’
This is a fundamental failure of journalism, an abject failure. A
nightmare of non-journalism, for which Ms. Fatah should be profoundly
ashamed.</p>
<p align="justify" style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0cm;">The
CBC has been the object of ridicule for its pro-war, pro-militarist
bias for years. Habitually, over and over, paid advocates for weapons
companies like General Dynamics, Lockheed Martin, and Raytheon, and
right wing ghouls like John Bolton, are platformed for their
‘expertise’ on foreign affairs. This bias is a consequence of the
rabid liberal imperialism of the affluent white management-editorial
caste which has monopolized the CBC – primary Brodie Fenlon, Paul
Hambleton and Chuck Thompson – to the exclusion of all other
perspectives. It is sad, and wild, however, to see someone like Fatah
so compliantly and cheaply used as a backdrop for open and
unvarnished pro-war and pro-NATO propaganda. And that is the point
with this farcical circus in Canadian media, are they not ashamed of
being so pliant and malleable? Are they not mortified at being
stenographers and mouthpieces for whatever orientation is handed down
to them?</p>
<p align="justify" style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0cm;">Canada’s
elder statesman pundit Andrew Coyne has thrown himself behind the
Ukrainian cause with enthusiasm. On Saturday, Coyne retweeted the SNL
cold-opening singing jingo songs in Ukrainian peasant garb. How can
they not itch slathered in their own absurdity? Coyne presents
himself as the kind of wisened and considered commentator whose
leatherbound tomes would occupy the bookshelves of the Laurentian
literati for a decade or two. But there could be no more corrosive
force to this presentation than the jingoistic oaf fervour he
presently seized by.</p>
<p align="justify" style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0cm;">Let
us review what is really significant in this instance. In 2014 the US
orchestrated a coup against the democratically elected leader of
Ukraine, the intentions of which were to economically integrate the
territory of Ukraine into the US sphere. This was a profoundly
hostile and belligerent act. One of the consequences of this act was
to strand and maroon an overwhelmingly culturally, ethnically and
linguistically Russian people in the east in a country they no longer
understood or felt wanted in. The deposed President, indeed, was from
Donetsk. Independence in these regions was, in fact, immediately
subject to a referendum. In the aftermath of the pro-US 2014 coup,
the Donbas region, just as Crimea did, voted overwhelmingly for
independence, with an overwhelming turnout. But whereas Russia was,
at the time, content to suffer the blowback for recognizing the
results of Crimea’s referendum, it urged the Donbas region to work
towards its implementation. Over the past eight years, the US and its
local proxies in first the Poroshenko Government, then the Zelensky
Government, have allowed Neo-Nazi battalions in the east to harass,
shell, menace and ethnically persecute these regions. Fifteen
thousand people have died in the Donbas region between 2014 and 2022.
The US, and Canada, have consistently provided military aid to these
Ukrainian paramilitaries, including the explicitly Neo-Nazi Azov
Battalion. The so-called Minsk Agreements called upon Ukraine to
recognize the particularities of these eastern regions, allow for
their self-government, to withdraw its paramilitaries from around
these regions, and to implement a program of economic recovery. None
of this was done. The opposite was done. In January and February of
2021, Ukrainian paramilitaries ramped up their persecution of these
regions, in concert with the United States, as a pretext for war.</p>
<p align="justify" style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0cm;">So
when the Western media now cries crocodile tears and portrays the
Ukrainians as innocent lambs, or noble warriors, unblemished by moral
taint, you should spit it at their feet. A band of robber barons and
their American patrons stole Ukraine in the dead of night, and now
want the world to forget it and beat the war drums with them. The
post-coup Governments could have committed to the implementation of
the Minsk Agreements, and could have pursued a path of peace with and
development for the eastern regions, and they did not. Rather they
kept them locked up in the closet, shelled every day, beaten like
dogs, for eight long years, and something, unfortunately, was going
to break.</p>
<p align="justify" style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0cm;">This
conflict is obscured, not illuminated, by the pious jingoism of the
liberal imperialist dummies draped from head to foot in blue and
yellow. The massive and enduring deficit of historical knowledge
which their shabby sabre-rattling requires is a bumbling and pathetic
insult to what this situation requires in terms of explication and
articulation towards de-escalation and peace.</p>
<p align="justify" style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0cm;">Canada
is set up to fail in this instance. Our foreign policy is essentially
determined, in the last instance, by a virulent Ukrainian fascist,
Chrystia Freeland. And, make no mistake, Chrystia Freeland is a
fascist, and has acted as one throughout the world during her tenure.
And our media is so anemic, stupid and cultivated to produce even a
modicum of critical analysis. As Jay Watts has noted, the only
possible outcome is for Canada’s undersized influence on the world
stage to be severely apparent and ridiculous. Nobody wants this war
more than Canada, not even America. We are the yipping, rabid attack
dog at America’s heel under Trudeau and Freeland, no less than we
would have been under any of the various pasty white gentlemen who
vie for the Conservative leadership. But that makes it even more
important to highlight how and why it is that Canada, of all places,
is baying for blood and desperate to inaugurate World War Three.</p>
<p align="justify" style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0cm;">Nobody
wants war and conflict, but permitting for only the monological
expression of a farcical, one-sided and absurd pro-Ukrainian
narrative, rather than doing anything to alleviate the conflict, in
fact profoundly exacerbates and pours fuel on the fire. No, Western
Ukrainians are not deserving of Russian occupation, and their
legitimate interests in self-determination ought to be respected. So,
too, should the legitimate interests of the eastern regions of the
People’s Republic of Donetsk and Luhansk in self-determination be
respected. And, yes, the entirely legitimate and reasonable interests
which Russia possesses in its own security and development, which the
US has ever sought to trench on, ought to be respected. The
one-sidedness of the debate right now is incredible. To suggest that
the US and NATO are not benign, still less benevolent, entities gets
one accused of being a Putin-lover. And yet the liberal imperialist
bobble-heads, baying for blood, consider it totally normal and sane
to cosplay as Ukrainian peasants and rehearse the Ukrainian blood and
soil myth on primetime!</p>
<p align="justify" style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0cm;">This
entire situation is an excuse for the most affluent liberal shitheads
to beat their emaciated little chests and feel pious for cheering for
Nazi battalions. Don’t fear offence in rejecting this monological
NATO narrative and its pious bobblehead policemen, because that is
what actual journalism is, presenting facts which unsettle the
powerful where and when you are. If there is to be any chance at a
peaceful resolution of the conflict, it will come from ravenously and
mercilessly attacking this kind of sycophancy for officialdom.</p></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div>Dock Curriehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09979072460617749796noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4063385487236063231.post-71696069774834474732022-02-24T23:23:00.001-08:002022-02-25T04:12:34.874-08:00Specific Imperialism and Social-Chauvinist Forgetting in Ukraine and Canada<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEg4NF0E735WcFo-j11--scUwCiZNpGr1ONnR-3THA8uJyxHLrol7V9zsmXLFRPCfx5IZF8DltBIIMrSlVVuctcKbsnrVjjTmJ9UKCcWOZHGjKQ7kUQDi_zX1-GccFpVIe-3HZrQsBUPvxdH3Va7wQeSv_tckqkpQFusDXMFhvOBltIcqhQ8pYMJJspEQQ=s1920" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1080" data-original-width="1920" height="360" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEg4NF0E735WcFo-j11--scUwCiZNpGr1ONnR-3THA8uJyxHLrol7V9zsmXLFRPCfx5IZF8DltBIIMrSlVVuctcKbsnrVjjTmJ9UKCcWOZHGjKQ7kUQDi_zX1-GccFpVIe-3HZrQsBUPvxdH3Va7wQeSv_tckqkpQFusDXMFhvOBltIcqhQ8pYMJJspEQQ=w640-h360" width="640" /></a></div><br /><p align="justify" style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><br /></p><p align="justify" style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="text-align: left;">The events in Eastern Europe over the past days and weeks have
shocked and concerned the world, and everyone’s focus and attention
is rightly on efforts to de-escalate the situation and resolve even
strong differences peacefully. But the discussion invariably turns
acrimonious once one attempts to analyze whose actions are really
impeding peace and development. The dominant view promulgated in the
West, most prominently in its privately owned means of communication,
like MSNBC, the New York Times, Reuters, Bloomberg, the WSJ, etc
holds that the barbarian hun simply struck, out of the blue, with no
reason or cause whatsoever, as an expression of their backwardsness
and unenlightenment.</span></p>
<p align="justify" style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0cm;">Liberals,
of course, have thrown themselves into this farce with aplomb.
Adorned with their Je Suis Ukraine facebook banners and yellow and
blue twitter handles, they e-transfer their pennies to the Roman
Shukhevych memorial foundation. It is sickening, really. What is a
hundred and fifty casualties in comparison with the fifteen thousand
who have died in the Donbas over the past eight years? These people
don’t know and don’t care, they’ve been told by their favourite
liberal plutocrat celebutantes to be outraged, and shake their little
fists with indignation. Many of them would not have been able to
locate Ukraine on a map a month ago, but now it is their cause
célèbre.</p>
<p align="justify" style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0cm;">It
would be bad enough for this view to be held by the owning class and
their self-identified mouthpieces and idiots, but what is worse is
when self-professed ‘socialists’ do the owner’s work and
promote such imperialist canards. In Lenin’s Imperialism: The
Highest Stage of Capitalism, Lenin reproaches Kautsky for his
narrowly political understanding of imperialism, his having contained
it to narrowly national question. Kautsky’s understanding of
imperialism, Lenin writes, amounts to merely a thirst for
annexations. Lenin says that Kautsky's definition is wrong because it
elides that contemporary imperialist interests reflect a preference
for annexations of highly industrialized areas, as well as the role
of the development of productive forces in securing such annexations,
and thus misses whose specific interests that preference reflects, ie
financiers. Lenin charges that Kautsky concertedly elides this
because he is representative of a kind of onlooker whose real
interests are in obscuring, rather that illuminating, the real
implications of the ubiquity of the monopoly form. This, Lenin finds,
is social-chauvinism, the effort to reconcile the interests of the
working class to those of their own monopoly imperialist formation.</p>
<p align="justify" style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0cm;">Lenin
charges that Kautsky believed in the possibility of a benevolent and
pacific superimperialism, meant in the sense of a harmonious and
perpetual division of the world along capitalist lines. Lenin charges
that the intention of the social chauvinist 'socialists,' like
Kautsky, is to obscure the reality that, as long as society is still
stratified along the lines of a class division between those who
possess the means of production and exchange, and those who merely
sell their labour to obtain the means of subsistence, "are
inevitably nothing more than a 'truce' in periods between wars."
[V I Lenin "Imperialism: The Highest Stage of Capitalism (1916)"
Collected Works Vol XXII (New York: Progress, 1963), 295] Kautsky's
analysis of imperialism is "permeated through and through with a
spirit, absolutely irreconcilable wit Marxism, of obscuring and
glossing over the fundamental contradictions of imperialism." [V
I Lenin "Imperialism: The Highest Stage of Capitalism (1916)"
Collected Works Vol XXII (New York: Progress, 1963), 298]</p>
<p align="justify" style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0cm;">In
promoting the notion of a perpetual and stable super-imperialist
alliance of the monopoly capitalist states and their associations for
the purposes of the exploitation of the world, Kautsky obscures the
actual development of imperialism. "Instead of showing the
living connection between periods of imperialist peace and periods of
imperialist war, Kautsky presents the workers with a lifeless
abstraction in order to reconcile them to their lifeless leaders."
[V I Lenin "Imperialism: The Highest Stage of Capitalism (1916)"
Collected Works Vol XXII (New York: Progress, 1963), 296]</p>
<p align="justify" style="background: transparent; break-before: auto; line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0cm; margin-left: 2cm; margin-right: 2.7cm; page-break-before: auto;">
"We ask, is it 'conceivable,' assuming that the capitalist
system remains intact - and this is precisely the assumption Kautsky
does make - that such alliances would be more than temporary, that
they would eliminate friction, conflicts and struggle in every
possible form?</p>
<p align="justify" style="background: transparent; line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0cm; margin-left: 2cm; margin-right: 2.7cm;">
The question has only to be presented clearly for other than a
negative answer to be impossible. This is because the only
conceivable basis under capitalism for the division of spheres of
influence, interests, colonies, etc., is a calculation of the
strength of those participating, their general economic, financial,
military strength, etc. And the strength of these participants in the
division does not change to an equal degree, for the even development
of different undertakings, trusts, branches of history, or countries
is impossible under capitalism. Half a century ago Germany was a
miserable, insignificant country, if her capitalist strength is
compared with Britain of that time; Japan is compared with Russia in
the same way. Is it 'conceivable' that in ten or twenty years' time
the relative strength of the imperialist powers will have remained
unchanged? It is out of the question."</p>
<p align="justify" style="background: transparent; line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0cm; margin-left: 2cm; margin-right: 2.7cm;">
V I Lenin "Imperialism: The Highest Stage of Capitalism (1916)"
Collected Works Vol XXII (New York: Progress, 1963), 295.</p>
<p align="justify" style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0cm;">The
conflict in the Donbas today reflects the impossibility of lasting
peace under conditions of capitalism, as articulated by Lenin in
Imperialism: The Highest Stage of Capitalism. It reflects the falsity
and unreality of the contention of the End of History made by
American NeoConservatives like Francis Fukuyama thirty years ago, and
its corollary in the metaphysical nihilism of Lyotard’s purported
transcendence of meta-narratives. Society is still wracked by
contradiction, a result of class stratification and its implication
on the world stage, competition between monopoly capitalist blocs. So
long as the development of the means of production and exchange in
the world remains alienated by the monopoly capitalist form,
conditions of peace will be irregular and punctuated by war.</p>
<p align="justify" style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0cm;">A
previously settled division of the world among great powers and their
respective trusts and associations, under the aegis of the United
States, is today coming undone, and the efforts of the United States
to preserve and extend its sphere of accumulation in the face of a
shifting balance of power among those powers is provoking war. The US
orchestrated Maidan coup of 2014, as well as the exploitation of
Ukraine’s natural resources, and the ethnic persecution of
Russian-speaking regions in the east, are hostile acts of war by the
United States against Russia.</p>
<p align="justify" style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0cm;">The
pro-war liberal imperialist position requires forgetting and
obliviousness, well delineated and concerted stupidity. It requires
forgetting the cynical efforts of the United States in weaponizing
radicalized jihadi variants of Islam against the former Soviet Union,
and the decades of horrors that this gave rise to across the middle
east. It requires forgetting the aggressive eastern movement of the
US-led military alliance, NATO, right up to and along Russia’s
borders. It requires forgetting that the illegal US-orchestrated coup
of 2014 was against a governor from those eastern regions. It
requires forgetting that it was Ukraine which violated the Minsk
agreements, which required acknowledgement of the particularities of
the eastern regions of Donestsk and Luhansk, acceptance of their
self-government, withdrawal of paramilitaries from those territories,
and a program of economic recovery implemented for these regions. It
requires forgetting that Ukraine did the opposite, and that the last
eight years have been marked by constant shelling, harassment, ethnic
persecution against these regions.</p>
<p align="justify" style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0cm;">The
mistake made by those who disclaim the conflict as merely differing
orientations of statecraft is in misperceiving imperialism as
disconnected from calculated accumulation, just as Kautsky did. The
efforts to integrate Ukraine into the Western sphere of accumulation
– the political battle between, on the one hand, a pro-Western
Ukrainian comprador elite, who favoured disconnection with Russia,
and the ideological rehabilitation of Ukraine’s legacy of Nazi
collaboration, and, on the other, the
institutional public sphere which was, much as Belarus still is
today, basically a relatively autonomous adjunct of the Russian
state, and culminating in the Maidan coup of 2014 – has everything
to do with the division of territories among the competing great
powers, specifically in terms of their relative accumulation. The
Maidan coup of 2014 reflects, in effect, the economic theft of
Ukraine by the West against Russia, it was a revolution of petty
Ukrainian capitalists, in concert with their big money accomplices in
the West, against the Ukrainian people. Draped in the finery of
mostly mythological blood and soil myth, the Maidan of 2014 was in
fact an act of war by the United States against Russia, having very
little, if anything, to do with ‘freedom’ for Ukrainians
themselves.</p>
<p align="justify" style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0cm;">Chrystia
Freeland is having a field day, of course, and has ostensibly flung
open the border to Ukrainians who wish to immigrate to Canada.
Canada, a settler-colonial imperialist state, fosters and encourages
reaction abroad, and then provides greater freedom of movement to the
reactionaries, of course. The requirements of actively produced
propaganda for belligerence against Russia in this instance, however,
produce the most absurd of consequences, where the Russian is
identified with the caricature of a barbaric slav, but the Ukrainian,
apparently inexplicably, is not. The contention that the overwhelming
majority of Russian people are either stupid, or oppressed, or that
Putin is acting without their endorsement, is an orientalist trope.
It supplants an actual analysis of the situation with a comforting
liberal-imperialist mythology of subduing the unenlightened
peripheral upstart.</p>
<p align="justify" style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0cm;">The
social chauvinist must necessary gloss over the repeated failures to
even attempt to implement the Minsk agreements on the part of
Ukraine, they must avoid confronting the reality of fear and
persecution visited upon the people’s of Donetsk and Luhansk over
the past eight years, they must necessarily be indifferent to their
alienation and misery. Such social chauvinists must necessarily avert
their eyes from right-wing fascist and terrorist influences in
Ukraine, and ignore that the Ukrainian state has joined in the
promotion of an official state blood and soil mythology, and the
ideological rehabilitation of perpetrators of the holocaust. The
social chauvinist must necessary elide, ignore, or block out
acknowledgement of the human rights violations perpetrated by
officially integrated Neo-Nazi regiments in the Ukrainian armed
forces, as well as the fact that these regiments have become a nexus
of support for white supremacist elements in the West.</p>
<p align="justify" style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0cm;">The
Russian intervention in Ukraine is already over, for all intents and
purposes. It lasted approximately an hour and a half for Russia to
demonstrate its overwhelming military superiority over Ukraine, with
targeted eliminations of its major military infrastructure, and a
relative minimum of casualties. The effort to televisually amplify or
contort its extent for demagogic purposes in the West is
overwhelming. Elements in the imperialist state most under the sway
of financier interests are baying for blood in retaliation. Weapons
companies in the West are already salivating.</p>
<p align="justify" style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0cm;">As
tempting as it may be for self-professed ‘socialists’ to be
disclaiming Vladimir Putin, and participating in the pious
demonization of the irrational slavic despot, this would be a
profound betrayal of truth and the working class of all nations, to
whom the obligation is to oppose the mystifications of the owning
class. Now, instead, is the time to forcefully advance what the
outbreak of hostilities really reflects: the effects of the United
States efforts to assert hegemony over more and more territory, and
more and more economically developed territory, and to integrate
these territories into its own sphere of accumulation. However much
you may dislike war and conflict, the war and conflict neither
started, nor will end, with Russia’s intervention in Ukraine. In
many respects the conflict began with the 2014 coup, and any efforts
at de-escalation now must needs centre that truth in its discussion
of the reasonable expectations of most average everyday Ukrainians,
alike with the reasonable expectations of those in the east who have
a radically different orientation to the events of 2014. The liberal
imperialist press likes to portray what occurred in Crimea in 2014 as
an annexation, but this contention elides that the population of
Crimea, with an over 80 per cent turnout, voted to leave Ukraine in
2014 in the aftermath of the pro-US coup. Censoring this point is
exemplary of the kind of social chauvinist forgetting which aim at
papering over the real nature of monopoly capitalist imperialism and
its irreconcilable contradictions. Participating in cynical liberal
imperialist jingoism against Russia today, especially by means of
social chauvinist myopia and forgetting, is objectively siding with
the monopoly interests of the United States and its immediate
sub-imperial vassal states.</p>
<p align="justify" style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0cm;">The
2014 Maidan coup was an act of martial economic theft by the United
States against Russia. It dramatically impacted the national security
calculations of Russia, with a pro-Western vassal suddenly
immediately on its doorstep, being armed and trained by NATO
functionaries, and it carved up and privatized the energy resources
of Ukraine. Worst of all, it marooned several overwhelmingly Russian
speaking peoples in the east feeling out of place, persecuted, and
militarily threatened by far right wing paramilitary thugs sanctioned
by the newly minted pro-Western Ukrainian government.</p>
<p align="justify" style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0cm;">The
last eight years have been hell on earth for these peoples, who have
proclaimed independence and been recognized by Russia these past
weeks, the People’s Republics of Donetsk and Luhansk. These people
were perpetually let down and immiserated by Ukraine’s refusal to
take the steps agreed to in the Minsk agreements. Ukraine did not
take steps to ensure that these peoples’ would not be menaced by
Neo-Nazi thugs along racial and ethnic lines. Ukraine did not
implement a program of economic recovery for these regions. Rather,
Ukraine allowed these regions to descend down into omnipresent
low-grade civil war for eight years, with enormous casualties and
degradation of quality of life. The Russian intervention is the
direct consequence of this failure on the part of Ukraine and its
Western patrons to even decently ameliorate the consequences of their
political and economic annexation of Ukraine.</p>
<p align="justify" style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0cm;">As
we think about the events of the past week, we should keep in mind
not only the interests of Western Ukrainians to be free from military
aggression, certainly, but we should keep it in mind no degree less
than the right of Eastern Ukrainians to be free from military
aggression, too. The Russian assault on Ukraine has been immediate
and overwhelming, the Western Ukrainian assault on the eastern
regions has been a slow and grinding siege, but neither are to the
benefit of the people involved, and both are reflective of the
changed geopolitical situation. The United States can expend
resources to destabilize states on the frontier of NATO and integrate
them into its sphere of accumulation, just as it has been able to do
for many decades. However Russia, far moreso than in the past, can
expend resources to militarily oppose this attempted expansion and
economic integration by the US and its immediate vassal-states. Both
reflect the intractability of conflict and contradiction under
conditions of monopoly imperialism, the changing balance of power,
contingent on both political and economic factors each in their own
development.</p>
<p align="justify" style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0cm;">As
the United States attempts to destabilize states on the periphery of
NATO and integrate them into the US’s own sphere of accumulation,
this will be, increasingly, met with military pushback from states
which are increasingly able to marshal this pushback as a result of
their own economic growth, and the relative decline of the United
States. In order to put an end to these kinds of conflicts, akin to
those in Iraq, Libya, and Syria, it is imperative to expose the real
interests which mobilize such conflicts, namely, the interest which
the owning class has in capitalist accumulation and the extension of
the monopoly capitalist form. Explicit financial, military and
propaganda support for the most reactionary elements on the periphery
of the sphere of accumulation of the United States is illustrative of
how durable and sustainable peace is ultimately not possible under
conditions of monopoly imperialist capitalism.</p><p></p>Dock Curriehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09979072460617749796noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4063385487236063231.post-10376512703813724242021-06-17T23:27:00.005-07:002021-06-17T23:49:28.931-07:00Anti-Democracy: Fear and Loathing in the Greens and NDP<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-hcvGClIPVE0/YMw8c3_22dI/AAAAAAAABI8/G16V6S1jnccKn9t0V09XEnk1nS4tvVOLACLcBGAsYHQ/s735/60526_cartoon_main.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="553" data-original-width="735" height="400" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-hcvGClIPVE0/YMw8c3_22dI/AAAAAAAABI8/G16V6S1jnccKn9t0V09XEnk1nS4tvVOLACLcBGAsYHQ/w640-h482/60526_cartoon_main.jpg" width="570" /></a></div><br /> <p></p><p></p><p align="justify" style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
Annamie Paul says that she disagrees with the criticism of the
illegal Israeli evictions of Palestinians in East Jerusalem and of
illegal Israeli bombing in Gaza expressed by her [dwindling] fellow
MPs, but that they are nonetheless ‘free to believe those things’
without sanction. Unless, of course, the sanction is being badmouthed
and slandered for days by your mouth-frothily Zionist advisor, in
which case Ms Paul doesn’t think its the membership of the Green
Party’s business if she lets this go on. Is this just a case of a
neoliberal bobble-head celebutante accidentally setting fire to her
own house? Or does this sudden convulsion within the Greens tell us
anything about how politics functions in the present moment. Is it
not the case that the entire old-guard of the Greens, including
Elizabeth May, flocked to Paul only last year to avoid the election
of a socialist? What was the bargain which was secured in that
election for Paul, on the one hand, and that party brass, on the
other? It was the same thing which Jagmeet Singh secured in 2017 with
the old guard party brass of the NDP: the position of ‘leader’ in
exchange for a pledge to not fundamentally alter anything about the
undemocratic and not at all transparent Party structure. They are
entitled to shift the discourse within their respective Parties
towards acknowledging the systematically racist nature of Canadian
Settler-Colonial society, but if they do so to such an extent as to
impinge upon the conservative and liberal politics of their
respective Party’s structures, then their positions are imperiled.</p>
<p align="justify" style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0cm;">The
difference between them is that whereas Jagmeet Singh has
scrupulously kept to his initial bargain, never made any serious
attempt to alter its parameters, simply resigning himself to the role
of inert PoC figurehead, and shrinks from any confrontation with
‘his’ Provincial lieutenants in Horgan and Notley, Annamie Paul
has now openly proclaimed the abrogation of her bargain in a fit of
self-aggrandizement – the Green Party is to be the Annamie Paul
Party, and nothing else. Members voted her in and the opportunity for
their input has thus come and passed, all cogitation and deliberation
has been concentrated in her own person, no one else need opine or
intone, divine truth is revealed to her. Singh, for his part, is
nothing like this. Singh has never contemplated the democratization
of the NDP Party apparatus, and has adopted the paranoia of his
surrounding coterie, clique and court, and thus would never say
anything in a Tik-Tok which hadn’t been focus tested, freeze-dried,
and reheated. </p><p align="justify" style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0cm;">But where they are the same, however, is overwhelming: victims of
this unequal bargain, where they get to be the face on the ads, but
only on condition that they subordinate themselves to the political
apparati of affluent white liberals, within or without the Liberal
Party. Both Singh and Paul are liberals, irrespective of being the
‘leaders’ of the NDP and the Greens, respectively, and they are
liberal precisely in their supplicating themselves to the strictures
and parameters of the possible dictated by an unelected, affluent,
and predominantly white caste of Party familiars, fixers, and
deciders. Paul is to be commended, in fact, for arming herself
against this structure in the Green Party, for it is as contemptuous
towards democracy, really, as she is. But what is she arming herself
against it regarding? Is it some point of noble principle integrally
connected to her experience and presence in the party, which she
alone could give voice to? No, it is the length of time which is
appropriate for her dipshit advisor to be trashing sitting MPs. Quel
dommage.</p>
<p align="justify" style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0cm;">The
leaked audio of Paul’s discussion with Green Party National
Councilors is really incredible for the stark view of the stakes and
conditions of this kind of spectacular neoliberal politics: Paul’s
position is that she doesn’t have to consult with the membership of
the Green Party to determine how long to let deranged Zionists in her
own office slag off sitting Green MPs - that, she says, is a matter
she is entitled to decide without any input from anyone. The
membership of the Green Party, she says, aren’t entitled to even be
kept abreast of the existence of disagreement. All is to be conducted
in secret, in private, behind closed doors. And this, - this! - is
what Annamie Paul and Jagmeet Singh have so singularly in common:
their belief in and adherence to anti-democracy.</p>
<p align="justify" style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0cm;">At
the 2018 NDP Convention, a motion was passed which called upon the
NDP Executive to, for their very next Convention, solicit and publish
resolutions four months in advance of the Convention to allow for
their consideration and prioritization by NDP membership. It did not
call for a harried prioritization by delegate-fees-paying delegates
to the Convention, it called for their publication in advance
precisely so that resolutions could be considered and prioritized by
NDP membership within their local EDAs. This motion, passed at the 2018 NDP Convention, was called “Modernization and Democratization of Convention Resolution Process (7-45-18)." After years of simply not
having a Convention, in contravention of the NDP’s own
Constitution, was this resolution passed at the 2018 Convention
implemented? Heavens no! The 2021 NDP Convention was, by all accounts
– even the sympathetic to sycophantic and apologetic – a harried,
undemocratic top down affair in which there was very little time to
debate or pass resolutions. This was by design! It was a clause in
the bargain made between Singh and the reactionary liberal fragment
within the NDP, that democratic intervention into Party Policy be
strictly circumscribed, perfunctory and onerous. Jagmeet is fine with
this level of contempt for membership and democracy because it limits
the amount of things Jagmeet Singh and his wavy-gravy ‘brain trust’
have to cogitate. Having to somehow rationalize the sole passed
resolution of consequence, calling on Canada to not sell arms to
Israel and to not trade with illegal Israeli settlements such as to
enforce compliance with International Law, nearly broke their tiny
brains. Whereas in Paul’s case, this antagonism has broken her
brain, precisely because she is only capable of interpreting this
antagonism as an interpersonal conflict of which she is
disinterested. She doesn’t care about MPs being flamed for
criticizing Israel when it is illegally evicting Palestinian
residents in East Jerusalem or illegally bombing Gaza because she
doesn’t care about Palestinians. Where Singh is agnostic on the
belief in the existence of the oppressed Palestinian people, Annamie
Paul is a true-believer in their non-existence. She is a partisan for
the apartheid State of Israel, and in this respect she stands totally
opposed to the already passed Green Policy of favouring boycotts,
divestment and sanctions to compel compliance by Israel to
International Law.</p>
<p align="justify" style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0cm;">What
both Singh and Paul practice is a kind of cynical false politics,
anti-politics, non-politics, sub-politics, post-politics, where the
material stakes of democratic politics recede behind their own
personal Id-Pol markers, personal mythos, and cult of personality,
and is superdetermined by them. This is the means by which the
liberal party within the New Democratic Party maintains its political
hold on the Party, and this is how the liberal party within the Green
Party maintains its hold on the Party. It is the means by which
liberalism is effected and ensured within these parties. Thus, it is
a variant of social chauvinism, one whose means and mechanism is an
asymmetrical reltationship between a charistmatic PoC leader who has
the requisite Id-Pol markers, personal mythos and cult of
personality, on the one hand, and a liberal party fragment working
externally to the Liberal Party to ensure that the interests of the
owning class are reflected within those other Parties. They are
liberals who calculate their self-advantage in political life in
being a liberal outside of the Liberal Party, rather than in, just as
Jody Wilson-Raybould did upon being subject to “a consistent and
sustained effort by many people within the government to seek to
politically interfere in the exercise of prosecutorial discretion”
for SNC-Lavalin, a large Liberal donor. But, taking their show on the
road, they replicate the liberalism of the Liberal Party within these
third Parties who notionally stand for something other than
liberalism.</p>
<p align="justify" style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0cm;">Without
the charismatic PoC ‘leader,’ in each of these other Parties
which notionally stand for something other than liberalism the rotten
and reactionary liberal Party fragment, working to reproduce
liberalism within those Parties other than the Liberal Party, would
be unmoored and shipwrecked! Without the reactionary liberal Party
fragment within the other Parties’ support, the charismatic PoC
leader would flounder and be pilloried in the privately owned
presses. They exist in a symbiotic relationship with one another. The
charismatic PoC ‘Party leader’ is the iron-lung for reactionary,
affluent, white and settler-colonial liberals within the Green Party,
and indeed within the NDP.</p>
<p align="justify" style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0cm;">Whether
they want to or not is ultimately beside the point: the position
which Jagmeet Singh and Annamie Paul are in is structurally
anti-democratic because they are not entitled to offer up democracy
to the membership of their respective Parties, insofar as doing so
would violate the bargain they made with the forces which put them
into the ‘leadership’ of their respective Parties, would bring
them into conflict with those forces, and would threaten their
position. Insofar as they are structurally incapable of offering up
democracy, either notionally or practically, Singh contents himself
to exist as a televisual mascot for deeply unimaginative vestigial
Blairite politics, whereas Paul indulges in convulsions of messianic
neoliberalism and gossipy, catty, self-interested political intrigues
like letting her sitting MPs get slandered and blaming the MP who
left.</p>
<p align="justify" style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0cm;">This
stagnation and decrepitude of the NDP, and these irrational
convulsions within the Green Party, are products of the same cause:
the forcible censorship and suppression of ideological and political
disagreement, their contemplation and discussion banished to behind
closed doors and not subject to democratic intervention by the
membership of the respective Parties at all. On the part of the Green
Party, contemporary environmental politics must needs be connected to
an anti-Capitalist and anti-Imperialist orientation which Ms Paul
does not share and does not care for. Her reaction against the Green
Party caste is neither revolutionary nor particularly interesting, it
is more self-messianic hagiography than anything else. On the part of
the NDP, Singh is more and more the face of total impotence with
respect to the environmental hypocrisy of the Provincial sections
which merely piles up around him while he looks on helplessly. He is
allowed, of course, to posture towards and blame Trudeau, but never
to heap calumny upon those actually responsible, ie ‘his’
Provincial lieutenants. He is content to ‘lay low’ and keep the
job of ‘leader’ for as long as he can, irrespective of whether he
ever understands or gives voice to anything of any importance or
significant whatsoever – he couldn’t pick significance out of a
police line-up. Singh’s political motto is 1000 days as a sheep.
Paul’s is 1 day as a lion, but let loose in a petting zoo. Singh
participates in the spectacle, Paul reacts against it in a purely
self-interested and self-absorbed way, neither of these things is
democracy, neither of these things is novel or interesting or
revolutionary, they are just two variants of the same anti-democratic
neoliberal scam.</p>
<p align="justify" style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0cm;">The
sine-qua-non of liberal politics today is two-facedness: on the one
hand you have the pseudo-universalist baffle-gab platitudes rehearsed
in public, and behind the scenes a cynical and calculative effort to
preserve brand celebrities and interests of the owning class. And
that is as much true of today’s Green Party as today’s ‘New
Democratic’ Party. It is the way that liberalism is maintained in
these Parties. A plague on both their houses. If Jagmeet Singh and
Annamie Paul would be revolutionary but are constrained by the
structures and systems of their respective Parties, they are to be
pitied, and if they would not be, and could only contemplate a
philosophical horizon of their own personal brand and vibe, and
endless self-interested hagiography of themselves, and aren’t
interested in democratizing the NDP or the Green Party, then they are
to be loathed.
</p><br /><p></p>Dock Curriehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09979072460617749796noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4063385487236063231.post-81618694369212853812020-12-10T02:19:00.003-08:002020-12-10T06:19:28.393-08:00Liberal-Imperialist Weaponization of Human Rights Discourse on Behalf of US Empire in Venezuela and China 2010 - 2020<p> </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-z2XxusRoCxo/X9H1Oqb3pyI/AAAAAAAABDM/4esUVK4F86oGVnoPXFpRU9Camea8iggcgCLcBGAsYHQ/s1183/Tomlin.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="696" data-original-width="1183" height="330" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-z2XxusRoCxo/X9H1Oqb3pyI/AAAAAAAABDM/4esUVK4F86oGVnoPXFpRU9Camea8iggcgCLcBGAsYHQ/w640-h376/Tomlin.jpg" width="570" /></a></div><p align="justify" style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0cm;">__________________________________________________________________________________________</p><p align="justify" style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="text-align: left;">The
Liberal-Imperialist weaponization of Human Rights discourse is an
element and component of Indirect Intervention, meant to undermine
the Sovereignty and Self-Determination of Socialist and Subaltern
States to the benefit of Hegemonic Imperialist States, most
especially the United States.</span><a class="sdfootnoteanc" href="#sdfootnote1sym" name="sdfootnote1anc" style="text-align: left;"><sup>1</sup></a><span style="text-align: left;">
The Principle of Non-Intervention contains within it a historically
determined Class component.</span><a class="sdfootnoteanc" href="#sdfootnote2sym" name="sdfootnote2anc" style="text-align: left;"><sup>2</sup></a><span style="text-align: left;">
Failure or refusal to recognize the content of this historically
fought for and won Class component, its specific effects on the
analysis of Geopolitics, and its most refined treatment,
International Law, leads to hypocricies, inconsistency and cynicism
of analysis, a substitution of scientific analysis for parochial
(and, importantly, Imperial) moralism and moralizing. One such
recurrent hypocrisy and cynicism over the past thirty years has been
the enlightened false consciousness of Human Rights discourse,
deployed as a weapon to legitimate and facilitate the activities of
Imperial powers with respect to weaker powers, namely to expand the
territory of NATO and integrate further territory into compliance
with market access by American firms; to cloak their activities with
a moral veneer. The so-called Human Rights of Human Rights discourse
are intrinsically political, and the proliferation of Human Rights
discourse in the latter portion of the Twentieth Century tracks with
and is implicated within the Belle Époque of US Empire from the late
1970s to the early 2000s. Efforts to simultaneously deploy Human
Rights discourse against Socialist and Subaltern States and occlude
the contingent historical effects of Class Struggle constitute one
element of a unitary breach of the Principle of Non-Intervention by
the United States against States with a Socialist or Subaltern
character - chiefly non-compliance with territorial integration by
NATO and concession to economic structural adjustment.</span></p><p align="justify" style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0cm;">The
abuse and distortion of Human Rights claims against Venezuela and
China<a class="sdfootnoteanc" href="#sdfootnote3sym" name="sdfootnote3anc"><sup>3</sup></a>
over the past decade by Democratic and Republican US administrations
of the United States, its sub-Imperial vassal States (UK/Can/Aus/NZ
and occasionally Japan), comprador classes in peripheral States, and
ideologically compliant Human Rights discourse institutions - the
specific occlusion of Class Interests in the explication and analysis
of Situations by these forces - coupled with illegal unilateral US
economic sanctions, comprises a Composite Breach of the Principle of
Non-Intervention in each case.<sup><a class="sdfootnoteanc" href="#sdfootnote4sym" name="sdfootnote4anc">4</a></sup></p><p align="justify" style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0cm;">Venezulela
has been on the receiving end of several spurious Human Rights claims
spearheaded by the United States, its vassal Imperialisms, and
comprador classes in Latin America over the past several years. These
attacks are usually voiced by the Washington based Organization of
American States<a class="sdfootnoteanc" href="#sdfootnote5sym" name="sdfootnote5anc"><sup>5</sup></a>,
the Lima Group, or any other number of Non-Governmental Organizations
whose purposes just happen to line up with American Oil Capital.
Their methodology is to perform exactly the dissagregation Mohamed
Helal criticized of the ruling in the Nicaragua case such as to
weaponize it as a cudgel against the non-compliant Latin American
State. That is, staging and curating instances of alleged
victimization divorced from the context of the ongoing hybrid-war
which the United States wages against Latin American states resistant
to so-called structural adjustment,<a class="sdfootnoteanc" href="#sdfootnote6sym" name="sdfootnote6anc"><sup>6</sup></a>
such claims purport to depict a small, almost invariably
light-skinned, urban comprador elite as a victimized under-class.
Rather, this light-skinned urban comprador elite has consistently
conspired with the United States to subvert and destabilize Venezuela
and roll back the political and economic gains made by working class
Venezuelans, indigenous peoples, and Afro-Venezuelans.</p><p align="justify" style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0cm;">China,
by contrast, has been attacked with two distinct erroneous, cynical
and malicious moral claims emanating from the United States, its
sub-Imperial vassals, and compliant Human Rights discourse: (1) that
it is conducting genocide against the Uyghur people of the Uyghur
Autonomous Region (XUAR), North-West China; and (2) that it is
complicit in the forced labour of the Uyghur people. Neither of these
sets of claims survives scrutiny. Both are fabrications of US Empire
and its complicit Human Rights institutions and figures. The Human
Rights claims against China in fact concern, on the one hand, (1)
China's efforts at deradicalization of Islamic populations in
North-Western China<a class="sdfootnoteanc" href="#sdfootnote7sym" name="sdfootnote7anc"><sup>7</sup></a>,
and (2) China's efforts at poverty alleviation across the country,
which, by virtue of their being State-led, are depicted as coercive.<a class="sdfootnoteanc" href="#sdfootnote8sym" name="sdfootnote8anc"><sup>8</sup></a>
On the first claim, not only are China's efforts at deradicalization
of Islamic populations reasonable when compared with other states,
notably the United States, but we find moreover that the United
States is itself profoundly culpable for the radicalization of Sunni
Islamic populations in the Middle-East in the first place. And on the
second claim, we find that it is not so much a claim that labour in
China is not remunerated, but rather, more insidiously, a moral claim
that State-led investment and poverty alleviation efforts are
themselves intrinsically coercive. It is at this point that our
friendly and well-intentioned Human Rights advocate will inform us
that we must be mistaken, that the confluence of Human Rights claims
and the geostrategic interests of US Empire could not possibly be
occluding a specifically economic class based dynamic because, of
course, China does not really have a Class character. It is merely
'authoritarian,' or 'state capitalist,' or, perhaps most erroneously,
simply 'capitalist.' This claim, also, is a fabrication and
distortion of US Empire, its sub-Imperial vassal States, and obliging
Human Rights ideologists, the purpose of which is to sabotage or
short-circuit solidarity between the working and subaltern classes in
the dominant Imperialist States and States in the Global South, like
China, which retain a Class character and advance the global position
of the working class and subaltern peoples.<sup><a class="sdfootnoteanc" href="#sdfootnote9sym" name="sdfootnote9anc">9</a></sup></p><p align="justify" style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0cm;">For
Human Rights discourse to carry any moral legitimacy at all it must
contain within itself a ruthless criticism of its own Class Interests
and its fidelity with the Economic prerogatives of US Empire, that
is, the continuum of the old civilizing mission and the new. Moreover
they must contain a criticism of Right itself, insofar as Class
interests are reflected within the philosophy of Right. Human Rights
discourse and its ideologists today entirely lack such a critique. It
is wholly insufficient to simply ascribe the harmony of targets of US
Empire and the claims of so-called 'Human Rights' advocates to
coincidence, or worse, to wholly exculpate the United States and
depict it, still, as any kind of champion of so-called 'Human
Rights.' It is not even good enough to say that the United States is
a partial, or occasional champion of Human Rights, one whose better
angels ought to win out. No, 'Human Rights' are an intrinsic
ideological component of the Liberal Economic and Geopolitical
project. The halls of so-called Human-Rights discourse institutions
are populated by the same ghouls, spooks and security consultants
which attend military and security contractor conventions. If the
so-called 'Human Rights' movement aspires to be greater than its lot
as this contingent element of US Empire's geostrategic interests then
it is incumbent upon Human Rights advocates to diagnose and extricate
Human Rights from this position and role by an inclusion of Class
Analysis. This requires, first and foremost, a sensitivity to which
bodies and institutions make such claims, where their funding comes
from, and the extent to which those claims function in conjunction
with definite Imperial political projects.</p><p align="justify" style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0cm;">The
Human Rights claims made by the United States, its vassal States,
comprador classes and a panoply of NGOs aligned with them<a class="sdfootnoteanc" href="#sdfootnote10sym" name="sdfootnote10anc"><sup>10</sup></a>
in the last five years are neither righteous nor credible, but rather
reflect, more than anything, deep Liberal Economic Chauvinism and
Class hatred for Socialist and Subaltern States. In the selective,
disaggregated, manipulative manner such claims are put forward,
coupled with unilateral US economic sanctions against those States,
they constitute one element of composite breaches of the Principle of
Non-Intervention. Taken together with illegal unilateral US economic
sanctions, Human Rights claims weaponized against non-economically
compliant States like Venezuela and China a composite breach of the
Principle of Non-Intervention in each case. The purpose of the
Principle of Non-Intevention is, in part, to prevent
Counter-Revolutionary efforts to sabotage the Self-Determination of
States in instances precisely such as these.
</p><p align="justify" style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0cm;">______________________________________________________________________________</p><div id="sdfootnote1">
<p align="justify" class="sdfootnote" style="margin-left: 0cm; text-indent: 0cm;">
<a class="sdfootnotesym" href="#sdfootnote1anc" name="sdfootnote1sym">1</a>
Alain Badiou writes of 1993 that the proliferation of Human Rights
discourse constituted "intellectual counter-revolution in the
form of moral terrorism." (iii) The purpose of this
intellectual counter-revolution was to impose "Western
capitalism as the new universal model." (liii) Badiou writes
that in the years since 1993, "the intervention of Western
bombers against Serbia, the intolerable blockade of Iraq, the
continuation of threats against Cuba." (lv) have been
"legitimated by a quite unbelievable outpouring of moralizing
sermons." (lv) Alain Badiou, Ethics: An Essay on the
Understanding of Evil tr Peter Hallward (London: Verso, 2001). In
2016, Makau Mutua charged that human rights has become "an echo
chamber" (450) of "grandiose statements made by insiders -
those with an interest in depicting human rights as a zeinith of
human civilization." (450) Mutua writes that the early
Twenty-First Century has been characterized by "several
dystopian catastrophes" (451) and that "the enthusiasm
that had characterized the surge of the human rights movement since
the 1970s had cooled down." (451) Mutua describes human rights
as an ideology, "a moral-legal-political and economic schema"
(451) in which human rights are "the moral argument for the
liberal project." (451) Among its critics, Mutua writes, human
rights have come to be seen as "a tool to justify a new
imperialism by the West over darker peoples. Makau Mutua, "Is
the Age of Human Rights Over?" in The Routledge Companion to
Literature and Human Rights ed Sophia McClennen and Alexandra
Schultheis Moore (New York: Routledge, 2016), 450. In 2014 Samuel
Moyn wrote that the credibility and legitimacy of Human Rights
discourse have been undermined, in the post-1989 period, by "America
pursuing low-minded imperial ambitions in high-minded humanitarian
tones." (14) Samuel Moyn, Human Rights and the Uses of History
(London: Verso, 2014). Michael Drake writes that the
Post-Human-Rights Era has been characterized by criticism that Human
Rights Institutions are "too often perfectly instep with U.S.
government and foreign intervention." (1053) On the one hand,
Drake writes, critics charge that the Human Rights movement is
complicit with "US Imperialism," (1029) and on the other
that they narrowly focus on "civil and political rights - as
opposed to economic rights," (1029) notably those civil and
political rights which entail a greater portion of the economy is
available to capital investment conducive to American Imperialism.
Drake argues as long as the human rights movement appears to be no
more than a revolving door with the US State Department, "the
movement will have little-to-no moral authority." (1053) Why is
this? Why is it that that Human Rights discourse has come to be
perceived as the handmaiden to US Empire? It is because it has been
coextensive with the effort at expanding and integrating the
frontiers of NATO, and thus market penetration by monopolist US
financial interests, of the post-Soviet bloc. Michael Drake, "They
Hate U.S. for Our War Crimes: An Argument for U.S. Ratification of
the Rome Statute in Light of the Post-Human Rights Era," UIC
John Marshall Law Review 52, no. 4 (Summer 2019).</p>
</div><div id="sdfootnote2">
<p align="justify" class="sdfootnote" style="margin-left: 0cm; text-indent: 0cm;">
<a class="sdfootnotesym" href="#sdfootnote2anc" name="sdfootnote2sym">2</a>
In <i>Nicaragua v United States of America (1986)</i> the Court
writes that the Principle of Non-Intervention is "part and
parcel of customary international law," (at para 202) and that
it "involves the right of every sovereign State to conduct its
affairs without outside interference." (at para 202) The ICJ
moreover confirmed that the principle of non-intervention applied
not only to territorial sovereignty, but also required that
"political integrity also to be respected." (at para 202)
The ICJ found that the principle of non-intervention "forbids
all States or groups of States to intervene directly or indirectly
in internal or external affairs of other states." (at para 205)
The ICJ notes that prohibited intervention bears on matters which
the principle of State sovereignty dictates that a state may "decide
freely." (at para 205) One of these matters reserved to the
discretion of the State, the ICJ writes, "is the choice of a
political, economic, social and cultural system, and the formulation
of foreign policy." (at para 205) The ICJ found that
"Intervention is wrongful when it uses methods of coercion in
regard to choices, which must remain free ones." (at para 205)
Nicaragua v United States of America (Case Concerning Military and
Paramilitary Activities In and Against Nicaragua) (1986), [1986] ICJ
Reports p 14 ['<i>Nicaragua v United States of America (1986)</i>'].
The Principle of Non-Intervention is not merely derivative of the
Principle of Respect for Sovereignty. No, it moreover includes a
prohibition upon Thermidorian conduct, that is, explicitly
Counter-Revolutionary action against States. This latter content,
the prohibition against foreign intervention for the purposes of
quashing Revolution, is not reducible to the respect for territorial
and political sovereignty of all States. It is something different.
Historically the United States played the primary guarantor of this
freedom of Self-Determination against political interference from
abroad. In seeing that the Counter-Revolutionary European powers
could undermine its geopolitical position as a Revolutionary
Republic, the United States adopted the role entailed by the Monroe
Doctrine, the claim of extrajudicial, extraterritorial sovereignty,
asserted on behalf of Revolutionary Republics. However throughout
the Twentieth Century, and especially over the past thirty years,
proved to be this principle's greatest hypocrite, intervening
constantly in the affairs of Sovereign States all over the globe,
totally flaunting from the end of the Nineteenth Century onwards the
principles it had once sought to champion and ensure against the
united Counter-Revolutionary powers of the early Nineteenth Century.
In the course of the Spanish-American War in 1898 the Americans at
first promised Self-Determination to the Filipinos, but later
reneged and annexed the Philippines. And for what purpose, this
incredible change of heart concerning the value of the principle of
Self-Determination of States? To explicitly crush and extinguish
from the earth the spectre of Class Struggle and secure all
territory for exploitation by Monopoly Imperialist Capital. As De
Leon argued in 1898, the primary beneficiaries of the beneficent
liberation of the United States in Latin America had become, by the
end of the Nineteenth Century, not independent peoples, but rather
American sugar, tobacco and fruit trusts.</p>
</div><div id="sdfootnote3">
<p align="justify" class="sdfootnote" style="margin-left: 0cm; text-indent: 0cm;">
<a class="sdfootnotesym" href="#sdfootnote3anc" name="sdfootnote3sym">3</a>
In combination with unilateral, hence illegal, economic sanctions,
the United States has committed composite breaches of the Principle
of Non-Intervention against both Venezuela and China over the past
five years, from 2015 to 2020. To this list could easily be added
Iran, Syria, Bolivia, and Yemen, among others, who have been on the
receiving end of both unilateral, hence illegal, US economic
sanctions and claims against their Human Rights rectitude, however
we will restrict our specific analyses to Venezuela and China. While
the Imperialist weaponization of Human Rights discourse alone may
not constitute a breach of the Principle of Non-Intervention and the
prohibition on interference with the Self-Determination of States.
</p>
</div><div id="sdfootnote4">
<p align="justify" class="sdfootnote" style="margin-left: 0cm; text-indent: 0cm;">
<a class="sdfootnotesym" href="#sdfootnote4anc" name="sdfootnote4sym">4</a>
In 2019, Mohamed Helal underook the effort of a full conceptual
articulation of Coercion in International Law. Helal notes that
while "the prohibition on intervention in the internal or
external affairs of states" (3) is the cardinal rule of
international law, what has rather attracted a great degree of
attention is "violations of the prohibition on intervention and
purported exceptions to this rule." (3) Helal's central claim
is that while the ICJ found that the United States had acted in a
coercive manner with respect to Nicaragua, in contravention of the
Principle of Non-Intervention, it nonetheless found this through
narrowly legalistic disaggregation of Nicaragua's claims which set
the bar too high. Coercion, Helal writes, "is a dynamic process
in which one or more states engage in pressure and counter-pressure
at various levels of intensity using a broad range of instruments
over an extended period." (62) Helal writes that it is
"impossible to examine the legality of coercive practices by
disaggregating the acts undertaken as part of a coercive strategy
and viewing them in isolation." (62) The legality or illegality
of coercion, Helal writes, must be assessed "through a holistic
examination of the relationship between the relevant parties and a
systematic tracking of their behavior in light of the objectives of
the coercing state and the means it employs to achieve its
objectives." (62) The question, Helal writes, is to determine
"the point at which pressure crosses the threshold of
illegality to become a form of coercion." (47) Beyond this
threshold, Helal writes, one finds a "composite breach"
(64) of the Principle. These composite breahces, Helal argues
"consist of separate acts that are part of a common objective
or a unified strategy that is, in its totality, unlawful." (83)
Mohamed S. Helal, "On Coercion in International Law," New
York University Journal of International Law and Politics 52;1, Fall
2019.</p>
</div><div id="sdfootnote5">
<p align="justify" class="sdfootnote" style="margin-left: 0cm; text-indent: 0cm;">
<a class="sdfootnotesym" href="#sdfootnote5anc" name="sdfootnote5sym">5</a>
In a plea for the politicization of Human Rights discourse, Angel
Oquendo argues that critics of the washington-based Organization of
American States charge that "under the perverse influence of
the United States [it] has no real in human rights" but rather
"imposes a conservative agenda and thwarts any endeavor to
revamp the responsible entities or even substitute the personnel."
(23) Angel R. Oquendo, "The Politicization of Human Rights:
Within the Inter-American System and beyond," New York
University Journal of International Law and Politics 50;1, 2017.</p>
</div><div id="sdfootnote6">
<p align="justify" class="sdfootnote" style="margin-left: 0cm; text-indent: 0cm;">
<a class="sdfootnotesym" href="#sdfootnote6anc" name="sdfootnote6sym">6</a>
The Composite Breach of American intervention into the Sovereign
Affairs of Venezuela includes a consideration of the hypertrophy of
the Monroe/Roosevelt doctrine concerning Latin America, and its
having morphed into a claimed Right to inhibit, sabotage, and
destroy Socialist and Indigenous political projects within the
American sphere of influence. Joseph Lutta notes that the political
dynamics of Venezuela are shaped, on the one hand, by "class
disparity," with political power concentrated around an "urban
bourgeoisie," (58) and racial dynamics wherein, "Spanish
elites" dominate politics "to the detriment and expense of
the Afro-Venezuelans and the indigenous groups." (58) Lutta
writes that after the overthrow of the dictatorship of Marcos Perez
Jimenez in 1958, successive governments implemented programs of
neoliberal austerity, privatization and extractivism, which "left
the masses disgruntled and disenfranchised by their political
elites." (59) Lutta notes that, for example, the government of
President Carlos Andres Perez had reduced oil revenues by divesting
the Veneuzuelan State of its stake in the oil industry. It was in
this context which Hugo Chavez came to power in 1998 and proceeded
to expand the Veneuzelan State's capacity to intervene in the
economic process such as to improve the station of Venezuelan
working class, indigenous and Afro-Venezuelan people. Lutta notes
that Chavez's Government "diverted significant proportions of
the oil revenue into social welfare programs such as health care,
education, housing and public infrastructure that benefited the
masses." (59) Lutta writes that Juan Guaido is "the
'civilian version' of the contras since he operates under the
ostensible control and support of the American government."
(67) Joseph Lutta, "A Critical Analysis of Western Intervention
in Foreign Nations: A Case Study of Ukraine and Venezuela,"
Russian Law Journal 7;4, 2019. The Human Rights claims against
Venezuela consist of a litany of supposed abuses against political
dissidents, totally divorced and disaggregated from their context,
ie a hybrid-war conducted by the United States against the State of
Venezuela. The least bit of scrutiny of the organizations funding
and orchestrating this campaign, the Washington-based Organization
of American States, the Lima Group, betrays that their interest is
precisely to engender the situations which they claim to decry. They
are provocateur organizations. Coupled with the operation of
unilateral, illegal, US sanctions, their actions constitute one
element of a breach of the Principle of Non-Intervention. In 2019,
former UN special rapporteur Alfred de Zayas described unilateral US
sanctions against Venezuela as "illegal" and "crimes
against humanity." Michael Selby-Green, "Venezuela
crisis: Former UN rapporteur says US sanctions are killing citizens"
The Independent, 26 January, 2019
(https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/venezuela-us-sanctions-united-nations-oil-pdvsa-a8748201.html).
Unilateral US sanctions against an official State Department enemy
cannot be considered as apart from allegations by the United States
of Human Rights abuses by that official enemy. Sanctions are
specifically calculated to produce a desperate situation and coerce
economic compliance.</p>
</div><div id="sdfootnote7">
<p align="justify" class="sdfootnote" style="margin-left: 0cm; text-indent: 0cm;">
<a class="sdfootnotesym" href="#sdfootnote7anc" name="sdfootnote7sym">7</a>
The Composite Breach of American intervention into the Sovereign
affairs of China includes a consideration of the American
contribution to the ongoing political instability of the
middle-east, that is, the strategic development and cultivation of
Sunni extremism as a military bulwark, first against the Soviet
Union, and now against China. These claims have, in the privately
owned media companies of the West, been hyperbolically called
'genocide' and 'forced labour.' In the case of China's efforts at
deradicalization, claimed to be 'genocide' by a hyperbolic Western
press, none of those epithets were or have been deployed in that
same presses to describe France's efforts at deradicalization. Why
is this? Because of course France is not a Class Enemy, and
therefore is not subject to the same opprobrium! In July of 2019, at
the 41st Session of the United Nations Human Rights Council, 22
counrties, notably the UK, Australia, Canada and New Zealand
criticized China's position on Xinjiang. At that session 50
counrties, notably Bolivia, Egypt, Iran, Pakistan, Russia, Somalia,
South Sudan and Sudan, Turkmenistan, United Arab Emirates,
Uzbekistan, Venezuela and Palestine all supported China's position.
Letter dated 8 July 2019 from the Permanent Representatives of
Australia, Austria, Belgium, Canada, Denmark, Estonia, Finland,
France, Germany, Iceland, Ireland, Japan, Latvia, Lithuania,
Luxembourg, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Spain, Sweden,
Switzerland and the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern
Ireland to the United Nations Office at Geneva addressed to the
President of the Human Rights Council A/HRC/41/G/11; Letter dated 12
July 2019 from the representatives of Algeria, Angola, Bahrain,
Bangladesh, Belarus, the Plurinational State of Bolivia, Burkina
Faso, Burundi, Cambodia, Cameroon, Comoros, the Congo, Cuba, the
Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, the Democratic Republic of
the Congo, Djibouti, Egypt, Equatorial Guinea, Eritrea, Gabon, the
Islamic Republic of Iran, Iraq, Kuwait, the Lao People’s
Democratic Republic, Mozambique, Myanmar, Nepal, Nigeria, Oman,
Pakistan, the Philippines, the Russian Federation, Saudi Arabia,
Serbia, Somalia, South Sudan, Sri Lanka, the Sudan, the Syrian Arab
Republic, Tajikistan, Togo, Turkmenistan, Uganda, the United Arab
Emirates, Uzbekistan, the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela, Yemen,
Zambia, Zimbabwe and the State of Palestine to the United Nations
Office at Geneva addressed to the President of the Human Rights
Council A/HRC/41/G/17. In October of 2019, at the 74th Session of
the United Nations General Assembly Committee on the Elimination of
Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia and Related Intolerance,
57 countries, led by Egypt, Iran, Russia, and Venezuela supported
China's position on Xinjiang. At this session 24 counrties, led by
the United States, the UK, Austalia, New Zealand and Canada, the
so-called Five Eyes Anglo-American bloc, criticized China's position
on Xinjiang. Summary record of the 37th meeting Third Committee
A/C.3/74/SR.37. This is to say nothing of the United States' efforts
at deradicalization over the preceding twenty years, which consisted
of unilateral invasion and systematic carnage unleashed upon the
muslim world as a consequence of the slightest blowback from their
Sunni allies. The United States, as a corollary of its political
project of liberal internationalism, simultaneously funds, arms,
trains and encourages Salifist and Wahhabist Sunni Extremists, as
well as uses the attempt by the States subject to this
instrumentalization to deal with the problem in a rational and
technocratic manner to level cynical charges of Human Rights abuses.
It has done this, also, since the late 1970s, as Zbigniew
Brzezinski's contribution to the Carter Doctrine. The United States
profits at both ends: (1) first, by destabilizing countries not
economically and politically integrated into the frontiers of NATO
through the use of contras and proxies; and (2), by portraying the
attempt to deradicalize Sunni Islamic populations as allegedly rife
with Human Rights abuses, for which, it is contended, the State in
question must be further disciplined. In November of 2020, for
example, the United States revoked the designation of "East
Turkestan Islamic Movement (ETIM)" as a terrorist organization,
ostensibly in an effort to elevate its political standing. Liu Zhen,
"China Accuses US of Double Standard as it Drops ETIM from
Terrorist List" South China Morning Post, Nov 6, 2020
(https://www.scmp.com/news/china/diplomacy/article/3108846/china-accuses-us-double-standards-it-drops-etim-terrorism-list);
Sha Hua, "China Irate After US Removes 'Terrorist' Label from
Separatist Group" Wall Street Journal, Nov 6, 2020
(https://www.wsj.com/articles/china-irate-after-u-s-removes-terrorist-label-from-separatist-group-11604661868).</p>
</div><div id="sdfootnote8">
<p align="justify" class="sdfootnote" style="margin-left: 0cm; text-indent: 0cm;">
<a class="sdfootnotesym" href="#sdfootnote8anc" name="sdfootnote8sym">8</a>
In July of 2019, Western China critics like Adrian Zenz and the
Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI) pivoted from their
previous claim of genocide, to claims of forced labour. They pivoted
to charging that China is compelling the minority Uyghur population
into forced labour. The evidence for this charge is slight to
non-existent. Some of the critics acknowledge that Uyghur workers
are in a wage-labour relationship, not a forced-labour relationship,
and others do not. Those who do attempt to paint the wage-labour
relationship and conditions under which Uyghur workers labour in
such a way that they are tantamount to forced labour, and those who
do not acknowledge that the relationship is that of wage-labour
accuse China of something they lack evidence for, that is,
unremunerated and coerced labour. Some critics elide entirely the
working programs and poverty alleviation programs instituted by the
Chinese Government, and others acknowledge it and attempt to portray
vocational training and state-led work projects as ominous. Singh
notes that Zenz contends that, even if labour is remunerated, the
labour in China is coerced because "not everyone will want to
be part of this rigid plan." Ajit Singh, "'Forced Labour'
stories on China brought to you by US Gov, NATO, arms industry to
drive Cold War PR blitz" The Grayzone, March 26
(https://thegrayzone.com/2020/03/26/forced-labor-china-us-nato-arms-industry-cold-war/).
One wonders if, by this, they contend that every worker in
liberal-democratic society wants to be part of the rigid plan of
monopoly enforced laissez faire economics! What the accusation that
Uyghur labour is 'not free' labour amounts to is the highly
subjective and ideological charge that whereas the sale of the
labouring commodity is 'free' in Capitalist States, it is 'not free'
in Communist States like China simply in virtue of the State's role
at the commanding heights of the Chinese economy and the utilization
of economic planning. The accusation levelled is that, at least in
the case of the Uyghur minority, the Chinese authorities are
facilitating the use of forced or compulsory labour in contravention
of International Instruments under which it is proscribed. It is
important to remember, however, for the purposes of parsing forced
or compulsory labour as proscribed under the International Law
instruments, that Article II(b) of the ILO's Forced Labour
Convention specifically exempts labour which "forms part of the
normal civic obligations of the citizens of a fully self-governing
country." This is not to say that the 'normal civic obligation'
exemption would abrogate the necessity that work be compensated, but
it would refute a notion that simply because work is part of a
state-planned economic endeavor that it is de facto forced or
compulsory. In fact, of one digs deeply enough into the claim, one
finds that what is really being asserted is not that the labour in
China is not remunerated, but rather that precisely in virtue of its
being State-led, it is therefore and therein coercive. Ultimately
one finds it resolves into and is reducible to a moral claim over
whose workers are more ill-treated by respective conditions of
remunerated labour.</p>
</div><div id="sdfootnote9">
<p align="justify" class="sdfootnote" style="margin-left: 0cm; text-indent: 0cm;">
<a class="sdfootnotesym" href="#sdfootnote9anc" name="sdfootnote9sym">9</a>
It is a claim that, for example, World Systems theorist Samir Amin
wholly rejects. Amin calls China bashing "the favored sport of
Western media of all tendencies - including the left, unfortunately
- that consists of systematically denigrating, even criminalizing,
everything done in China. . . participat[ing] in the systematic
campaign of maintaining hostility toward China, in view of a
possible military attack." (85-86) Ajit Singh argues that while
the "capitalist restoration narrative" (68) holds sway
ideologically in the West, it actually wholly misrepresents the
nature of contemporary China. Singh argues that the policies adopted
by Deng Xiaoping in the period following 1978 are not reflective, in
fact, of a capitalist restoration, but rather a reprisal of Lenin's
'New Economic Policy' which characterized the Soviet Union in the
early 1920s. Far from a retreat from socialism, these reforms in
fact reflect the strategic prerogatives of Chinese Communists to use
global capital flows to develop the productive forces of society,
both in terms of the sophistication of capacities of living labour
(social reproduction, education, public health), and the level of
technological and scientific advancement. As Singh writes, "while
capitalism exists within China, public ownership of the means of
production is dominant and ultimately structures and guides the
movement of the entire social formation. The authority of the
worker's state over capitalists allows it to set the country's
political and economic agenda and prioritize the interests of the
vast majority of people." (78) Ajit Singh, "China: Reform
and Revolution in the People's Republic" in Keywords in Radical
Philosophy and Education: Common Concepts for Contemporary Movements
ed Derek Ford (Leiden: Brill, 2019). Roland Boer answers the
question of whether China is Communist by answering that China is in
the process of building Communism, and that Socialism with Chinese
Characteristics reflects a particular iteration of the "multiple
possibilities for socialism have opened up with the rich history of
socialist revolutions." Roland Boer, "Is China Communist?"
Taking Notes, 36, 2014. No less an authority than the World Bank
credits China with having lifted 850 million people out of Poverty
over the past forty years, and between 2001 and 2020 Chinese
workers' wages have increased six-fold, while wages in North America
remain stagnant. These views are shared by the philosopher and
historian Domenico Losurdo, and World Systems theorist Giovanni
Arrighi.</p>
</div><p>
</p><div id="sdfootnote10">
<p align="justify" class="sdfootnote" style="margin-left: 0cm; text-indent: 0cm;">
<a class="sdfootnotesym" href="#sdfootnote10anc" name="sdfootnote10sym">10</a>
This panoply of allegedly Non-Governmental Institutions is
invariably either based in Washington, DC, or funded by the National
Endowment for Democracy, also based in Washington, or both. Hersch
Lauterpacht argued that the use of private institutions by one State
to effect subversion in another " is a clear breach of
international law," (403) and that Indirect Intervention, or
Subversion, is "a disguised interference with the internal
relations of a foreign State. . . a denial of its independence."
(403) The test as to whether a government is using an allegedly
private institution to effect unlawful International purposes,
Lauterpacht writes, is whether the private association in question
is so closely associated with the Government and the Stat as to
become indistinguishable from it." (405) Herch Lauterpacht,
International Law (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1970),
Helal notes on the nature of 'impartial institutes' funded by
Defence and weapons companies "by misrepresenting or concealing
its identity, the communicator engages in subversion that undermines
and sabotages the political process, an act that should be
proscribed by the prohibition on intervention." (115) Mohamed
S. Helal, "On Coercion in International Law," New York
University Journal of International Law and Politics 52;1, Fall
2019. As Ajit Singh notes in The Grayzone, while the ASPI is
described in Western Press as "an independent, non-partisan
think tank," it is in fact funded by the Australian Department
of Defence and weapons manufacturers, from Raytheon, Lockheed
Martin, to Northrop Grumman. Ajit Singh, "'Forced Labour'
stories on China brought to you by US Gov, NATO, arms industry to
drive Cold War PR blitz" The Grayzone, March 26
(https://thegrayzone.com/2020/03/26/forced-labor-china-us-nato-arms-industry-cold-war/).
Singh writes that information presented by these think-tanks relfect
"serious biases and credibility gaps that Western media
wilfully ignores in its bid to paint China as the world's worst
human rights violator." Former Australian Foreign Minister Bob
Carr has alleged that ASPI reflects a "one sided, pro-American
view of the world." The purpose of these think tanks is to
produce threat credibility such as to financially benefit the
domestic military industrial complex in the respective imperialist
and sub-imperialist vassal states.</p>
</div><p></p>Dock Curriehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09979072460617749796noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4063385487236063231.post-11139005765925745312020-07-23T08:18:00.000-07:002020-07-23T08:59:35.947-07:00The Cowardice of Left Anti-Communism: A Reply to David Camfield<br />
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<a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-EKzfmolJork/XxmpyZZCwzI/AAAAAAAAA_U/qr1E0YHQV_cCKfjIJasAFHtXeMg7TjsBQCLcBGAsYHQ/s1600/Worker_Buck.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="261" data-original-width="382" height="390" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-EKzfmolJork/XxmpyZZCwzI/AAAAAAAAA_U/qr1E0YHQV_cCKfjIJasAFHtXeMg7TjsBQCLcBGAsYHQ/s640/Worker_Buck.jpg" width="580" /></a></div>
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<br /></div>
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<br /></div>
<div align="justify" style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
The
attack on the Communist Party of Canada by David Camfield recently
published in Passage doesn't merit a response, but rather
necessitates one. That is to say, the arguments made in the piece
aren't good ones, but left unresponded to they may mislead young
radicals exactly in the manner that Camfield erroneously charges
against the Communist Party of Canada. In the piece, which is itself
a response to Kimball Cariou's exemplary article '<a href="https://readpassage.com/canada-still-needs-a-communist-party/">Canada Still Needsa Communist Party</a>,' Camfield makes a number of charges. The most
prominent of these charges is the least compelling, and is in large
bold letters at the top of the page: "Since the 1950s, Canada's
Communist Party has lacked the size, and degree of influence on a
mass scale, needed to be a genuine party." What is one even to
do with this? What is this argument other than an incoherent
tautology? The Communist Party of Canada has lacked size and
influence, so therefore it ought not have size and influence? It
hasn't been sizable or influential, so its growing size and influence
ought to be checked? Nothing in the following paragraphs in any way
turns this frustrated lament into an actual argument. But beneath the
charge that the Communist Party of Canada cannot be a revolutionary
force in Canadian politics lies a more insidious and bitter argument,
that the Communist Party of Canada ought not be a revolutionary force
in Canadian politics.</div>
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<br /></div>
<div align="justify" style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
The
real substance of David Camfield's argument is that he simply doesn't
want young people to fall under the sway of the Communist Party of
Canada. He portrays them in the manner of Socrates' accusers:
corrupting the youth. But the fact of the matter is that the
Communist Party of Canada is growing in size and influence not
because of the nefarious machinations of its elder members, but
rather because its positions are right and principled. This is what
Camfield is actually attacking, the taking and holding of principled
positions whatsoever, and that is precisely why young people are
gravitating towards them.</div>
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<br /></div>
<div align="justify" style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
On
the front of Social Democracy, Jagmeet Singh is undeniably an
improvement over Thomas Mulcair, and does not deserve the racist
treatment he has received in the House of Commons. And yet, it is no
accident that while a majority of NDP MPs have denounced the Israeli
annexation of the West Bank, he and Randal Garrison have not. On
foreign policy most of all the NDP compromises with and reproduces
imperialist falsehoods and reaction. The Communist Party of Canada
does not do this, ever. At no point does the Communist Party of
Canada split the difference with those who champion and cheerlead for
Israeli apartheid, or the disastrous and bloody war in Yemen, or
reproduce the grotesque sinophobia being promoted by US Empire today.
On the foreign affairs front that is why young people are inspired by
the line of the Communist Party of Canada, it is not an aftereffect,
something smuggled in after the fact, it is rather the reason that
young people are turning to them. The same is true of domestic
politics and a resolute commitment to justice for working class
people and indigenous people.</div>
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<br /></div>
<div align="justify" style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
Older
Social Democrats, or more broadly older Trotskyists, are allergic to
principle, to belief, to solidarity with global class struggle. So
long have they prefaced anything resembling socialist principle with
qualifiers and disclaimers of responsibility that all that remains
are the qualifier and disclaimers. And worse, they hold forth their
qualifications and disclaimers as a virtue in and of themselves. 'We
are the real left,' they claim, 'because we have for so long
denounced the left.' And that is all that remains, paranoiac
denunciations and pious idealism. That is what David Camfield's
argument amounts to 'don't fall under the sway of the Communist Party
of Canada, who have solidarity with Palestinians and Yemenis and
Chinese people, instead hold fast to doing nothing and believing in
nothing.'</div>
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<br /></div>
<div align="justify" style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
Ultimately
the dispute has little to nothing to do with the Communist Party of
Canada itself, the institution and its personages. The fact that the
Communist Party of Canada expresses the principled anti-imperialist
positions domestically and internationally that it does merely
exposes those for whom those positions are anathema. That allergy,
that remove, that refusal to have unwavering and unequivocal love and
solidarity for working class and indigenous struggle against the
Canadian State and Capital at home, and unwavering and unequivocal
love and solidarity for actually existing socialist states and
minoritarian movements abroad, is what young people are rejecting and
moving away from. The fashionable nihilism of the geriatric and
deteriorating 'new left' is no longer fashionable, and they are
enraged. That is the substance of David Camfield's objection to the
Communist Party of Canada, that they believe too much, and are
encouraging younger people to believe too much.</div>
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<br /></div>
<div align="justify" style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
Whether
one chooses to become involved with the Communist Party of Canada or
not - and I am neither a member nor do I speak for the Party - I
wholeheartedly encourage everyone, especially young working people,
young indigenous people and young marginalized people, to read and
study their program '<a href="http://communist-party.ca/party-program/">Canada's Future is Socialism!</a>' adopted and
ratified at the 39th Central Convention of the Communist Party of
Canada. This document is
the gold standard of contemporary Socialism. Not only do critics like
David Camfield not offer a credible alternative to this program, they
lack the ability to. Their argument is, in effect, that it is wrong
and dangerous to so earnestly and unreservedly endorse such an
unvarnished socialist program. This argument is failing to gain
traction precisely because young people are exhausted with late
capitalism and are sick of exactly the kind of compromise and
complicity that saturates Camfield's critique.</div>
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<br /></div>
<div align="justify" style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
Young
people are not being duped, misled, scammed, grifted, or anything
else left anti-communist allege. Young people, working people,
indigenous people and marginalized people are inspired and united by
rigorous critique and principle, and that is why its critics launch
such facile attacks against the Communist Party of Canada today.</div>
Dock Curriehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09979072460617749796noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4063385487236063231.post-17210333996162368532020-03-30T22:19:00.000-07:002020-03-30T22:34:49.973-07:00Anticommunist Sinophobia by Any Other Name<br />
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<a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-QM5IYi2iC_w/XoLSnPTYMGI/AAAAAAAAA7E/a4RePy_GtIYN0D3t2BaEhoHYD45aBdFGQCLcBGAsYHQ/s1600/the-japanese-yellow-peril-mary-evans-picture-library.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="264" data-original-width="446" height="320" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-QM5IYi2iC_w/XoLSnPTYMGI/AAAAAAAAA7E/a4RePy_GtIYN0D3t2BaEhoHYD45aBdFGQCLcBGAsYHQ/s640/the-japanese-yellow-peril-mary-evans-picture-library.jpg" width="570" /></a></div>
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<br /></div>
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<br /></div>
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<br /></div>
<div align="justify" style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
One
thing I have never been good, or able to do whatsoever really, is
compartmentalize. The cognitive dissonance I see in others I cannot
understand, and very often I simply throw my hands up at what appears
to me to be obvious, glaring hypocrisy. I accept, however, on an
abstract level, that other people may not be associating things
together in the same way that I do, that they do not see how two
things are connected and logically refute one another.</div>
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<br /></div>
<div align="justify" style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
So,
I'll give you an example. Today a reporter I know on the one hand
retweeted Mayor of Port Coquitlam Brad West's ignorant one-sided
polemics against Huawei on twitter, while on the other tweeted
condemning anti-asian hate-crimes ginned on by racist and sinophobic
sentiment on the part of public officials. To my mind, these things
are inextricable from one another. There is functionally no
difference whatsoever between the rhetoric of Brad West and Mike
Pompeo. They are equally complicit in inflaming ignorance and
sinophobic hate-crimes.</div>
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<br /></div>
<div align="justify" style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
The
rhetoric of Brad West is not saved because he is 'nobly' demanding
the release of Global Affairs Canada spooks Michael Kovrig and
Michael Spavor, precisely because he elides, ignores and obscures
that this country, Canada, took an illegal economic hostage first.</div>
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<br /></div>
<div align="justify" style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
The
responses are incredible to pointing out that (1) Wanzhou has broken
no Canadian law; (2) what she is accused of breaking are unilateral
American sanctions against Iran; and (3) those unilateral US sanctions
were <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/oct/03/international-court-of-justice-orders-us-to-lift-new-iran-sanctions">declared illegal in 2018 by the International Court of Justice.</a>
It amounts to a shrug, 'oh, someone in our government signed off on
it, so it is okay.' No, it absolutely isn't. The fact that Meng
Wanzhou was illegally detained, contrary to the terms of the
extradition treaty, which explicitly requires that the alleged
offence be an offence in both jurisdictions, which it is not, was
already a mortifying embarrassment for a liberal-democracy claiming
that kidnapping a hostage for Donald Trump and Mike Pompeo has
anything to do with the 'rule of law.' Now, in the context of the
Coronavirus, where Donald Trump and Mike Pompeo are refusing to
participate in global coordination on medical relief efforts unless
it is called 'Wuhan Virus' and those unilateral US sanctions
restricting vital medical supplies are currently murdering people in
Iran, complicity with American anti-Communism and Sinophobia is even
more loathsome and inscrutable.</div>
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<br /></div>
<div align="justify" style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
What
Brad West does, with his jingoistic sabre-rattling, is racist
opportunism. He preys on Sinophobic sentiment for political gain.
Parsing the 'good' anti-Chinese sentiment from the bad, trying to
claim that your anti-Chinese sentiment is noble and good, whereas the
people murdering asian people because they are frightened and scared,
and have been told by officials that China is bad and should be
reviled, is bad, is a grotesque and self-indulgent spectacle.</div>
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<br /></div>
<div align="justify" style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
Denouncing
and condemning China because Michael Kovrig and Michael Spavor are
detained while remaining uncritical towards the interests of US
Empire and the radical anti-Chinese hatred emanating from the US
right now is complicity, it is actively choosing to regurgitate the
lies and falsehoods of US Empire, and it is at best indifference to
the general atmosphere of sinophobia and hatred it fosters.</div>
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<br /></div>
<div align="justify" style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
Yes,
Michael Kovrig and Michael Spavor should be freed. So should Meng
Wanzhou. We should disassociate ourselves from American
state-sanctioned Sinophobic racism as much as possible, and so too
should we dissociate ourselves from a corrupt and degenerating
American Empire and its particular geopolitical ambitions. We should
stop allowing Canadian sovereignty to be merely an appendage of
racist apes like Donald Trump and Mike Pompeo.</div>
<br />Dock Curriehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09979072460617749796noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4063385487236063231.post-45399123885961405062020-03-27T07:36:00.000-07:002020-03-27T07:36:47.779-07:00Why the BCNDP Nerfed the Emergency Program Act<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/--OlCdTk0Clc/Xn2r3hCymXI/AAAAAAAAA6c/JwlSKhPD6Xk5VXc2WdWH-fZmPnM0GYCngCLcBGAsYHQ/s1600/mancamp.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="452" data-original-width="804" height="310" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/--OlCdTk0Clc/Xn2r3hCymXI/AAAAAAAAA6c/JwlSKhPD6Xk5VXc2WdWH-fZmPnM0GYCngCLcBGAsYHQ/s640/mancamp.jpg" width="570" /></a></div>
<br />
<br />
<br />
<div class="Standard" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
The
BCNDP Government is irresponsibly putting the safety and security of British
Columbians at significant risk by not ordering the closure of construction
sites. In order to ensure that local authorities don't close them using the
powers specifically and concertedly delegated to them under the Province's
Emergency Program Act, RSBC 1996 legislation, the Provincial Government
announced on Thursday that it was suspending all the emergency powers afforded
to local authorities under the Act.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="Standard" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<br /></div>
<div class="Standard" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
If
you imagine legislation as something like the software which runs on the
hardware of the State and its capacity to mobilize, the Emergency Program Act
was specifically designed in contemplation that local authorities would take
action in the event of a cross-Province emergency, and those specifically<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>delegated emergency powers are the mechanism
by which they are supposed to be able to do that, by empowering their city
managers, their fire chiefs, their police chiefs, to take actions which the
local authority perceives would ameliorate risk or prevent the loss of life.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="Standard" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<br /></div>
<div class="Standard" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
The
suspension of local authority emergency powers by Premier John Horgan and Mike
Farnworth is to force the LNG camps to stay open, over the objection of local
authorities and the specific powers enumerated to them under the Emergency
Program Act. The Emergency Program Act is specifically designed and structured
such as to delegate emergency powers to local authorities to take the steps
most necessary to protect their communities according to local conditions.
Premier Horgan and Minister Mike Farnworth just gutted that ability.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="Standard" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<br /></div>
<div class="Standard" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
Why
have Premier Horgan and Mike Farnworth nerfed and gutted the Emergency Program
Act? In other words, why have they abrogated the powers afforded to the local authorities under the Act? For the same reason Dr Bonnie Henry has not ordered the camps closed: they are
prioritizing accumulation by dispossession over the safety and security of
workers and British Columbians. They are prioritizing the interests of
extractive industry over the safety of workers, First Nations peoples, and
British Columbians generally. The 'coordinated approach' of Premier Horgan and
Minister Mike Farnworth is in fact a vehicle to deprive municipalities of the
life-saving emergency powers which were specifically contemplated for them in
an event of an emergency precisely such as this one.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="Standard" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<br /></div>
<div class="Standard" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
Of
all the low-down half-measures pursued by this so-called 'social democrat'
BCNDP government, insisting workers continue extractive industry in unsafe
conditions while the First Nations they are dispossessing are compelled to take
shelter is perhaps the most loathsome and vile. And, in order to facilitate
that extractive industry in unsafe conditions against the wishes of the First
Nations society concerned, Premier Horgan and Minister Mike Farnworth have
effectively left British Columbia without a functional Emergency Program Act.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="Standard" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<br /></div>
<div class="Standard" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
Local
authorities who had depended on those emergency powers to pursue strategies of
ameliorating the risks to their community, now cannot do so, the Province's
legislative instrument for emergency management crippled, all to keep the
man-camps churning, irrespective of the health concerns. Not closing the LNG
camps, and gutting the Emergency Program Act to facilitate not closing the LNG
camps, is a bloody albatross that ought to weigh on the shoulders of Premier
Horgan, Minister Mike Farnworth, Minister Adrian Dix, and Doctor Bonnie Henry.
These people are talking out of both sides of their mouths. From one side they
say they are resolutely combating the health crisis, from the other they are
sanctioning the exacerbation of the public health crisis by forcing unsafe work
to transpire.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="Standard" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<br /></div>
<div class="Standard" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
There
are a million different circumstances in which it was specifically contemplated,
and authorized by the Emergency Program Act, that a local authority would act
for the interests of its specific locality. What Premier Horgan and Minister
Farnworth have ensured is that now no municipality will be able to avail itself
of the emergency powers authorized to it under the act, in order to ensure that
some local authorities do not use those powers to interfere with resource
extraction.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="Standard" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<br /></div>
<div class="Standard" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
For a
Provincial Government to gut the function of its own emergency powers
legislation in entirety in the middle of a global pandemic in order to
facilitate the continuity of unsafe extractive industry is criminal, cartoonish
villainy. It is impossible that Premier Horgan, Minister Farnworth, Minister
Dix and Doctor Henry do not know that what they are doing is reckless,
irresponsible and unsafe. They have rather made a knowing, cynical calculation
to exempt extractive industry, even though it is unsafe, even though it poses a
significant public health risk. They have placed the interests of extractive corporations
above those of the health, safety and security of all British Columbians, and,
moreover, above the need for all local authorities to be able to delegate
emergency powers in the midst of an emergency situation.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="Standard" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<br /></div>
<div class="Standard" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
Section
13 of the Emergency Program Act, RSBC 1996 delegates to local authorities the
powers enumerated in Section 10 (d) to (l). In order to unsafely keep LNG
going, Premier Horgan and Minister Farnworth have just stripped local
authorities of all of those powers. These are powers under S 13 of the
Emergency Program Act like to control travel to and from areas, to cause
evacuations, to construct structures, to authorize assistance, that is, vital
measures that local authorities absolutely ought to have at their disposal.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="Standard" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<br /></div>
<div class="Standard" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
When
Premier Horgan says that stripping these powers from local authorities is meant
to prevent 'leapfrogging,' what he means is that the BCNDP has decided to keep
the LNG camps open irrespective of the risks, and has deleted any recourse of
objection by local authorities. The purpose of Nerfing the Emergency Program
Act is to ensure that municipalities do not restrict economic activity farther
than the Provincial government is comfortable with, irrespective of local
circumstances. They are placing the accumulation imperative above human lives
and relations between settler-society and First Nations societies.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="Standard" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<br /></div>
<div class="Standard" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
What
Premier Horgan and Minister Farnworth have done in abrogating the emergency
powers specifically afforded to the local authorities across British Columbia
by the Emergency Program Act is enforce a minimal, blanket, one-size fits all
non-response to the public health crisis. Does your municipal council feel
travel ought to be restricted right now? Do they want to empower local police
chief or fire chiefs to make necessary determinations about emergency measures?
They can't anymore, because Premier Horgan and Minister Farnworth don't want
them trying to close LNG camps.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="Standard" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<br /></div>
<div class="Standard" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
Again:
in a complete gutting of the carefully thought out Emergency Program Act, no
local authority may now avail themselves of the emergency powers afforded to
them by the act, because Premier Horgan and Minister Farnworth don't want some
of them messing with LNG. Why even have an Emergency Program Act if, in an
effort to exempt extractive industry, you are willing to gut the Act and
deprive every local authority of their lawful authority to act to protect their
communities in the ways they know best to do so?<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="Standard" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<br /></div>
<div class="Standard" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
There
is something so insidiously grim about a so-called 'social democratic'
government knowingly, cynically putting workers in harms way to ensure plunder
during a global pandemic, and crippling the ability of all communities to
respond to do so. Abrogating the powers of local authorities delegated to them
by the Emergency Program Act leaves communities vulnerable, and for what? So
Premier Horgan and Minister Farnworth can keep ramrodding through an LNG
pipeline in recklessly, irresponsibly unsafe conditions.</div>
Dock Curriehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09979072460617749796noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4063385487236063231.post-17293838833795764902020-01-16T03:38:00.001-08:002020-01-16T04:20:36.970-08:00'You Called Me a Liar:' The 2020 He-Said-She-Said that Wasn't<br />
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
The last three days
of 2020 Democratic Presidential candidate horse-trading has been
goddamned looney-tunes. From the Neo-Keynesian dynamic duo of the
first debates, suddenly Sanders and Warren are mortal enemies,
betrayed and betrayer? It is ludicrous. If the CIA hadn't conceived
of it they'll be studying it to deploy against social democrats the
world over. The privately owned media have interjected strife between
the world's two leading voices for left-liberal to social-democratic
Keynesian political economic theory. It is a salacious, nonsense,
reality TV gaffe trainwreck which has, unfortunately, world-historic
significance. There are plenty of disingenuous smear tactics that
weaponize identity politics against this or that politician who
espouses class politics. Let me tell you why I believe this is
different: what is disturbing is the lack of empathy for Warren's
position, which is hypocritical with respect to the entire ontology
of belief espoused by Sanders.</div>
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
We believe women,
but when a woman expresses that she thought something a male friend
said to her was sexist then suddenly she is a liar turncoat who
conspires with CNN to stab Bernie in the back? This is sub-comic-book
level Manicheaen myopia, and the willingness to cast Warren into the
ninth circle of hell for having not denied the allegation made that
Senator Sanders said to her something which basically amounted to 'a
woman can't win,' or 'is less likely to win,' or something
effectively similar.</div>
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
We know essentially
what was said: The two spoke; both noted how Trump was a bigot and
misogynist who would weaponize Senator Warren's gender against her.
And maybe, just maybe, the good Saint Bernard, guiding light, lapsed
Trot from Vermont, noted how Warren's gender would be weaponized
against her so much, and emphasized how that cynical weaponization
could, and would, be combated and overcome so little, that he inadvertently
hurt and wounded a close friend and ally. The total inability to
conceive that Bernie, human, fallible old man that he is, may err,
may be in the wrong in a situation, is deeply disturbing, and belies
Sanders essential message: that it is up to the whole of society to
be critical.</div>
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
Everything is
explicable from the hot-mic meeting after the debate:</div>
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
'I think you called
me a liar on National TV.'</div>
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
'What?'</div>
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
'I think you called
me a liar on National TV.'</div>
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
'Let's not do this
right now. You want to have that conversation, we can have that
conversation.'</div>
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
'Anytime.'</div>
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
'You called me a
liar. . . alright, lets not do this right now.'</div>
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-J4ZdF5z0cXM/XiBKbEwjshI/AAAAAAAAA4U/KDbdfmPtXXQFmsdyIzzfLGBaLjgHab9BwCLcBGAsYHQ/s1600/All%2BIm%2Bgetting.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="518" data-original-width="530" height="560" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-J4ZdF5z0cXM/XiBKbEwjshI/AAAAAAAAA4U/KDbdfmPtXXQFmsdyIzzfLGBaLjgHab9BwCLcBGAsYHQ/s640/All%2BIm%2Bgetting.jpg" width="570" /></a></div>
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<br /></div>
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<br /></div>
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
Neither of them
understands what the other is talking about. Both are absolutely
certain that they are correct. Both of them are correct and neither
of them are. It is not a case of 'he said, she said' from which we
can divine no sense of the truth of the matter. Rather we can get a
picture of exactly what the truth of the matter is, and it is right
in the middle, at the border of 'noting Trump will do x' and actually
being critical with respect to that, and being willing to challenge
that. Senator Sanders maintains, quite rightly, that he would never
ever say that a woman can't win the presidency, and I believe him.
But did he follow up 'noting' how Trump would weaponize Warren's
gender with an equally fulsome analysis of how the two could beat
Trump nonetheless, or did he bootstrap off from that as a postulate
to imply that he invariably ought to be the nominee? Senator Warren
maintains, quite rightly, that she disagreed with Senator Sanders
about whether a woman could win the presidency (importantly
irrespective of whether Senator Sanders said as much and in those
terms), and I believe her. But is she now allowing Senator Sanders to
be suspected of saying 'a woman can't win' when in fact he simply
didn't state positively 'a woman can win' in that particular
conversation? Is this an important distinction? If you fail to
positively state, in each and every instance, 'a woman can win,' are
you therein contributing to and reproducing 'a woman can't win,' even
if you don't say it in those terms?
</div>
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
Ultimately the
situation is very sad. Two close friends are inscrutably fighting and
being sharp with one another in front of a general audience. The gods
clashing. Nobody is coming off well from this conflict, and how could
they? Its one thing to be slandered by one's enemies and to slough
them off, but it is quite another to be misunderstood by one's
closest friends. It is unnerving and anxiety producing that these
titans of policy and thought could be laid low by the kind of
inexplicable family meltdown which punctuates the holidays.
Acquiescing to this Sanders v Warren fight, to their supporters being
acrimonious with one another, is boneheaded, self-indulgent pouting
and catharsis. The most malign influences are ecstatic about the
rift.</div>
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
The non-aggression
pact gave them both legitimacy and room for maneouver, now they have
neither. 'She's a liar,' 'she's a traitor,' 'she's a snake,' these
are really gross, knee-jerk oversimplifications, and they reflect
really really badly on Sanders' support base. Hardcore Sanders fans
don't seem to appreciate how tenuous and fledgling their little
class-consciousness bloom actually is. In the short term the
beneficiary is Biden, insofar as Sanders and Warren voters becoming
inimical to one another cuts them off from each other's 15% to 20% of
primary voters and caucus goers. In the long term the beneficiary is
Trump insofar as what Trump requires to be elected, as in 2016, is a
catastrophic rift between the Liberal Democratic and Social
Democratic wings of the Democratic Party.
<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-ccxlnGJNaNw/XiBU0PBIcKI/AAAAAAAAA4s/1h4r_dmhFQYol6BYp-wSWttKr8cuWDMfQCLcBGAsYHQ/s1600/ben.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="321" data-original-width="530" height="310" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-ccxlnGJNaNw/XiBU0PBIcKI/AAAAAAAAA4s/1h4r_dmhFQYol6BYp-wSWttKr8cuWDMfQCLcBGAsYHQ/s640/ben.jpg" width="570" /></a></div>
<br /></div>
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<br /></div>
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
At the same time,
Warren had an opportunity to push back against CNN's salacious
framing of the conflict, and demurred from doing so. I don't want to
endorse Senator Warren, or say that her political and economic plans
are sufficient to the present moment, or that her baggage with Native
American ancestry claimancy was legitimate or culturally sensitive,
but just to say that it is okay to say that you don't think a friend
was supportive enough, which is all she did. I don't want to detract
from absolutely endorsing Senator Sanders by saying that the man is
not god, that he is right politically and economically only in the
very modest reformist context of the United States, and that I can
very easily believe that in a conversation about how Trump would
weaponize Senator Warren's gender, that Senator Sanders may have not
emphasized that this could be overcome enough so as to not hurt and
wound his friend. What we are looking at in this inscrutable
upside-down through-the-looking-glass last three days is an open
wound between two long-time friends and allies. On the one hand we
ought not stare at that wound. We should let Senator Warren and
Senator Sanders talk about what is evidently a strong disagreement
between themselves. On the other hand we should acknowledge that the
truth isn't binary, that what amounts to saying 'a woman can't be
president' is not necessarily self-same with saying 'a woman can't be
president.' Or is it? That's what this ought to be about, whether the
distinction matters, not who is lying or telling the truth, but
shades of what was emphasized, and how, and for what purposes?</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
Dock Curriehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09979072460617749796noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4063385487236063231.post-15314352815230511532019-10-25T01:57:00.002-07:002019-10-25T02:20:43.141-07:00Oil Chauvinism and the Western NDP Schism<br />
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<a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-LoW4ZLLESJU/XbK2BqtK0AI/AAAAAAAAA3U/SJ2P4bpjCzA50DBdMepvLG1lhQ9HWab2QCLcBGAsYHQ/s1600/ANDP.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="583" data-original-width="1141" height="290" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-LoW4ZLLESJU/XbK2BqtK0AI/AAAAAAAAA3U/SJ2P4bpjCzA50DBdMepvLG1lhQ9HWab2QCLcBGAsYHQ/s640/ANDP.jpg" width="570" /></a></div>
<br />
<br />
The schism between the Federal NDP and the Alberta NDP cannot be, and should not be, papered over. It represents a real, material disagreement, and, in the case of the Alberta NDP, a massive departure from the policies and principles of the Federal NDP.<br />
<br />
Having had my
candidacy here in Kamloops-Thompson-Cariboo for this past election
blown up by the gotcha-sliming of Alberta NDP pipeline partisans, and
having had to sit through an election while those same vestigial
'Alberta NDP' personalities slagged off and demeaned the leader of
the Federal NDP, I think it is high time for the 'leadership' of the
remnant, rump 'opposition' of the 'Alberta NDP' to be called out for
oil chauvinism, climate change hypocrisy and reaction, denigrating
and excluding ecologically conscious young socialists from the
Alberta provincial party, and for making backroom deals with Liberals
for pipelines.</div>
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
Yesterday, on the
CBC's Power and Politics, Alberta NDP 'leader,' Rachel Notley said of
Federal NDP Leader, Jagmeet Singh, that <a href="https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/rachel-notley-calls-out-singh-1.5334646?__vfz=medium%3Dsharebar&fbclid=IwAR3DaC-UuquIl8d_J4gBQCZ6WT5hbyG8Rh4pjOA3g9M5o-BwSIKLY7ICUDM">"he needs to stop hurting jobs and accelerating anxiety around the kitchen tables in the province ofAlberta."</a> For Rachel Notley to
be phrasing this in such an insulting and incendiary way <a href="https://www.cbc.ca/news/indigenous/bc-undrip-indigenous-rights-1.5333137?fbclid=IwAR2qIGkHlbVasIlBfKrG5aTCPTCqB3eeuWSdKIG7QjLn6qDVe0i2w2utLJk">on the day that the BC NDP recognizes the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples into Law</a> is irresponsible, ignorant and
petty. In unilaterally adopting ecocidal, oil-chauvinist policies,
and insisting that they be made federal policies, Rachel Notely has
'accelerated anxiety' in all of Western Canada, and sown confusion
and discord within social democracy.</div>
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
Rachel Notely and
the provincial NDP's 2015 win in Alberta was absolutely and wholly
conjunctural, that is, it was dependent on and impossible without
particular circumstances which no longer exist (oil crash, separation
of Conservatives, etc.). For her to be slagging off the leader of the
party, in the middle of an election, and dictating energy policy to
the federal party, from her rump legislature, is ludicrous and
treasonous. She got elected on a fluke and squandered it perpetuating
the same ecocidal policies of her predecessors.</div>
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<br /></div>
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
In 2015 Rachel
Notley used the chaos in the aftermath of a Federal election to
broker a unilateral backroom deal with Justin Trudeau, without
consulting the party, and is now livid that her deal hasn't been
accepted as de facto party policy. If she wants to challenge Jagmeet
Singh for leadership of the federal party she should do so, otherwise
she should either put a sock in it or shove off to the Liberals or
Conservatives. If Jagmeet Singh
wants to 'grow into the role as leader' he cannot simply respond to
this with 'we will discuss this in private.' Rachel Notley is already
explicitly not discussing this in private, she is discussing this in
public. The 'leadership' of the Alberta NDP needs to be told to get
its head on straight and, instead, the Federal party keep kowtowing
to these kind of whiny denigrations of the leader's intelligence.</div>
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<br /></div>
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
All Jagmeet Singh
has been able to offer is in response is <a href="https://ipolitics.ca/2019/10/24/singh-and-notley-will-work-together-despite-disagreement-on-tmx-says-party/">"I’m not going to negotiate what we’re going to fight for in media like this."</a> Far be it for me to
call the leader of the party naive and unlearned, as Rachel Notley
and her sycophants did <i>during the election</i>, but this statement
is nonetheless meek. I believe the Party is demonstrating a deficit
of spine and backbone by not pushing back against Rachel Notley's
public statements for oil companies and against the leader of the
NDP, against the scientific consensus, and against serious action on
climate change and reconciliation. Of course this must be litigated
in public, there is no other means of doing so. Jagmeet Singh must
negotiate what the NDP is going to fight for in the Media. That is
literally his job now: to go out into the media and explain not only
what the priorities of an NDP Government are, but why they are
important, why they matter. If when confronted with pro-pipeline
criticism his response is simply to not discuss it, then the Party
loses the opportunity to say why opposition to the TransMountain
expansion is the position of the Party. It is not enough to simply
have a policy position, that policy position must be defended and
advanced, even as against oil chauvinist members of a provincial
section.</div>
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<br /></div>
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
The TransMountain
expansion environmental and duty to consult processes have been shot
through with bad faith on the part of the Harper and Trudeau
governments. The cheap, post-hoc, after the fact consultation and
environmental review the government have engaged in, is neither in
keeping with our Paris Agreement emissions obligations, nor our s 35
Constitutional obligations towards First Nations, nor with
reconciliation, nor with the Honour of the Crown, nor with our moral
obligation to ensure the survival of vulnerable coastal habitats for
future generations. If it is NDP policy to oppose the TransMountain
expansion, then these arguments must actually be prosecuted,
vigorously.
</div>
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<br /></div>
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
It is not sufficient
to simply say 'I am against the transmountain expansion,' and simply
leave it at the index, just like that. No, the argument that the
pipeline approval processes have irrevocably damaged the possibility
of free, prior, and informed consent of indigenous peoples, that such
an expansion would constitute a massive 9 billion dollar giveaway to
oil and gas conglomerates, directly from the public purse, in
addition to the already dispensed 4.5 billion, and that the increased
bitumen tanker traffic it would entail represents an intolerable risk
to vulnerable coastal habitats, must actually be made, right now.</div>
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<br /></div>
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
When Rachel Notley
slags Jagmeet Singh off in the press and shouts 'jobs, jobs, jobs,'
it is imperative to push back, immediately and publicly, and note how
the policy of the party is based on environmental science, economic
analysis which accounts for economic growth in an ecologically
sustainable way, and our constitutional and moral duties with respect
to First Nations peoples. If your policy on
TransMountain is that you're against it, then defend that policy!
Explain the reasons why and care about those reasons! Shout from the
rooftops that you care earnestly about the environmental and
inter-societal ramifications of ramrodding through a pipeline without
social license.</div>
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<br /></div>
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
Justin Trudeau says
his intention is to have the TransMountain expansion constructed <a href="https://www.blogger.com/[https://www.theglobeandmail.com/politics/article-tax-cuts-will-be-first-order-of-business-trudeau-says-after-re/">"as quickly as possible."</a> Any hope or expectation that Trudeau would want to govern in a
collaborative and progressive manner are extinguished. His intention
is to pick and choose who to solicit votes from on an issue by issue
basis, and to exclude the NDP as much as possible. The time for
backroom deals on oil chauvinism are over. It is insulting to suggest
that these contradictions can simply be glossed over in public and
hammered out in private. The forces which work for the oil companies
do not operate in private, they loudly condemn the communities and
social forces which stand in their way as 'Native extremists,'
'foreign funded radicals,' 'ecoterrorists,' and all manner of
dispicable, denigrating language. Disdain and contempt towards
settler society's historical relationship with First Nations is
characteristic of the discourse emanating from Alberta, and this is
sick and dangerous.</div>
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
The abject failure
of Rachel Notley to be critical with respect to herself and her
society is appalling. There is 'brexit-like' talk in her province and
she has not denounced it or tried to address the real reasons for it,
which are not that 'Albertans don't feel listened to,' it is rather
that they have refused to diversify their economy for fourty years,
and are refusing to do so now. Oil has become a religion and symbol
of toxic masculinity and white-supremacism, it has become a cipher
for disdain and contempt towards ecology and Canada's relationship
with First Nations peoples.</div>
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<br /></div>
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
What the NDP ought
to do in response to these counter-productive insults from Rachel
Notley is institute mechanisms by which membership can hold
provincial and federal leaders to account, in addition to mechanisms
of enforcement, whereby if the leadership of a provincial section
acts wantonly in opposition to agreed upon party policy, as in the
case of the Rachel Notley and the TransMountain expansion, that they
can be either removed from leadership, or at very least made to
answer for their contradictions.</div>
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<br /></div>
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
It is not enough to
simply be handed a piece of paper with a bunch of policy positions on
it. What matters is the degree of care and solicitude you invest in
those policy positions, the degree to which you will go to defend and
advance them. Military force is being <a href="https://cfjctoday.com/2019/10/22/arrests-follow-tiny-house-warrior-confrontations-over-trans-mountain-pipeline/?fbclid=IwAR2eyWtqdVuEgAhTU5TJuXG8k6RNBwnHEDz3I4kEnXYQh_XxlJdkAg4lJe0">applied to Secwepemc people who are opposing the TransMountain expansion right now.</a> The Canadian State is violating the sovereignty of First Nations lands right now. To have made the kinds of comments that Rachel Notley did is ignorant and irresponsible, and to not push back, as the Federal party has, is cowardly and rudderless, and makes it appear as though the Federal Party isn't as committed to the scientific, ecological, and reconciliatory goals as it needs to be to really fight this fight.</div>
Dock Curriehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09979072460617749796noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4063385487236063231.post-89161871248930379872019-02-21T19:39:00.000-08:002019-02-21T20:01:50.871-08:00There is Nothing Wrong with Jagmeet Singh.<br />
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<a href="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-9GYvg5Wnt3g/XG9uPONWMtI/AAAAAAAAA0I/vwSLtemQf-I1tGU-m32CLHstyTnKfD8YACLcBGAs/s1600/Jagmeet%2BOne.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="375" data-original-width="728" height="310" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-9GYvg5Wnt3g/XG9uPONWMtI/AAAAAAAAA0I/vwSLtemQf-I1tGU-m32CLHstyTnKfD8YACLcBGAs/s640/Jagmeet%2BOne.jpg" width="570" /></a></div>
<br />
<br />
While Jagmeet Singh
may coast to victory in Burnaby-South, alarm bells are nonetheless still going
off. The most recent polls have the NDP federally at an absolutely
abysmal 14%. Older MPs, for better or worse, are choosing to retire
rather than fight the upcoming election. This all sounds rather grim,
but, as always, it is less grim than the rich-man's newspaper would
have you believe. There is nothing wrong with Jagmeet Singh.<br />
<br />
Jagmeet
Singh is an intelligent, literate, personable, and charming guy, more
than capable of commanding and leading a social democratic party in
the spirit of the times if he sets his mind to it. Jagmeet Singh is
eminently capable of leading a political party, the question is
whether he is as capable of grasping the significance of the
historical moment and articulating a clear-headed socialist response
to both the vile xenophobic rhetoric of the far right, on the one hand, and the
hypocrisy and economic criminality that characterizes liberalism and
the monopoly form, on the other. This is what Jagmeet needs to be better
at, louder at, more unrelenting at, bring the soapbox and shout it
from the rooftops at, if he wants to rise to the occasion.</div>
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<br /></div>
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
The commentariat
across the spectrum whispers behind his back, 'he will flunk and be
churned up.' I don't think so. I hope not. The problem, the reason
the NDP is still at 14%, is not Jagmeet Singh. The problem is rather
that Jagmeet Singh is hamstrung by all the elements that allowed him
to rise to the position of party leader in the first place. With all
due respect to the scaffold, Singh needs to kick away this scaffold
of party patronage if he's to rise to the occasion. So far Jagmeet
has trailed and stumbled in Canadian political discourse with late,
polished, superficially uncontroversial language on whatever problem or issue of
the day. His position on LNG was and is boneheaded and tonedeaf. The
BCNDP has for political reasons, and not all of them especially
convincing, made its peace with LNG. But Coastal GasLink was
nonetheless, as the chart below illustrates, spearheaded by the BC Liberal
Government in all its criminality and indifference.
</div>
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<br /></div>
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<a href="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-0K2JIIZBRo4/XG9sgheln9I/AAAAAAAAAz8/35mSd3chHTMiyOIrnGlnHZ-pISId4uTrQCLcBGAs/s1600/LNG.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="266" data-original-width="945" height="170" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-0K2JIIZBRo4/XG9sgheln9I/AAAAAAAAAz8/35mSd3chHTMiyOIrnGlnHZ-pISId4uTrQCLcBGAs/s640/LNG.jpg" width="570" /></a></div>
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<br /></div>
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<br /></div>
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
If you are for LNG
then state your reasons, defend that position, but don't materially
be indifferent to the RCMP forcibly rounding up First Nations elders
and shrug your shoulders because you've been assured by some
shrivelled party Iago that its checked the boxes, or because it calms
the waters between you and Western NDP Premiers. That is shallow
opportunism, and Jagmeet Singh should be, and needs to be, better
than that.</div>
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
The same goes for
foreign policy. In order to win the leadership, Singh slyly
gladhanded exactly those elements of the party that were most
culpable for the defeat in 2015, the worst, most lazy, most
unimaginative vestigial apparatchiks of the party. Characteristic in
this respect, is Helene Laverdiere, a viciously right-wing ex-Liberal
spook. It is a great development for the NDP and for Canada that she
will no longer be foreign policy critic for the NDP, it cannot come
soon enough. And so, when there is a situation of disagreement
between the 'leader of the party' and the 'foreign policy critic'
whose support had been solicited for the leadership, the 'leader' has
to lead. All around the world socialist and social democratic parties
are dealing with the cynical instrumentalization of claims of
anti-semitism wielded by neoliberal centrists as a cudgel. As Israel
slides further and further to the right, Jagmeet Singh needs to be,
and has a moral obligation to be, standing up for the basic dignity
and human rights of Palestinian peoples and against illegal
settlement, dispossession, and oppression by the State of Israel, as well as against real antisemitism against Jewish communities.
Instead, Singh countenances Israeli-apartheid cheerleaders like
Randal Garrison when they make exactly this cynical and weaponized
conflation of criticism of the state of Israel with anti-semitism. On all the touchstones of foreign policy, Singh must chart a different line than the Liberals. Oftentimes these
positions that he unreflectively adopts are the very thing which
causes him trouble, because in many cases the apparatchiks who have
survived through Mulcair and into the Singh party administration have
bad and incoherent positions. The point is that it is not enough for
Jagmeet to simply internalize the extant positions of the different
pontiffs whose support he solicited, he's got to understand the
issues and be vociferous in responding to them in a principled and
consistent manner in real time.</div>
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
Jagmeet Singh is
going to win in Burnaby-South, but to change the political landscape
in October he has to be much, much better. Jagmeet Singh is more than
capable of seizing the moment, galvanizing a mass movement, and
offering a credible alternative to the xenophobic right wing, on the one hand, and
hypocritical and ethically bereft centrism, on the other, but this requires a
gravity, clarity, and ferocity of thought and principle that Singh
has in his power but has thus far not exercised. I have actually said this before to
Jagmeet Singh, briefly at a leadership debate held in the Empress in Victoria,
where I was pleased to have met and talked with him for a while. I
told him that he needed to be more critical, off the cuff, less
polished. 'On what issue?' he said. 'On all the issues,' I told him.
Its even more necessary now.
</div>
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The point of this
writing is in the most comradely spirit I can imbue to it. I want
Jagmeet Singh to hook into the general social democratization going
on across the continents, to be Labour not Independent Group, AOC not
David Brooks, and to galvanize working class, marginalized peoples,
and First Nations peoples into a powerful force for social and
environmental justice. More pessimistically I can foresee the
dystopian hell-world that Andrew Scheer and his fascist henchmen
would create were they to, in the demise of the reputation of St.
Trudeau, take power. For better or worse, the only person who can
forestall that now is Jagmeet Singh.</div>
<br />Dock Curriehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09979072460617749796noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4063385487236063231.post-29670011564620428162018-11-23T00:19:00.002-08:002018-11-23T14:43:34.537-08:00The Palace-Coup that Wasn't<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-2xxDFfhq-KY/W_e30Pj8y2I/AAAAAAAAAyk/cZZKFBIR0nEuAfQ7QVoOW5UaDssJv9PWgCLcBGAs/s1600/plecas.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="459" data-original-width="823" height="320" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-2xxDFfhq-KY/W_e30Pj8y2I/AAAAAAAAAyk/cZZKFBIR0nEuAfQ7QVoOW5UaDssJv9PWgCLcBGAs/s640/plecas.jpg" width="570" /></a></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #1d2129; font-family: "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 14px;">The speaker of the legislature, Darryl Plecas, took his position over partisan cries of 'traitor' from the cratering wreck of his former party, the BC Liberals. They, and the media personalities that support them unequivocally (postmedia), unequivocally hate Mr. Plecas's guts for having done so, and hate his guts moreover for playing such a part as would allow the NDP to govern. </span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; color: #1d2129; font-family: "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 14px;"><br /></span>
<span style="background-color: white; color: #1d2129; font-family: "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 14px;">The way the BC Liberals and their friendly media mouthpieces (notably Postmedia lickspittles Vaughn Palmer and Rob Shaw) are portraying <a href="https://www.straight.com/news/1166786/top-legislature-officials-craig-james-and-gary-lenz-placed-administrative-leave-wake">the bizarre scenes emanating from Victoria this week</a> is as a kind of minor palace coup, in which an authoritarian and ambitious speake</span><span class="text_exposed_show" style="background-color: white; color: #1d2129; display: inline; font-family: "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 14px;">r appointed his 'crony' (as Vaughn Palmer called Mr. Mullen) to oust the longtime and beloved clerk and sergeant-at-arms, seeking to install said crony in the latter position. Is this what happened? Is this the story? Or is the story rather that an avowedly and enthusiastically non-partisan speaker of the legislature, having no incentive to bolster the NDP whatsoever, at every risk to himself, discovered evidence of impropriety on the part of legislative staff; and that, having discovered such evidence, Mr. Plecas appointed a trusted and extremely well qualified associate, Alan Mullen, to quietly look into the matters? </span><br />
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<span class="text_exposed_show" style="background-color: white; color: #1d2129; display: inline; font-family: "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 14px;">This is no longer 'the Mullen investigation.' Craig James, the suspended legislative clerk, and Gary Lenz, the suspended Sergeant-at-Arms, are now under active RCMP investigation with two special prosecutors appointed to the investigation. On Tuesday, November 20th, The Province's Mike Smyth, <a href="https://twitter.com/MikeSmythNews/status/1065012285691719682">tweeted out the particulars of a hiring document of BC Prosecution Service</a>. This document stated that "the Assistant Deputy Attorney General for the British Columbia Prosecution Services, Peter Juk, QC (ADAG). . . [had] concluded, based on the request [from the RCMP] and the information available about the alleged circumstances of the case that the appointment of Special Prosecutors is in the public interest." As the hiring documents note, Special Prosecutors work "independent[ly] from government, the Ministry of Attorney General and the British Columbia Prosecution Service." Their mandate includes to determine whether "a prosecution is warranted" and to "conduct the prosecution and any subsequent appeal."</span><br />
<span class="text_exposed_show" style="background-color: white; color: #1d2129; display: inline; font-family: "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 14px;"><br /></span>
<span style="background-color: white; color: #1d2129; font-family: "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 14px;">Today former Attorney General Wally Oppal agreed to be the <a href="https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/alan-mullen-darryl-plecas-sergeant-at-arms-bc-legislature-1.4916532">second special advisor to speaker Darryl Plecas</a>. Do you think Wally Oppal would have signed his name on to Mr. Plecas's minor palace-coup? I don't. I believe, reasonably I think, that the only reason why the RCMP, the Deputy Attorney General, and the British Columbia Prosecution Services would take up the investigation, and the only reason Mr. Oppal would lend his credibility to the speaker in such an instance, is because evidence of gross impropriety and inappropriate dealings on the part of Mr. James and Mr. Lenz has in fact been discovered. </span><br />
<span class="text_exposed_show" style="background-color: white; color: #1d2129; display: inline; font-family: "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 14px;"><br /></span>
<span class="text_exposed_show" style="background-color: white; color: #1d2129; display: inline; font-family: "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 14px;">Why, then, is there the current furor surrounding Mr. Plecas's actions? Venture out in a speculative endeavour with me for a moment. Could it not perhaps be that this impropriety in fact implicates Mr. Plecas's most vocal critics in some way? We do not know what this investigation entails, what it pertains to, what brought it about. The RCMP have <a href="https://vancouversun.com/news/politics/special-prosecutor-in-b-c-legislature-case-urges-patience">explicitly and publicly pleaded for public patience</a> as the investigation is ongoing. With that said, there has been far too much slack-jaw recrimination of Speaker Plecas from his aggrieved former colleagues and postmedia sycophants, and not not nearly enough hard-nosed inference from the present circumstances of the investigation into the activities of Mr. James and Mr. Lenz, which required two special prosecutors because of (as their hiring documents reveal) the "size and scope of the investigation," as well as Mr. James <a href="http://www.vancouversun.com/news/former+chief+electoral+officer+Craig+James+under+fire+travel+expenses/7158330/story.html?fbclid=IwAR1AKMvzHS2NVdP64Ef9-7lpJR5beZGaCoiW5hriPnNrrsSqw453Rd4YL1w">history of loose financial dealings</a>.</span>Dock Curriehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09979072460617749796noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4063385487236063231.post-11015375818479523432018-03-18T23:33:00.001-07:002018-03-18T23:47:23.238-07:00The CBC’s Sliming of Jagmeet Singh<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-EwfMY77m3Js/Wq9ZWsWcdJI/AAAAAAAAAuI/9jdJlbDsvKMo_M9Vj-SUIOQPNIBCgoAcgCLcBGAs/s1600/slime.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="600" data-original-width="1180" height="280" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-EwfMY77m3Js/Wq9ZWsWcdJI/AAAAAAAAAuI/9jdJlbDsvKMo_M9Vj-SUIOQPNIBCgoAcgCLcBGAs/s400/slime.jpg" width="580" /></a></div>
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The CBC is on a crusade to smear Jagmeet Singh and it is
loathesome, contemptible, and wholly on brand for a network which regularly
platforms white-supremacists while limiting working class and marginalized
voices to the fringes.<o:p></o:p></div>
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On Thursday last week the CBC’s David Cochrane interviewed
NDP leader Jagmeet Singh, and repeated the same questions on Sikh nationalism
and the dispaying of images of Talwinder Singh Parmar at Sikh events as had the
CBC’s Terry Milewski previously. This was followed by a CBC News story entitled
“Jagmeet Singh now rejects glorification of Air India bombing mastermind,”
implying, disingenuously of course, that Singh had erstwhile approved of the
glorification of Talwinder Singh Parmar, which is false and libelous. <o:p></o:p></div>
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In the interview with Milewski Singh repeatedly tried to
clarify that the narrative of an irreconcilable conflict between Sikhs and
Hindus is a false narrative, but Milewski was only interested in having Singh
condemn those who display Parmar’s image. Jagmeet clearly and unequivocally
condemned the bombing of Air India in the strongest of terms:<o:p></o:p></div>
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<blockquote class="tr_bq">
"It is unacceptable that the violence that was
committed, the heinous massacre that was committed, is something that Sikhs,
Muslims, and Hindus all denounce, and I regularly denounce it on the
anniversary. Its something that we are all collectively opposed to, there is no
question about this, it is completely unacceptable, it needs to be denounced as
a terrorist act."</blockquote>
<o:p></o:p></div>
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This, however, wasn’t enough for Milewski, because Milewski
didn’t care about Singh denouncing the Air India bombing, he wanted Jagmeet
Singh to denounce *those members of the Sikh community who display Parmar’s
image.* This is a very different thing. Milewski was in effect demanding that
Singh police the sentiment of the Sikh community. On Thursday, Cochrane again
wanted exactly the same thing – not merely a denunciation of the Air India
bombing, but a condemnation of a particular sentiment within some part of the
Sikh community. To this Singh responded:<o:p></o:p></div>
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<blockquote class="tr_bq">
“Because of the history, the ongoing violence, the genocide,
the persecution and descrimination. There are some in the community that don't
accept the official record. I will still attend events to reach out and speak
to people. </blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
Personally I think the displaying of a picture of Mr. Parmar
is something that re-traumatizes and hurts and injures people who are suffering
so much in terms of that loss in their lives, and I don't think it's
appropriate. So I don't think it should be done, but if someone else is doing
it an event I still think it's important for me to reach out and speak to
people and talk about my journey, how I felt that same pain and that same
trauma of knowing that people who looked just like me were singled out and
killed, targeted and murdered. I think its important to talk to people about
what we can do to transform that pain into something positive."</blockquote>
<o:p></o:p></div>
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Hysterically insisting that Singh must answer for and
condemn ambivalence towards the Air-India bombing isn’t ‘journalism,’ it’s
parochial race-baiting and dogwhistling. Dogwhistling is when one phrases
things so that a certain, almost invariably white, community will be alerted to
a racist or prejudiced subtext. In this case, Milewski and his fellow
race-baiters are attempting to paint Jagmeet Singh as somehow vaguely connected
to a horrible tragedy which evokes fear, suspicion, and xenophobia. <a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/othering-jagmeet-singh-171101094423416.html">As AndrewMitrovica writes</a>, “this hysterical pile-on is intended to paint a simplistic
caricature of Singh as first and foremost a Sikh, not a Canadian, born and
raised in Canada.”</div>
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There is much to criticize about Jagmeet Singh. He is young,
inexperienced, and vague, his sloganeering is orange-liberal bafflegab, and he
obtained his position by soliciting the support and party machinery of the NDP
chauvinists like Brad Lavigne and Hélène Laverdière who are chiefly culpable
for reactionary positions on economics and foreign policy. It is unwarranted,
however, and illegitimate in the extreme to try to portray him as answerable
for Sikh nationalism and terrorist sympathies in the Sikh community.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Milewski’s only response to this charge is that Cochrane also put
the question to Justin Trudeau as well - so clearly, he argues, it must have
nothing to do with Jagmeet being Sikh. This is ludicrous, disingenuous, and
lowbrow. Why is this issue being pressed now? It is because a Sikh is a leader
of a federal party. Asking Justin Trudeau to condemn those who valorize
Talwinder Singh Parmar isn’t analogous, but asking him to condemn those who
valorize genocidal war criminal Winston Churchill for starving 3 million
Bengals to death might be. On the one hand violence is prismatic, and different
communities view different historical violences differently, and on the other
Jagmeet Singh is no more answerable for those who admire Parmar than Trudeau is
for those who admire Churchill. That many white people consider Churchill a
hero doesn’t negate or undo his demonstrable legacy of barbarism, white-supremacism,
and genocide, and Milewski wouldn’t expect any white politician to reconcile
the two and be answerable for it. So why try to make Singh responsible and
answerable for Parmar and the some segment of the Sikh community’s views on
him?<o:p></o:p></div>
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The Laurentian elite is threatened by a charismatic social
democrat who threatens their largess, the wealth of their gated communities,
and their favorite neoliberal fraud, Justin Trudeau. The political angle of
focusing on his Sikh heritage, and whatever convenient smears they can glean
from it, is deployed cynically, as a cudgel to dissuade middle-class voters
from throwing their lot in with working class and marginalized peoples.<o:p></o:p></div>
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I had thought and hoped that this kind of banal race-baiting
was beneath an otherwise venerable reporter like Terry Milewski, but alas, it
seems it is not. It is disappointing and sad that this, playing to the racist
peanut-gallery, is how Milewski deigns to spend his ‘semi-retirement’
years. Make no mistake, the crusade
Milewski and his associates like Cochrane are on is not even in the slightest
journalism, it is slime.<o:p></o:p></div>
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If Jagmeet Singh’s electoral hopes were to be impinged upon
because a few racist pundits promulgated lies, smears, and disinformation, that
would be a great loss for Canada. Singh is a fresh face, and deserves scrutiny
from both the press, and his party base, for the content of his platform and
the function of his party, for his vision for Canada politically and
economically. These questions are relevant, these questions are legitimate, and
one can only hope he rises to the occasion. The kind of third-rate parochial
smears than Milewski and Cochrane are pushing, however, deserve universal condemnation.<o:p></o:p></div>
Dock Curriehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09979072460617749796noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4063385487236063231.post-46786358202477792232017-10-27T01:04:00.000-07:002017-10-28T04:15:30.493-07:00There is No Going Back for Chrystia Freeland<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-cFT-gpRJ-bM/WfLnyQ-ZwhI/AAAAAAAAAr4/HWkMkJf8h6AR_pzKDdPrpy8xX1Wvs7W7gCLcBGAs/s1600/Freeland.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="320" data-original-width="580" height="320" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-cFT-gpRJ-bM/WfLnyQ-ZwhI/AAAAAAAAAr4/HWkMkJf8h6AR_pzKDdPrpy8xX1Wvs7W7gCLcBGAs/s640/Freeland.jpg" width="580" /></a></div>
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It’s become passe to note that Chrystia Freeland’s
grandfather was a Nazi. It’s even become passe to note that hers were not ‘sins
of the [grand]father’ but rather <a href="http://thepalladium.ca/canada-training-neo-nazis-ukraine/">current offences by playing both booster andapologist for fascists who wield power in Ukraine today.</a> The pretense, once
wildly pantomimed by Scott Gilmore, or Terry Glavin, or Justin Ling, that
Freeland is anything but her grandfather’s granddaughter has withered and died.
Now it is simply accepted, and ignored, in the media that Freeland openly
supports reactionary, xenophobic, and pro-US-Empire forces wherever and
whenever they are. But her latest gaffe cannot be ignored, it is too massive,
too beneath contempt, too glaringly at odds with her Liberal Government’s
platitudes about ‘truth’ and ‘reconciliation’ with First Nations peoples in
Canada.<o:p></o:p></div>
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At a ‘roundtable’ of Gold Company lobbyists, mouth-frothy
over their imperialist profiteering being curtailed, in an auditorium built on
the blood of oppressed peoples in the global south, that heaving bellend,
Chrystia Freeland, had the temerity to suggest that it was <a href="https://twitter.com/compartycanada/status/923754580642549761">‘funny’ to say thatCanada was an imperialist oppressor because Canada ‘was the colony.’</a> In other
words, Freeland is attempting to suggest that it is impossible that Canada be
party to, implicated in, and culpable for imperialist oppression, exploitation,
and primitive accumulation because once upon a time Canada was a colony of
Britain. Oh *dusts hands* well then, that settles that, doesn’t it? Here we
have the Foreign Affairs Minister of a Government which has made ‘truth’ and ‘reconciliation’
tweet-fodder for months, claiming that Canada is permanently exempt from the
category of ‘Empire’ and that it is absurd to suggest it. This is heinous, this
is foul.</div>
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Clearly this gaffe will garner little if any airtime on the
CBC or pagespace in the bourgeois rags like the Post or the Mail, but it
deserves to, clearly. This is a level of ignorance, cynicism, willful and
concerted historical myopia that would make Kellie Leitch blush. To imply
that Canada, at very least in the post-Dominion era, hasn’t been a willing and
avid sub-Imperialist crony, party to theft, deprivation, and domination, isn’t
just ridiculous, it’s loathesome.<o:p></o:p></div>
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This past month Venezuela held an election for regional
governors, and the results did not go the way reactionary cretins like Freeland
had hoped. This they took as an opportunity to heap scorn, bile, and falsehoods
upon the Maduro government, a cacophony of baseless accusations, with Freeland
feeling entitled to implicate her Government in her own personal descent into
reactionary paranoia. No opposition groups have offered up evidence for their
claims of the illegitimacy of the election, impartial and international election
monitors have said explicitly that there is none.<o:p></o:p></div>
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The Minister of Foreign Affairs has anointed herself a
knight in a farcical crusade on behalf of plutocrats, exploiters, cartels,
mining companies, their thugs and lackeys. This was never sustainable, but, before this, the
Trudeau Government could always sweep her less savory outbursts under the rug of
some contrived hypocrisy of ‘universal rights.’ Not this one, however. In her
comments today the Minister has crossed the Rubicon into the same space
occupied by Senator Lynn Beyak – an irretrievably, irrevocably racist, reactionary,
inaccurate conception of the recent past.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Every learned voice should heap calumny upon Freeland, and
all the jackals of the Trudeau Government, for not only their vulgar
falsehoods, but their absence of even the most rudimentary fidelity to the
gospel of ‘reconciliation’ from which they preach. Pious Pharisees
pontificating ahistorical fiction totally indiscernible from the most ardent
fascist. This is not a repudiation of contemporary liberalism, this is contemporary
liberalism.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Right now the Trudeau Liberals are reeling from the
all-too-deserved scrutiny on corporate vulture Bill Morneau and his
profiteering off elderly pensioners. Justice would dictate that he share the
frying pan with Chrystia Freeland, who has tipped her cards, fumbled her façade,
and openly opined one of the most ignorant and vile mystifications in Canadian
history. Freeland is a duplicitous, disingenuous, cowardly racist. How can Justin Trudeau possibly justify keeping her, given the glaring incongruity between his Government's rhetoric and the Minister's self-exculpatory, self-serving mystifications and lies about History?<o:p></o:p></div>
Dock Curriehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09979072460617749796noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4063385487236063231.post-73695086467360873082017-01-31T21:12:00.000-08:002017-01-31T21:26:07.949-08:00Either the Liberals Suspend the Safe Third Country Agreement, or They Are Complicit With Trump<div style="text-align: justify;">
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<a href="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-L97G5SHWJq8/WJFtLFS4hyI/AAAAAAAAAl4/og7A-D02csMqzHsqfmI77UtynYN4R2VHQCLcB/s1600/Jenny.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="325" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-L97G5SHWJq8/WJFtLFS4hyI/AAAAAAAAAl4/og7A-D02csMqzHsqfmI77UtynYN4R2VHQCLcB/s640/Jenny.jpg" width="578" /></a></div>
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<blockquote class="tr_bq">
"We can no longer trust that refugees in the United States will have access to a fair process. We must institute a process for rapid review and approval of refugee applications to Canada. Banning people because of their religion is fascist behavior. The NDP will say NO to these racist policies. The NDP calls for immediate action and for the Liberal government to stand up to the fascist, Donald Trump." <br />
<br />
- Thomas Mulcair, NDP Leader</blockquote>
</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
What the emergency session on refugees and the American Muslim Ban reveals is a deeply cynical Liberal government, obfuscating, resting on their laurels, and churning out vacuous self-congratulation, all while abandoning refugees when it is most important to stand up for them. The Liberal Government of Justin Trudeau is, apparently, content with tokenism, symbolic gestures, tweets, and their own odious self-satisfaction.<br />
<br />
The <a href="http://www.cic.gc.ca/english/department/laws-policy/menu-safethird.asp">Immigration and Refugee Protection Act (IRPA) requires</a> “the he continual review of all countries designated as safe third countries” and that “the conditions that led to the designation as a safe third country continue to be met.” The United States is no longer a safe country for refugees and asylum seekers, the conditions that led to it being designated as a safe country are not currently being met. The United States under Donald Trump, particularly with respect to his vile and racist Muslim Ban, does not “respect human rights” nor does it “offer a high degree of protection to asylum seekers.” The United States is not according fair and due process to refugees and asylum seekers, it is neither respecting human rights nor affording a high degree of protection to those who most need it, and it is not a Safe Third Country.<br />
<br />
If Justin Trudeau and his Liberal cronies, particularly immigration minister Ahmed Hussen, do not lift the cap on private sponsorship of refugees, streamline and accelerate refugee application processes, and, most importantly, suspend the Safe Third Country agreement – as the United States has violated its core precepts – then they are hypocrites and cowards. This abdication of the responsibility to uphold and champion human rights and immigration is loathesome and shameful, and the Liberal Government must act now to put their words into action or be forever labeled as liars and showboats. It is one thing for Trudeau to pat himself on the back at his dog and pony show 'townhalls,' it is another for him to mouth vacuous platitudes about vulnerable refugees and asylum seekers while simultaneously acting in a manner which betrays and harms them. His quietude, complacency, hypocrisy, and failure to stand up to Donald Trump will do immeasurable harm to Canada's reputation, and safety. <br />
<br />
Two hundred Canadian law professors have <a href="http://www.osgoode.yorku.ca/news/law-professors-call-suspension-safe-third-country-agreement/">written to the Immigration Minister</a> demanding an immediate suspension of the Safe Third Country agreement. This would allow these refugees and asylum seekers to apply to Canada should they be turned away from the United States during this extraordinary period of tumult and xenophobia. The British Columbia Civil Liberties Association, too, has <a href="http://globalnews.ca/news/3217301/canada-should-suspend-safe-third-country-agreement-with-the-u-s-says-b-c-group/?sf53672560=1">urged Trudeau and the Immigration Minister, Hussen</a>, to immediately suspend the agreement.<br />
<br />
Either the Liberal government of Justin Trudeau suspends the Safe Third Country agreement with the United States for its failure to meet the conditions that led to its designation, or Trudeau's government is complicit with and implicated in Donald Trump's odious and reactionary politics. As the NDP's Jenny Kwan asked in the House of Commons emergency session, "will we be bystanders, or will we stand up for those facing hate and descrimination?"</div>
Dock Curriehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09979072460617749796noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4063385487236063231.post-5168592335583332582016-12-06T13:28:00.000-08:002016-12-06T14:40:36.100-08:00#MyDemocracy is a Spectacle Which Functions on Spectatorship<blockquote class="tr_bq" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12pt;">“To start off we would
have to be agreed on what we call democracy. In Europe we have got used to
identifying democracy with the double system of representative institutions and
those of the free market. Today this idyll is a thing of the past: the free market
can be seen increasingly as a force of constriction that transforms
representative institutions into simple agents of its will and reduces the
freedom of choice of citizens to variations of the same fundamental logic. In
this situation, either we denounce the very idea of democracy as an illusion,
or we rethink completely what democracy, in the strong sense of the word,
means. Democracy is not, to begin with, a form of State. It is, in the first
place, the reality of the power of the people that can never coincide with the
form of a State. There will always be tension between democracy as the exercise
of a shared power of thinking and acting, and the State, whose very principle
is to appropriate this power. Obviously states justify this appropriation by citing
the complexity of the problems, the need to the long term, etc. But in truth,
politicians are a lot more subjected to the present. To recover the values of
democracy is, in first place, to reaffirm the existence of a capacity to judge
and decide, which is that of everyone, against this monopolisation.”</span> </blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq" style="text-align: justify;">
<a href="https://hiredknaves.wordpress.com/2012/01/21/jacques-ranciere-interview-democracy-is-not-t/">Jacques Ranciere, “To Speak of the Crisis of Society is to Blame its Victims” <i>Público</i>, January 15,2012. </a></blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">“The conversation with a
consumer must be quickly referred back to a ‘script’ with which the operator
will then read word for word. He can be penalized if he ‘goes off’ script, even
for offering an intelligent or empathetic response to the customer. Thus the ‘prompts,’
replies to questions, and other forms of civility are planned out prior to the
conversation. Dialogue is ‘triggered’ according to the customer’s attitude and
questions. Finally, the scripts are a way of ‘taylorizing’ conversation; the
latter is split into basic units and each task performed. Conversational
scripts are made up of pre-fabricated phrases thought up by those who do not
speak them and spoken by those whose self-interest is not to think.”</span> </blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Marie-Anne Dujarier in Maurizio
Lazzarato, <u>Signs and Machines: Capitalism and the Production of Subjectivity</u>
tr. Joshua David Jordan (Los Angeles: Semiotext[e], 2014), 116.</span></blockquote>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">It has been a string of
days this past week in which the Liberals have embarrassed themselves and been
the object of deserved widespread ridicule on social media, and today was, of
course, no exception. With the launch of the Liberals’ ‘mydemocracy.ca,’ much
attention has been paid to its being ridiculous, and it is, but it is important
to nonetheless not let its apparent triviality obscure its real importance. The
real importance isn’t the contents of an absurd pop-psych quiz, but that there
is an absurd pop-psych quiz at all, posted without reference to, and seemingly antithetical
to, the findings of the special committee on electoral reform. Forget that ‘MyDemocracy.ca’
is ridiculous, it is, more importantly, deeply offensive and politically
concerning. The antics of the Minister for Democratic Institutions over the
past days demonstrates a government not only virulently obfuscating and
sabotaging their signature campaign promise, but confessing to a fervent
antagonism to the findings of their own special committee on electoral reform, to
an impoverished and authoritarian understanding of political rule, and to a
sneering condescension towards participatory democratic engagement, public
involvement and intervention by the masses into political and economic affairs.
<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<a href="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-2yb4Uuj0Dh8/WEctAAd-kgI/AAAAAAAAAig/qm2giyqyvLUsBlr9Io6njGEjgkHd5lkBgCLcB/s1600/Crazy.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="300" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-2yb4Uuj0Dh8/WEctAAd-kgI/AAAAAAAAAig/qm2giyqyvLUsBlr9Io6njGEjgkHd5lkBgCLcB/s640/Crazy.jpg" width="578" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">The Liberals pop-psy
survey is at once propaganda, distraction, and spectacle. This bizarre widget
is comprised entirely out of a degraded facsimile of political participation.
It is an insult to the intelligence of democratic actors, and an affront to
democratic politics. Felix Guattari calls these kinds of so-called ‘surveys’ “institutional
simulacra,” [1] in that they are hypocritical or cynical projections of “homogenous
but empty sets” which miss “the heterogeneous assemblages that give real
consistency to the socius.” [2] But what is the subject position from whence this
strange exercise emanates? What is it and what does it want? In effect what the
Liberals actually want from this exercise of decision-based-evidence-making is
a fictitious public that demands a restricted window of political selection, in
which the Liberals are to be selected as though it were a brand, or a channel, and the
entire political and economic affairs be conducted by that brand, or channel,
without intervention from the public, for the entire intervening period. The
public that the Liberals wish to invent is the Republic of Spectators: the
public that renounces its claim to political and economic intervention in
public life to an agency of a fictitious political process characterized by
spectacle.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">The Liberals isolate and
construct such a fictitious public by limiting the possibility, intensity, and
length of political intervention of actual social forces, dissipating them into
meaningless recouperative exercises like ‘MyDemocracy.ca.’ MPs must do what
their party promised and they must do what their constituents want, but in the
Liberals’ poll these things are counterposed to one another. The poll’s basic
structure elides that it is only the bourgeois parties, such as the Liberals
and the Conservatives, for whom there is a contradiction between satisfying the
wishes of one’s constituency and fulfilling political promises. The Liberals
are not only attempting to extricate themselves from their campaign promises
but are attempting to invent a public which demands they betray their promises,
having realized that such an invented peoples is required for the abrogation of
their word. To the extent that no such public actually exists, they must rather
be invented in order that they be referred to in terms of political
representation. The Liberals demand spectatorship, and portray anything short
of spectatorship as a cumbersome hindrance, and argue that the burden of having
to deal with the intervention of social forces into political and economic life
somehow absolves the Liberals of responsibility for their failures. The
Liberals would prefer to have monological control over political and economic
function than to have to be beholden to democratic intervention; they habitually
present democratic engagement and civic participation as onerous and
complicated.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">The Liberals consistently
present a contradiction between party promises and constituent wishes as a
general feature of political parties, when this contradiction is in fact
particular to one type of political party, which represents itself as
representing all classes, when in reality it represents only one economic
class, i.e. bourgeois political parties. A contradiction between constituency
and party is only possible with a bourgeois party that is elected on the basis
of lies and which governs in the interests of exploitation. The Liberals’
fetishize the conception of a few large brands fraternizing with one another,
and exclude the more salient relationship between parliament and that in which
one will find a 'diversity of views,' i.e. the masses. Citizens have both a
right and a duty to participate in political life. These rights and duties
derive colaterally from the relationship of citizens with one another,
culminating in ongoing and concerted democratic participation. The Liberals
are, in effect, saying 'wouldn't it just be easier if you didn't ask any
questions and just let us orchestrate political and economic life without your
intervention?' What the Liberals want is to portray themselves as beholden to a
constituency which wants them to betray their promises and govern as they see
fit, whereas the reality is that the Liberals want to be durably elected by a
fictitious public which they themselves engineer. The Liberals, in other words,
prefer the electoral system that most prudently accommodates their wish to
periodically misrepresent themselves that they might systematically
misrepresent their 'constituents.'<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">It is imperative to
realize that the Liberals are not merely incompetent but are moreover
malicious. In a gongshow appearance on the CBC, parliamentary secretary to the
Minister of Democratic Institutions, Mark Holland, argued that this survey was
oriented not to engaged citizens, but rather to "rank and file canadians
who are aggregating Canadian values on this issue;” one would be hard pressed
to find a euphemism more technocratically mandarin than ‘rank and file
Canadians who are aggregating Canadian values.’ Their intention is not to glean data from this exercise, but to obscure data, to supplant political
engagement with spectacle. This whole ludicrous pop-quiz is a hamfisted distraction
from the recommendation that there be a referendum in which First Past the Post
is on the ballot against any system which meets the standard of the Gallagher
Index of proportionality within 5%. What the 'leading Qs' in the Liberals' '#MyDemocracy' lead to is an authoritarian plutocracy which lies to the masses
for a brief period of time. A contradiction between constituents and party
interests is particular and exclusive to bourgeois political parties, and in
this instance it is particular and exclusive to Justin Trudeau’s Liberals. Parliament
must be made to represent not merely a greater diversity of people but of economic
interests as well. The Liberals’ paean to 'Simplicity' is prelude to
exploitative managerialism and the meaningless selection of its brand. The
so-called ‘data’ generated by this cynical exercise in misuse of statistics is
not only useless, but moreover harmful, it is intended to sabotage and sideline
an ongoing parliamentary process in which 88% of participants in public
consultations supported proportional representation. ‘MyDemocracy.ca’ is an
instrument of class rule, and functions to stigmatize and pathologize one set of policy
inclinations and constrain and dissipate the expression of any other.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">[1] Felix Guattari, Lines of Flight: For Another World of Possibilities tr. Andrew Goffey (London: Bloomsbury, 2016), 47.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">[2] Ibid.</span></div>
Dock Curriehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09979072460617749796noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4063385487236063231.post-87255359722340055562016-12-02T13:16:00.002-08:002016-12-02T17:47:15.381-08:00‘It is the Common Opinion of the Dissenting Liberal Committee Minority that Goody Cullen is a Witch’<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12pt;">Nathan Cullen may have an unfortunate tendency to glean his foreign
policy from Netflix documentaries, but it is undeniable that he has done a
number on the Liberals in the special committee on electoral reform. On the
heels of cash-for-access, and then the hamfisted approval of Kinder Morgan,
today the Liberals lurch into the awkward position of hopping up on a soapbox
to rail against their signature electoral promise: electoral reform. Who put
the Liberals in this uncomfortable position? NDP MP Nathan Cullen did. </span><span style="background: white; font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12pt;">In
terms of sheer political maneuvering and fortitude he is easily among the NDP's
best, and has certainly displayed that acumen in his work on the special
committee on electoral reform. The Liberal apoplexy today, their blatant
hypocrisy, their stammering anti-intellectualism, all Cullen's meticulous
construction.</span><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12pt;"> This began back in June when, after an unrelenting dressing down
by Cullen, the Liberals acquiesced to a committee composition in which they did
not comprise the majority. The optics of an undemocratically constituted
committee on electoral reform, after all, were very bad, and the Liberals
caved. Today, however, was the coup de grâce. In returning an ostensible
green-light for a referendum on First Past the Post versus any system which
meets the standard on the Gallagher Index on proportionality, the agreed members
of the multi-party committee on electoral reform, and Cullen in particular,
have forced the Liberals hand; and the Liberals, in turn, have taken the
opportunity to become loathesome and ridiculous.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12pt;">The Liberals are doing what they always do, dissimulation and
distraction, the latest being Maryam Monsef attempting to fall on the grenade
and make the story about herself, and her personal insults and retractions of
said insults directed to the members of the special committee. But, make no
mistake, the story is rather, of course, that the Liberals are doing everything
in their power to scuttle electoral reform as such. That their efforts to do so
include insulting the members of the special committee as a cheap distraction
from the strategic blow that the committee has dealt to them is secondary.
Having been outmaneuvered at every turn, they have given up the ghost of trying
to appear the good guys, and are now simply spitting bile and vitrol in hopes
that it will overshadow it’s occasion.</span><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 13.5pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12pt;">The Liberals, having been the party of ‘sociology now,’ are now relying
upon base anti-intellectualism. Canadians don’t want electoral reform, we are
told, because look, here, in Maryam Monsef’s hands, a mathematical formula.
‘Isn’t it complicated?’ she asks, ‘inscrutable even?’ The Liberals are waving
pitchforks at statistical modeling, fearmongering about formulas. The purpose
of the Gallagher Index is to ensure that any system of elections conforms very
closely to proportionality. It is as though the Liberals had cracked open a
conventional radio and said ‘aren’t these electronics complex? Canadians don’t
want the songs and voices that this indecipherable hash of wires and speaker
cones offers.’ What the Liberals despise about the Gallagher Index is not its
indecipherable complexity, but rather that it sets a standard and benchmark for
proportionality that the Liberals cannot fudge, mystify, or obfuscate. Justin
Trudeau and Maryam Monsef desperately want an exit-strategy from their
electoral reform promises and their options were to either scuttle the entire
business, or move forward with a variant of electoral reform that is not in
fact proportional. The committee’s hard work has denied the Liberals the
opportunity to champion a self-serving and disproportionate electoral system
like ranked ballots, and so they have been left to flail about, smashing and
sabotaging what they can. </span><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 13.5pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12pt;">The Liberals are incensed because the committee actually did something
really smart. They were hoping that the committee would come back with one
system so that the Liberals could smother it with a pillow in the night.
Instead they returned with a standard, or benchmark, below which the Liberals'
preferred system[s] fall and before which they flunk. Its important that they
not let the story become 'Maryam Monsef was mean, but now she's apologized.'
The story is 'the committee has greenlit a referrendum with FPTP vs. any system
which meets the standard of the Gallagher Index (within 5% of absolute
proportionality).' The Liberals have been trapped and cornered by Cullen, the
rest of the special committee, and, most importantly, the Gallagher Index. They
hate it intensely because it precludes their preferred mystifications and
obfuscations, they hate that they are now stuck with a rubric from which they
cannot escape. What is insufferable, however, is the shock and disappointment
from Liberal voters. Of course the Liberals are unscrupulous, of course they
are disingenuous and hamfisted. These are not ‘new Liberals,’ they are the same
sorry, corrupt, and undemocratic technocrats that were evicted in 2003. The
Gallagher Index and its function is not, as Monsef and Trudeau would have it,
beyond the comprehension of the poor hinterland Canadian’s intellect; nor are
Monsef and Trudeau’s true motives in suggesting as much. Far from ‘not doing
the hard work,’ as Monsef alleged, the committee has made it ‘hard work’ for
the hackneyed and duplicitous Trudeau Liberals to wriggle out of their
signature campaign promise. </span><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 13.5pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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Dock Curriehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09979072460617749796noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4063385487236063231.post-16675856828314342472016-06-21T00:08:00.002-07:002016-06-21T01:34:22.132-07:00Heteronomy and Autonomy in Social Time<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">
</span><style type="text/css">p.sdfootnote { margin-left: 0.24in; text-indent: -0.24in; margin-bottom: 0in; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 100%; }p { margin-bottom: 0.1in; line-height: 120%; }a.sdfootnoteanc { font-size: 57%; }</style><br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"></span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"></span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">“It is obviously
the illusion of the historian – our illusion, necessary to all of
us – to measure eternity on the basis of his own life expectancy
and to consider that whatever does not change for three centuries is
'stable.' But change the scale of time, and the stars in the heaves
will step to a dizzy dance.”
</span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span>
</div>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">
</span>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Cornelius
Castoriadis, The Imaginary Institution of Society tr. Kathleen Blamey
(Malden: Polity, 1987), 186.</span></div>
</blockquote>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">
</span>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span>
</div>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">
</span>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Autonomy is the
opportunity for both polyrhythmia and arrythmia, concerted repetition
and novel creation, successes and failures, it has definite
historical and material antecedents, and accidents, the most glaring
of which is social dissociation and the dissolution of social
existence forms. The historical conditions of autonomy,
self-legislation, is an acceleration of social intercourse, but one
which inaugurates the alienated and mediated form of the contract, a
self-binding or subordination which becomes expressed a contradiction
within society. Trading cities were made great by their
indeterminacy, their aleatory flux or becoming; the modern
world-empires have, in their turn, made themselves great by
propagating their greatest cities, and thus extending the fields of
immanence of these cities, the spaces they share on the planes of
consistency that their cities connect to and relate to; a geometry of
the formations and diformities of social action and interaction
through time; a topography of the relative speeds and slownesses of
the various social formations and a microphysics of their attractions
or repulsions to one another. The object of consideration, then, is
the contrasting modes of temporality that the city and the hinterland
give rise to, i.e. the qualitative character of their respective
rhythms and the causal substance of their divergence and mutation.
Henri Lefebvre writes that cyclicality temporality “originates in
the cosmic, in nature: days, nights, seasons, the waves and tides of
the sea, monthly cycles, etc.,”<a class="sdfootnoteanc" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=4063385487236063231#sdfootnote1sym" name="sdfootnote1anc"><sup>1</sup></a>
whereas linear temporality stems from “social practice.”<a class="sdfootnoteanc" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=4063385487236063231#sdfootnote2sym" name="sdfootnote2anc"><sup>2</sup></a>
The city undoes the fabric of its surrounding hinterlands and
transforms the manner in which it relates to itself (the hinterland
comes to relate to itself through and by the city), the world-empires
who are beholden to their great cities even moreso, and thus the
object of consideration is also the structural character of that
which is not identical to itself, the non-identical, torsions or
contradictions within society. So, on the one hand there is cyclical,
formative, slow or frozen time of the hinterlands, and on the other
there are aleatory fluxes, or becomings, bound up with cities, their
indeterminacies and immanences, the world-formations that cities give
rise to. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Heteronomy is the
social fact of orders premised upon the concerted suppression and
abstention from thought, the atrophy of conscious life, the
capitulation to social existence forms in which conscious thought
figures seldom or never, with a low degree of scope or intensity.
Kant defines heteronomy as the condition under which the “the will
would not give itself the law but a foreign impulse would give the
law to it by means of the subject's nature, which is attuned to be
receptive to it.”<a class="sdfootnoteanc" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=4063385487236063231#sdfootnote3sym" name="sdfootnote3anc"><sup>3</sup></a>
Territory and territorial control gives rise to heteronomy, and the
forgetting of irreversible time, the erosion or subversion of this
control gives rise to both the inventions and accidents of
irreversible time. Heteronomy, autonomy, and accident, are therefore
three modes of subjectification, occuring under two modes of
temporality; the first, wherein the exterior milieu gives law to the
subject [subjectus], cyclical temporality; the second, wherein the
subject gives law to its exterior milieu [subjectum], irreversible
time; and the third, in which the exterior milieu fails to give law
to the subject, or the subject fails to give law to its exterior
milieu, and indeed both, also irreversible time. Autonomy and
accident straddle subjectum, as the properly Cartesian subject, and
the subjectus, as the properly Hobbsian man of State, they are the
concrete material circumstances which both Descartes and Hobbes
attempted to chart, but insofar as these concrete circumstances were
processes, their respective descriptions of subjectivity miss the
real agencies of subjectification (those processes which make the
subject supple to the State or isolate it from the State completely).
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Accident
historically represents the substrate of the intensification of
social intercourse and irreversible time, and invention, concerted
and societal autonomy, historically represents the exception, rather
than the rule. Social autonomy, the substantive proliferation of
autonomous thought and action, is precariously composed from the ebbs
and flows of eroded control, Empires crumble, cities fail, Autonomy
and accident are, in many ways, inextricable. Heteronomy and autonomy
concern the degree to which the law is imprinted on the material
substrate of history, and the extent to which this material substrate
is able to make this law, this imprint, function otherwise than it
was intended, to internalize law as opposed to control; accident
concerns the short-circuiting or manipulation of the former, but an
incapacity for the latter, becoming free from imprint and cyclical
time, but without law, and thus substantively unfree (i.e. becoming
dissociated). Kant writes that heternomy is essentially the causality
of a preceding state, or set of conditions, whereas autonomy is “the
faculty of beginning a state from itself, the causality of which does
not in turn stand under another cause determining it in time”<a class="sdfootnoteanc" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=4063385487236063231#sdfootnote4sym" name="sdfootnote4anc"><sup>4</sup></a>
insofar as “reason creates the idea of a spontaneity, which could
start to act from itself, without needing to be preceeded by any
other cause that in turn determines it to action according to the law
of causal connection.”<a class="sdfootnoteanc" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=4063385487236063231#sdfootnote5sym" name="sdfootnote5anc"><sup>5</sup></a>
In other words, autonomy concerns the capacity for instituting
conditions, but this generative effect is determined after the fact,
where the fact is the receptivity or resistance of masses to the
conditions of external necessity. Deleuze and Guattari write that the
binding contract “appears as the proceeding of subjectification,
the outcome of which is subjection,”<a class="sdfootnoteanc" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=4063385487236063231#sdfootnote6sym" name="sdfootnote6anc"><sup>6</sup></a>
it is conditioned by a political distribution which exceeds it and
apportions its relative allotments. Thus, Kant argues, practical
freedom is “the real moment”<a class="sdfootnoteanc" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=4063385487236063231#sdfootnote7sym" name="sdfootnote7anc"><sup>7</sup></a>
of the difficulties encountered by the transcendental idea of
freedom, and that, thus, “freedom in the practical sense is the
independence of the power of choice from necessitation by impulses of
sensibility.”<a class="sdfootnoteanc" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=4063385487236063231#sdfootnote8sym" name="sdfootnote8anc"><sup>8</sup></a>
The disruption, erosion, and subversion of heteronomy provides the
historical conditions for the emergence of autonomy, but it neither
guarantees it nor necessitates it; its collapse is a necessary but
not a sufficient condition for the social proliferation of autonomy.
Castoriadis writes that the autonomy of society requires the
“explicit recognition that the institution of society is
self-institution.”<a class="sdfootnoteanc" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=4063385487236063231#sdfootnote9sym" name="sdfootnote9anc"><sup>9</sup></a>
Heteronomy is the obfuscation of this social fact, which transmutes
obedience to the pathological character of frozen time into a present
social and political framework, and society institutes itself as
heteronomic, as refusing the obligations of action and intercourse
that such a recognition would entail.
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Heteronomy is
distinguished from Autonomy, its subfunctions, and accident, by its
entropy, its tendency to uniformal, uniaccentual, univocality, the
repetition of heard phrases which come to appear obligatory in this
or that concrete situation; heteronomy lacks dissociation by virtue
of its asociality, it's incredibly asphyxiating and isolate
conditions of social intercourse. Homogenous magnitudes under an
unlimited governmental power lack abortive or diformed thought
insofar as their conditions of production do not engender it, “much
as a bag with potatoes constitutes a potato-bag.”<a class="sdfootnoteanc" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=4063385487236063231#sdfootnote10sym" name="sdfootnote10anc"><sup>10</sup></a></span>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Autonomy is distinct
from physis, and includes Poïesis among its subfunctions, it is not
becoming but rather command over the internal consistency of
becoming, a gap between dominated by necessity and a formal command
over that necessity; Kant calls this 'transcendence.' Indeed, he
writes, “a principle that takes away these limits, which indeed
bids us to overstep them, is called transcendent.”<a class="sdfootnoteanc" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=4063385487236063231#sdfootnote11sym" name="sdfootnote11anc"><sup>11</sup></a>
Autonomy is a transcendence of heteronomy and accident, it is
transcendental insofar as its regulative ideal is not empirically
constrained; heteronomy is merely physical insofar as it replicates
the process itself, it generates no emergent properties. Lest one
imagine that this need necessitate the introduction of spurious
metaphysics, the object of consideration is rather bodies of men and
women who either are or are not, were or were not, capable of taking
the axioms and principles of class conscious thought into their own
hands and engineering their own epochs. The difference between
autonomy and accident is whether the system becomes constructive and
expressive, whether more subjects become autonomous, or whether it
merely inaugurates a contrasting and oppositional heteronomy and thus
social degeneration; transcendence is the autonomy of the accident,
and practical freedom is its concrete manifestation. This
transcendence and practical freedom, however, is my no means assured,
and is rather the consequence of a particular split between
philosophical or conceptual consciousness on the one hand, and
material incoherence, chaos, on the other.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">In Kojin Karatani's
schema of world-systems analysis, the modes of exchange analytic, all
material consequences of theological or emotional social connection
are indexed under mode of exchange D, i.e. transcendence, the form of
exchange in which aspects of each of the other forms of exchange
(reciprocal, territorial, and commodity) return in a different and
uncanny form. Karatani analyzes the effect of mode of exchange D
throughout a very large portion of history, and thus the category
remains necessarily general. Karatani indicates that it was Proudhon
who divorced mode of exchange D from its theological moorings,
premising it rather on the actual concrete development of industrial
capitalism, but it is surprising that he missed the opportunity to
relate the distinctions of the kinds of actions and utterances one
encounters in mode of exchange D back to Immanuel Kant, given
Karatani's otherwise Kantian commitments. Mode of exchange D ought to
be conceived of as branching into two distinct historical phenomena,
which oftentimes overlap geographically and chronologically,
irrational and rational modes of exchange D, which is autonomic. Note
that theology may be of a rational and autonomous bent, as it was for
Feuerbach, just as atheism may be of a heteronomous and irrational
bent, as it was for Destutt de Tracy. What determines the rationality
or irrationality of a mode of consciousness in a historical
circumstance is not its internal consistency, which considered in the
abstract would appear wild and irrational anyways, but rather its
correspondence between the elements of a situation, that is, how it
transcends a concrete situation that is itself irrational. What
provides the opportunity for distinguishing historically between the
two forms of mode of exchange D are historically irrational
situations, times of great chaos and disorder.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Norman Cohn, writing
of the late Middle-Ages, notes that “the social situations in which
outbreaks of revolutionary millenarianism occurred were in fact
remarkably uniform,” that “areas in which the age-old prophecies
about the Last Days took on a new, revolutionary meaning and a new,
explosive force were the areas which were becoming seriously
over-populated and were involved in a process of rapid economic and
social change.”<a class="sdfootnoteanc" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=4063385487236063231#sdfootnote12sym" name="sdfootnote12anc"><sup>12</sup></a>
In situations in which “traditional social bonds were being
weakened or shattered and the gap between rich and poor was becoming
a chasm. . . a collective sense of impotence and anxiety and envy
suddenly discharged itself into a frantic urge to smite the ungodly –
and by doing so bring into being, out of suffering inflicted and
suffering endured, that final Kingdom where the Saints, clustered
around the great sheltering figure of their Messiah, were to enjoy
ease and riches, security and power for all eternity.”<a class="sdfootnoteanc" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=4063385487236063231#sdfootnote13sym" name="sdfootnote13anc"><sup>13</sup></a>
In other words, the development of city-states is characterized by a
militant eschatology whose content is not predetermined but is rather
constructed, ad hoc, in an irrational or rational manner. Law,
imprint, is a function of territorial accretion, whereas this
functioning otherwise is extra-territorial. Virilio suggests that
when Paris police lieutenant Gabriel Nicolas de La Reynie set about
lighting the streets of paris in the mid seventeenth century, it
market the invention of both a “transterritoriality of nighttime”<a class="sdfootnoteanc" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=4063385487236063231#sdfootnote14sym" name="sdfootnote14anc"><sup>14</sup></a>
and an “extraterritorialitity of nightlife.”<a class="sdfootnoteanc" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=4063385487236063231#sdfootnote15sym" name="sdfootnote15anc"><sup>15</sup></a>
The creation of new existential territorialities gives rise to new
material social existence forms and thus the mutation of already
existent forms, i.e. “the perverted peasant.”<a class="sdfootnoteanc" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=4063385487236063231#sdfootnote16sym" name="sdfootnote16anc"><sup>16</sup></a>
Acceleration exhausts expanse, thus making necessary the invention of
new territorialities, if not new literal territories, as in the
creation of artificial islands. The city is always the space of the
extra-territorial functioning otherwise, insofar as the
intensification of social intercourse not only gives law to its
hinterland, but changes its function.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Autonomy and
accident essentially depend upon the development and extension of the
forces of production and exchange in society, as heteronomy is
dependent upon their retardation, on their non-development. Kinetic
situations become divorced from their causal antecedents, and their
separation is the premise of their mutual accident, their breakdowns
happen within the distance between emission and reception, i.e.
bodies at speed. Autonomy is not merely opposed to heteronomy, it
represents the emergent properties and capacities of heteronomous
masses, which exceed and become alien to heteronomic and static
institutions. Autonomy is transcelerative, it is for motion and
diformity, mutation, whereas heteronomy is entropic; heteronomic
reference is acquiescent, receptive, complaisant, whereas autonomous
reference is violent, generative, idiosyncratic. When Nicole Oresme
writes that “every velocity is capable of being increased in
intensity and decreased in intensity;”<a class="sdfootnoteanc" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=4063385487236063231#sdfootnote17sym" name="sdfootnote17anc"><sup>17</sup></a>
that “continuous increase in intensity is called acceleration,”
which may happen more or less slowly, such that “it sometimes
happens that velocity is increasing and acceleration is decreasing,”<a class="sdfootnoteanc" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=4063385487236063231#sdfootnote18sym" name="sdfootnote18anc"><sup>18</sup></a>
what he captures is the need to describe conditions as processes,
rather than as static images of relation, these relations mutate.
Cyclical time is eroded by the function of Commodity-Exchange, the
consequence of which is the irreversible time of Commodity-Exchange,
the aporia is that Commodity-Exchange is as corrosive to heteronomy
as autonomy, such that they become physically counterposed in torsion
in the world-economy, rather than the one succeeding from and
historically triumphing over the other. Commodity-Exchange makes
heteronomy and autonomy exist structurally in irrational torsion with
one another in the metastable pattern of the heteronomous order and
the autonomous and accidental historical classes.
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Just before the
manuscript breaks off in chapter fifty-two of Capital volume three,
Marx writes that those who own merely their own labour, those who own
capital, and those who own land, constitute “the three great
classes of modern society based on the capitalist mode of
production.”<a class="sdfootnoteanc" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=4063385487236063231#sdfootnote19sym" name="sdfootnote19anc"><sup>19</sup></a>
It is a pity, however, that he only had the opportunity to introduce
the problem of the variation of classes, as the inquiry leads back to
the torsion or tension between the capitalist modes of production and
exchange and their material substrate, “the independent divorce of
all landed property from capital and labour, or the transformation of
all landed property into the form of landed property corresponding to
the capitalist mode of production.”<a class="sdfootnoteanc" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=4063385487236063231#sdfootnote20sym" name="sdfootnote20anc"><sup>20</sup></a>
Irreversible time and its antecedents, its acceleration of social
intercourse, is inserted into the hinterlands in the form of a total
asynchrony, a disassociative temporality which is the obverse of pure
heteronomic value, and thus the need to distinguish between the
threefold identification of economic classes, and the origins of two
of these classes from a process which the third undergoes. This third
'class,' the land-owners, function on the basis of stratification and
their material force in the world comes to be expressed as the
capacity to extort ground-rent, so they have an economic function,
but not one which stems from the process which inaugurates the
economic as a separate domain. The form and content of territorial
control is economically implicated, but perhaps not in such a way as
to imply a symmetry between each of the classes, so-called. Rather,
territorial control is itself transformed, in part, to police and
enforce the speeds and rhythms set by the cities.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Castoriadis argues,
rather, that “what is given in and through history is not the
determined sequence of the determined but the emergence of radical
otherness, immanent creation, non-trivial novelty,”<a class="sdfootnoteanc" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=4063385487236063231#sdfootnote21sym" name="sdfootnote21anc"><sup>21</sup></a>
and that “it is only on the basis of this radical otherness and
creation that we can truly think of temporality and time, the
excellent and eminent effective actuality of which we find in
history.”<a class="sdfootnoteanc" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=4063385487236063231#sdfootnote22sym" name="sdfootnote22anc"><sup>22</sup></a>
The dominant perception of temporality and causality is socially
contingent, a product of its particular society which perceives
itself as culminate and placed, predictably, at the end of the causal
chain, whereas History recognizes no such culmination and completion,
no such societal narcissism. Temporality is thus bifurcated between a
nihilism, an “essential intemporality of a relation of order,”<a class="sdfootnoteanc" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=4063385487236063231#sdfootnote23sym" name="sdfootnote23anc"><sup>23</sup></a>
on the one hand, and “the very manifestation of the fact that
something other than what exists is bringing itself into being,”<a class="sdfootnoteanc" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=4063385487236063231#sdfootnote24sym" name="sdfootnote24anc"><sup>24</sup></a>
on the other. Heteronomic reference rejects becoming, genesis,
mutation, insofar as it designates its own particular historical
temporality as closed, it is intempestive, resistant to irreversible
time.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">“Time can exist
only if there is an emergence of what is other, of what is in no way
given with what is, what does not go together with it. Time is the
emergence of other figures. The points of a line are not other, they
are different by means of what they are not – their place.”
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<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Cornelius
Castoriadis, The Imaginary Institution of Society tr. Kathleen Blamey
(Malden: Polity, 1987), 193.
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Castoriadis argues
that heteronomy constitutes “the covering over of otherness, the
denial of time, society's ignorance of its own social-historical
being in so far as these are grounded in the very institution of
society such as we know it, namely, such as it has up to now
instituted itself.”<a class="sdfootnoteanc" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=4063385487236063231#sdfootnote25sym" name="sdfootnote25anc"><sup>25</sup></a>
Heteronomy is the social alienation of concrete historical time with
respect to its own development, the obscure remainder of “the
refusal to see that it institutes itself.”<a class="sdfootnoteanc" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=4063385487236063231#sdfootnote26sym" name="sdfootnote26anc"><sup>26</sup></a>
He writes that the maintenance and reproduction of heteronomy relies
upon a social representation of “an extra-social origin of the
institution of society (an origin ascribed to supernatural beings,
God, nature, reason, necessity, the laws of history or the being-thus
of Being).”<a class="sdfootnoteanc" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=4063385487236063231#sdfootnote27sym" name="sdfootnote27anc"><sup>27</sup></a>
The character and contour of society is not the product of immanent
social relation, according to this precept, but is rather an
unapproachable given-in-advance, the organization handed down from
above, the past, social superiors, etc. it is the ideology of the
causal constitution of non-society, the rationalization of the
suppression of the fact of the immanent, immediate, and continual
re-institution of the forms of relations it prescribes. Insofar as it
treats its own emergence at all it is “situated on a ground where
the radical imaginary as social-historical and as radical
imagination, indetermination as creation, temporality as essential
self-alteration are excluded.”<a class="sdfootnoteanc" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=4063385487236063231#sdfootnote28sym" name="sdfootnote28anc"><sup>28</sup></a></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span>
</div>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">
</span>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Though control over
social temporality is inextricably bound up with territoriality, the
fixing of time is nonetheless profoundly implicated in ideology, and
the conditions and characteristics of temporality are an object of
class struggle. Asocial temporalies are a consequence of
Commodity-Exchange and irreversible time, and autonomy is the
transcendence of this asocial or anti-social character of these
temporalities. Such a transcendence would entail an associative
elaboration of the quality of social time and a science attendant to
the various ideological conceptions of social life of the contending
economic classes. The irreversible time of the owning class is one
which inaugurates a regime of naturalized accident, whereas the
irreversible time of the class who have only their physical labouring
power to sell, the workers, denatures this accidental time, exposing
its historical contingency. The irreversible time of the owners is
divided between a monorhythm and an arrhythmia, the irreversible time
of the proletariat is polyrhythmic and polysynchronous, the former is
policed time, and sociality is stratified between compliant
living-labour and non-compliant living-labour, whereas the latter is
stratified between socially necessary labour and free time as the
development of the social organism resulting from the unfettered
development of the means of production and exchange. Speed both
liberates law from its terrestrial accretion, while the processes
that allow for this liberation render law impossible for a different
reason, the distance between the engineering of a material function
and its concrete existence. Castoriadis writes that heteronomy, or
“inherited thought,”<a class="sdfootnoteanc" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=4063385487236063231#sdfootnote29sym" name="sdfootnote29anc"><sup>29</sup></a>
can only perceive causality in virtue of the ensemble that it itself
designates, or, in other words, “it can think of succession only
from the point of view of identity.”<a class="sdfootnoteanc" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=4063385487236063231#sdfootnote30sym" name="sdfootnote30anc"><sup>30</sup></a>
The succession is perceived in virtue of its culmination, and in
spite of its process, and thus relies on the apriori acquiescence to
its own terms of reference and thus “the conclusion is given
together with the premises.”<a class="sdfootnoteanc" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=4063385487236063231#sdfootnote31sym" name="sdfootnote31anc"><sup>31</sup></a>
And yet, as Cohn suggests, the rapidly industrializing urban centers
of the Renaissance were characterized by “a state of chronic
insecurity,”<a class="sdfootnoteanc" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=4063385487236063231#sdfootnote32sym" name="sdfootnote32anc"><sup>32</sup></a>
and, indeed, this condition is the basis of the mixed semiotic of
Commodity-Exchange, the proliferation of precarious, marginal, and
deterritorialized social existence forms.
</span></div>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">
</span>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span>
</div>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">
</span>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Heteronomy and
autonomy are not counterposed as equivalent political forms, but are
rather asymmetrical to one another, the one constitutes a defense of
the ruling class materially and ideologically, whereas the other
stands for its thoroughgoing decomposition; counterrevolution is the
perpetual attempt to reinstitute heteronomy, uniaccentual standard,
and cyclicality on the part of the territorialized stratas. The
owners of the means of production and exchange becoming a ruling
strata whose interests lay with counterrevolution, heternomy,
uniaccentual standard, and cyclicality, is the historical accident of
autonomy. Thus the autonomy of one economic class came to manufacture
the heteronomy of the other: the ideology of the owning class, in
1848, became politically right wing, it announced that it's intention
was to preserve the ruling order insofar as it had become the ruling
class.
</span></div>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">
</span>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span>
</div>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">
</span>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">The formulations of
heteronomy and autonomy put forward by Kant and Castoriadis,
respectively, differ in their figuration of the antecedent causes of
both, as for Kant they represent merely self-structurations, whereas
for Castoriadis they represent societal structurations. This is why
Castoriadis might consider the formal content of Kant's autonomy to
be heteronomous, that is, beholden to a particular self-legislation
that is partial, contingent, intent on closure. It is not enough to
distinguish between personal and societal self-legislation, but
rather, in order to clarify the specific sociological character of
populations which are practically free in the terms that Kant
enumerates, Castoriadis's formulations are necessary. The frozen and
cyclical temporality of the heteronomous terrain is not
self-legislated away, but done away with by an accretion or
agglomeration of self-legislations, which together may comprise and
autonomous society, or may simply result in monstrous accidents of
both heteronomy and the attempt to inaugurate autonomy. Personal or
individual autonomy of the kind that Kant gestures to is a certainty
in the context of the erosion of a monotemporal scene, but an
autonomous society obviously isn't, and therefore requires a
different ontological criteria for assessing the self-legislative.
Kant's is a moral and universal self-legislation, the coordination
of, and self-subordination to, a system of self-legislation, whereas,
for Castoriadis, self-legislation is a particular event, a
congregation, a space, a coalescence of actors, whose autonomy is
fundamentally and inextricably social. The necessarily interrelated
and public character of Castoriadis's conception of an autonomous
society is one in which law emerges from social intercourse itself,
whereas for Kant this would be an unacceptable concession to sensual
and empirical experience.</span></div>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">
</span>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span>
</div>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">
</span>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Social time,
polyrythmic and autonomous time, is that temporality which is lived
by a self-legislating and heterogeneous masses, usually in the
context of the emergent social existence forms, transterritorialities
and transtemporalities, of the city. Accidental time, disjunctive,
arythmic, desynchonized and chaotic time is the abortive temporality
of the social and political contradicitons of the city, its classes
and the torsions they give rise to. Heteronomy is unitemporal,
monorhythmic, asynchonized and ahistorical, and emerges politically
from the social relations which obtain outside of the city and its
heterogenous social existence forms, most especially from the
hinterland, or what becomes designated as hinterland as a consequence
of the social microphysics of its relation to nodal sites of social
intercourse, i.e. what accelerative forms transform into their
hinterlands. The evacuation of heteronomy from a city's hinterland is
its invention as hinterland, just as the construction of autonomy is
the transcendence of its accident, or empirical circumstances.
</span></div>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">
</span>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span>
</div>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">
</span>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span>
</div>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">
</span>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span>
</div>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">
</span>
<br />
<div id="sdfootnote1" style="text-align: justify;">
<div class="sdfootnote" style="margin-left: 0in; text-indent: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><a class="sdfootnotesym" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=4063385487236063231#sdfootnote1anc" name="sdfootnote1sym">1</a>
Henri Lefebvre, Rhythmanalysis tr. Stuart Elden and Gerald Moore
(London: Continuum, 2004), 8.</span></div>
</div>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">
</span>
<br />
<div id="sdfootnote2" style="text-align: justify;">
<div class="sdfootnote" style="margin-left: 0in; text-indent: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><a class="sdfootnotesym" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=4063385487236063231#sdfootnote2anc" name="sdfootnote2sym">2</a>
Ibid.</span></div>
</div>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">
</span>
<br />
<div id="sdfootnote3" style="text-align: justify;">
<div class="sdfootnote" style="margin-left: 0in; text-indent: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><a class="sdfootnotesym" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=4063385487236063231#sdfootnote3anc" name="sdfootnote3sym">3</a>
Immanuel Kant, Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals tr. Mary
Gregor (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), 50.</span></div>
</div>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">
</span>
<br />
<div id="sdfootnote4" style="text-align: justify;">
<div class="sdfootnote" style="margin-left: 0in; text-indent: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><a class="sdfootnotesym" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=4063385487236063231#sdfootnote4anc" name="sdfootnote4sym">4</a>
Kant, Critique of Pure Reason tr. Paul Guyer and Allen Wood
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), 533.</span></div>
</div>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">
</span>
<br />
<div id="sdfootnote5" style="text-align: justify;">
<div class="sdfootnote" style="margin-left: 0in; text-indent: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><a class="sdfootnotesym" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=4063385487236063231#sdfootnote5anc" name="sdfootnote5sym">5</a>
Ibid.</span></div>
</div>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">
</span>
<br />
<div id="sdfootnote6" style="text-align: justify;">
<div class="sdfootnote" style="margin-left: 0in; text-indent: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><a class="sdfootnotesym" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=4063385487236063231#sdfootnote6anc" name="sdfootnote6sym">6</a>
Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari, Capitalism and Schizophrenia: A
Thousand Plateaus tr. Brian Massumi (Minneapolis: University of
Minnesota Press, 1987), 460.</span></div>
</div>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">
</span>
<br />
<div id="sdfootnote7" style="text-align: justify;">
<div class="sdfootnote" style="margin-left: 0in; text-indent: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><a class="sdfootnotesym" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=4063385487236063231#sdfootnote7anc" name="sdfootnote7sym">7</a>
Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, 533.</span></div>
</div>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">
</span>
<br />
<div id="sdfootnote8" style="text-align: justify;">
<div class="sdfootnote" style="margin-left: 0in; text-indent: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><a class="sdfootnotesym" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=4063385487236063231#sdfootnote8anc" name="sdfootnote8sym">8</a>
Ibid.</span></div>
</div>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">
</span>
<br />
<div id="sdfootnote9" style="text-align: justify;">
<div class="sdfootnote" style="margin-left: 0in; text-indent: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><a class="sdfootnotesym" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=4063385487236063231#sdfootnote9anc" name="sdfootnote9sym">9</a>
Cornelius Castoriadis, World in Fragments: Writings on Politics,
Society, Psychoanalysis, and the Imagination tr. David Ames Curtis
(Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1997), 329.</span></div>
</div>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">
</span>
<br />
<div id="sdfootnote10" style="text-align: justify;">
<div class="sdfootnote" style="margin-left: 0in; text-indent: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><a class="sdfootnotesym" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=4063385487236063231#sdfootnote10anc" name="sdfootnote10sym">10</a>
Karl Marx, The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte (New York:
Cosimo, 2008), 84.</span></div>
</div>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">
</span>
<br />
<div id="sdfootnote11" style="text-align: justify;">
<div class="sdfootnote" style="margin-left: 0in; text-indent: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><a class="sdfootnotesym" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=4063385487236063231#sdfootnote11anc" name="sdfootnote11sym">11</a>
Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, 386.</span></div>
</div>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">
</span>
<br />
<div id="sdfootnote12" style="text-align: justify;">
<div class="sdfootnote" style="margin-left: 0in; text-indent: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><a class="sdfootnotesym" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=4063385487236063231#sdfootnote12anc" name="sdfootnote12sym">12</a>
Nicholas Cohn, The Pursuit of the Millennium: Revolutionary
Millenarians and Mystical Anarchists of the Middle Ages (London:
Pimlico, 2004), 53.</span></div>
</div>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">
</span>
<br />
<div id="sdfootnote13" style="text-align: justify;">
<div class="sdfootnote" style="margin-left: 0in; text-indent: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><a class="sdfootnotesym" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=4063385487236063231#sdfootnote13anc" name="sdfootnote13sym">13</a>
Ibid, 60.</span></div>
</div>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">
</span>
<br />
<div id="sdfootnote14" style="text-align: justify;">
<div class="sdfootnote" style="margin-left: 0in; text-indent: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><a class="sdfootnotesym" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=4063385487236063231#sdfootnote14anc" name="sdfootnote14sym">14</a>
Paul Virilio, A Landscape of Events tr. Julie Rose (Cambridge: MIT
Press, 2000), 3.</span></div>
</div>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">
</span>
<br />
<div id="sdfootnote15" style="text-align: justify;">
<div class="sdfootnote" style="margin-left: 0in; text-indent: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><a class="sdfootnotesym" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=4063385487236063231#sdfootnote15anc" name="sdfootnote15sym">15</a>
Ibid, 2.</span></div>
</div>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">
</span>
<br />
<div id="sdfootnote16" style="text-align: justify;">
<div class="sdfootnote" style="margin-left: 0in; text-indent: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><a class="sdfootnotesym" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=4063385487236063231#sdfootnote16anc" name="sdfootnote16sym">16</a>
Ibid.</span></div>
</div>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">
</span>
<br />
<div id="sdfootnote17" style="text-align: justify;">
<div class="sdfootnote" style="margin-left: 0in; text-indent: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><a class="sdfootnotesym" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=4063385487236063231#sdfootnote17anc" name="sdfootnote17sym">17</a>
Nicole Oresme, The Configurations of Qualities and Motions tr.
Marshall Clagett (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1968),
283.</span></div>
</div>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">
</span>
<br />
<div id="sdfootnote18" style="text-align: justify;">
<div class="sdfootnote" style="margin-left: 0in; text-indent: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><a class="sdfootnotesym" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=4063385487236063231#sdfootnote18anc" name="sdfootnote18sym">18</a>
Ibid.</span></div>
</div>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">
</span>
<br />
<div id="sdfootnote19" style="text-align: justify;">
<div class="sdfootnote" style="margin-left: 0in; text-indent: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><a class="sdfootnotesym" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=4063385487236063231#sdfootnote19anc" name="sdfootnote19sym">19</a>
Marx, Capital: A Critique of Political Economy Volume III tr. David
Fernbach (London: Penguin, 1991), 1025.</span></div>
</div>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">
</span>
<br />
<div id="sdfootnote20" style="text-align: justify;">
<div class="sdfootnote" style="margin-left: 0in; text-indent: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><a class="sdfootnotesym" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=4063385487236063231#sdfootnote20anc" name="sdfootnote20sym">20</a>
Ibid.</span></div>
</div>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">
</span>
<br />
<div id="sdfootnote21" style="text-align: justify;">
<div class="sdfootnote" style="margin-left: 0in; text-indent: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><a class="sdfootnotesym" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=4063385487236063231#sdfootnote21anc" name="sdfootnote21sym">21</a>
Cornelius Castoriadis, The Imaginary Institution of Society tr.
Kathleen Blamey (Malden: Polity, 1987), 185.</span></div>
</div>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">
</span>
<br />
<div id="sdfootnote22" style="text-align: justify;">
<div class="sdfootnote" style="margin-left: 0in; text-indent: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><a class="sdfootnotesym" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=4063385487236063231#sdfootnote22anc" name="sdfootnote22sym">22</a>
Ibid.</span></div>
</div>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">
</span>
<br />
<div id="sdfootnote23" style="text-align: justify;">
<div class="sdfootnote" style="margin-left: 0in; text-indent: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><a class="sdfootnotesym" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=4063385487236063231#sdfootnote23anc" name="sdfootnote23sym">23</a>
Ibid.</span></div>
</div>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">
</span>
<br />
<div id="sdfootnote24" style="text-align: justify;">
<div class="sdfootnote" style="margin-left: 0in; text-indent: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><a class="sdfootnotesym" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=4063385487236063231#sdfootnote24anc" name="sdfootnote24sym">24</a>
Ibid.</span></div>
</div>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">
</span>
<br />
<div id="sdfootnote25" style="text-align: justify;">
<div class="sdfootnote" style="margin-left: 0in; text-indent: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><a class="sdfootnotesym" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=4063385487236063231#sdfootnote25anc" name="sdfootnote25sym">25</a>
Ibid, 214.</span></div>
</div>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">
</span>
<br />
<div id="sdfootnote26" style="text-align: justify;">
<div class="sdfootnote" style="margin-left: 0in; text-indent: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><a class="sdfootnotesym" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=4063385487236063231#sdfootnote26anc" name="sdfootnote26sym">26</a>
Ibid.</span></div>
</div>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">
</span>
<br />
<div id="sdfootnote27" style="text-align: justify;">
<div class="sdfootnote" style="margin-left: 0in; text-indent: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><a class="sdfootnotesym" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=4063385487236063231#sdfootnote27anc" name="sdfootnote27sym">27</a>
Ibid, 373.</span></div>
</div>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">
</span>
<br />
<div id="sdfootnote28" style="text-align: justify;">
<div class="sdfootnote" style="margin-left: 0in; text-indent: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><a class="sdfootnotesym" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=4063385487236063231#sdfootnote28anc" name="sdfootnote28sym">28</a>
Ibid.</span></div>
</div>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">
</span>
<br />
<div id="sdfootnote29" style="text-align: justify;">
<div class="sdfootnote" style="margin-left: 0in; text-indent: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><a class="sdfootnotesym" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=4063385487236063231#sdfootnote29anc" name="sdfootnote29sym">29</a>
Ibid, 183.</span></div>
</div>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">
</span>
<br />
<div id="sdfootnote30" style="text-align: justify;">
<div class="sdfootnote" style="margin-left: 0in; text-indent: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><a class="sdfootnotesym" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=4063385487236063231#sdfootnote30anc" name="sdfootnote30sym">30</a>
Ibid.</span></div>
</div>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">
</span>
<br />
<div id="sdfootnote31" style="text-align: justify;">
<div class="sdfootnote" style="margin-left: 0in; text-indent: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><a class="sdfootnotesym" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=4063385487236063231#sdfootnote31anc" name="sdfootnote31sym">31</a>
Ibid.</span></div>
</div>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">
</span>
<br />
<div id="sdfootnote32" style="text-align: justify;">
<div class="sdfootnote" style="margin-left: 0in; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><a class="sdfootnotesym" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=4063385487236063231#sdfootnote32anc" name="sdfootnote32sym">32</a>
Cohn, The Pursuit of the Millennium, 58.</span></div>
</div>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">
</span>Dock Curriehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09979072460617749796noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4063385487236063231.post-35585540277562844442016-06-09T22:44:00.000-07:002016-06-10T14:34:08.129-07:00The Semiotic Function of Exchange in World-Economy<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">
</span><style type="text/css">p.sdfootnote { margin-left: 0.24in; text-indent: -0.24in; margin-bottom: 0in; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 100%; }p { margin-bottom: 0.1in; line-height: 120%; }a.sdfootnoteanc { font-size: 57%; }</style><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">
</span>
<br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">
</span>
<br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><a href="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-qQBMxOsuXw8/V1p4_NNCCxI/AAAAAAAAAbY/vgT9NhPk8Hs9lhfrVFr_w9CWMy26SP71gCLcB/s1600/Courbet_LAtelier_du_peintre.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="340" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-qQBMxOsuXw8/V1p4_NNCCxI/AAAAAAAAAbY/vgT9NhPk8Hs9lhfrVFr_w9CWMy26SP71gCLcB/s640/Courbet_LAtelier_du_peintre.jpg" width="578" /></a> </span><br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">“The exchange of
products springs up at the points where different families, tribes or
communities come into contact; for at the dawn of civilization it is
not private individuals but families, tribes, etc. that meet on an
independent footing. Different communities find different means of
production and different means of subsistence in their natural
environment. Hence their modes of production and living, as well as
their products, are different. It is this spontaneously developed
difference which, when different communities come into contact, calls
forth the mutual exchange of products and the consequent gradual
conversion of those products into commodities.”
</span></div>
</blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">
</span>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span>
</div>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">
</span>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Karl Marx, Capital
Vol I tr. Ben Fowkes (New York: Penguin, 1990), 471 – 472.</span></div>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">
</span>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span>
</div>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">
</span>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">“Levi-Strauss
specified that the linguistic sign is arbitrary a priori but
non-arbitrary a posteriori.”
</span></div>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">
</span>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span>
</div>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">
</span>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Roland Barthes,
Elements of Semiology tr. Annette Lavers and Colin Smith (New York:
Hill and Wang, 1967), 51.</span></div>
</blockquote>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">
</span>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span>
</div>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">
</span>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Exchange is a social
function that regulates the relation between individuals and groups,
it occurs in all societies, though with radically different
manifestation depending on the social structure which obtains in a
given society. Exchange bears upon all social systems, though it is
more intense and prevalent in certain instances than in others, and
indeed Exchange may be fostered by certain agencies, as it may be
suppressed by others. The interdependence and reciprocality of
Exchange can be of an equal or unequal kind, that is, symmetrical or
asymmetrical, simple or complex, and it can be enforced or
unenforced, that is, bounded, determined, and structured by an
edifice which dominates those parties which participate in such
Exchange, and it occurs in a different form in the absence of such an
edifice. Exchange promotes complex social arrangements which are
emergent properties of its elemental procedures. For instance, while
the performance of one Exchange may result in merely the transfer of
things, participating in the transference of things as such imbues
those involved with more complex social relations between and among
one another, i.e. a durable social linkage or rapport, and an
expectation of further Exchanges, a sociologically determinable bond.
Thus simple Exchange gives rise to complex Exchange insofar as the
discrete units of Exchange aggregate socially, and impact upon and
inform the broader social environment in which they transpire. The
distinction between systems of Exchange of an enforced and those of
an unenforced kind is one of historical periodization, but not
necessarily of development; indeed, it is in the nature of the
analysis of the emergence of such social existence forms to question
as to whether this object constitutes an advancement or a
retrogression. Exchange pertains to sociological processes,
mutations, which may be captured and manipulated by institutions
whose function is control, whose own emergence is historically
contingent. The fundamental question is to what extent the structures
of association and division generated by Exchange rebound upon it, to
what extent this feedback of sociality and Exchange determined the
emergence of a political form capable of ensuring the domination of
social life by accumulation. Or, conversely, the question might be to
what extent Exchange as such is innocent in the emergence of State
power and Commodity-Exchange, and thus an investigation into their
real causes.</span></div>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">
</span>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span>
</div>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">
</span>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Circulation and
exchange have been oftentimes sidelined as objects of social and
political concern in favour of linear developmental models of modes
of production which presupposes the political units they otherwise
intend to explain. This has been effected by a kind of neo-theology
in which only production may be analyzed, as divorced from and
prioritized above exchange, and even in this, only within the
methodological confines of one or another State. It is, consequently,
a fundamental failing and limitation of some Political and Economic
analyses to have conflated Exchange as such with Commodity-Exchange,
and to have treated them as synonymous and interchangable, and to
dismiss the one for reasons pertaining to the concrete existence of
the other. Commodity-exchange is a restricted subset of Exchange, a
homogenization which is by no means exhaustive of Exchange as such.
Pierre Klossowski calls this a “simulacrum of exchange”<a class="sdfootnoteanc" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=4063385487236063231#sdfootnote1sym" name="sdfootnote1anc"><sup>1</sup></a>
insofar as the industrial economy presupposes living-labour, replete
with the social reproductive labour required for its production, as
an abstract and extant resource. Nomothetic so-called 'liberal'
accounts of the development of the Capitalist Modes of Production and
Exchange indeed rely exclusively on circulation and exchange to
explain the genesis of such modes of production and exchange, and
this is, of course, insufficient. With that said, it is a mistake to
suppose that a polarized focus on production to the exclusion of
circulation and exchange, wherein these social relations are seen as
merely 'buying low and selling high,' is much better. The former
misses, under the banner of comparative advantage, the
substantively false character of allegedly free and equal exchange
under a unitary world system of Capitalist design; the latter, in
thrall to the “romanticism of productivity,”<a class="sdfootnoteanc" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=4063385487236063231#sdfootnote2sym" name="sdfootnote2anc"><sup>2</sup></a>
misses the precondition of such falsity, the social mutations
provoked by manifold contact, communication, and mobility of masses,
i.e. the division and association of living-labour.</span></div>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">
</span>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span>
</div>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">
</span>
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">“Most men, while
they wish for what is noble, choose what is advantageous; now it is
noble to do well by another without a view to repayment, but it is
the receiving of benefits that is advantageous.”</span></div>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">
</span>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span>
</div>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">
</span>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Aristotle, Complete
Works Vol II tr. Benjamin Jowett (Princeton: Princeton University
Press, 1984), 1837.</span></div>
</blockquote>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">
</span>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span>
</div>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">
</span>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"></span></span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"></span><br />
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Wallerstein writes
that what characterizes World-Economy, as distinct from disperate
world-empires, is its synthesis of outward-looking or globally
oriented economic decision making and inward-looking or locally
oriented political command and control<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">. </span></span>World-empires are
characterized by a fixed semiotic and a low degree of symbolic
exchange, whereas world-economy is characterized by mixed semiotics
with a high degree of symbolic exchange.<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"> </span>World-economy is “a
spatial/temporal zone which cuts across many political and cultural
units, one that represents an integrated zone of activity and
institutions which obey certain systemic rules.”<a class="sdfootnoteanc" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=4063385487236063231#sdfootnote3sym" name="sdfootnote3anc"><sup>3</sup></a>
The world-economy and its constituent elements are premised upon and
dependent upon acceleration and exchange; the chief difference
between a system of Commodity-Exchange and ulterior systems of
Exchange is the intervention of an agency capable of acquiring
control over Living Labour, roughly within a given bounded territory,
and thus enforcing Signification upon them within that territory; in
prior systems of Exchange the circulation of products and signs was
not mediated by a material edifice capable of determining their
manifestation, whereas in Commodity-Exchange it is. In fact in
Commodity-Exchange there are necessarily several such edifices or
organs in competition with one another, composing together a
World-System, in which different systems of value intersect. Braudel
writes that “the pre-conditions of any form of capitalism have to
do with circulation; indeed at first sight one might think them to be
exclusively determined by this single factor.”<a class="sdfootnoteanc" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=4063385487236063231#sdfootnote4sym" name="sdfootnote4anc"><sup>4</sup></a>
The caveat of 'at first sight' is meant to suggest that there are
other factors which are less visible on the gloss, but which are no
less important, and indeed these two factors are the intervention of
State power, on the one hand, and production, on the other. Guattari
suggest that “whatever belongs to the realm of law tends to be
modeled on the State”<a class="sdfootnoteanc" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=4063385487236063231#sdfootnote5sym" name="sdfootnote5anc"><sup>5</sup></a>
whereas “whatever to the realm of desire on the pursuit of
profit,”<a class="sdfootnoteanc" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=4063385487236063231#sdfootnote6sym" name="sdfootnote6anc"><sup>6</sup></a>
with the former being akin to that of domestic non-reciprocal
exchange and the fixing of Signification, and the latter being
premised on heterogenous value systems, i.e. different sociological
masses and different interpretations of Desire. Braudel writes that a
“market economy”<a class="sdfootnoteanc" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=4063385487236063231#sdfootnote7sym" name="sdfootnote7anc"><sup>7</sup></a>
is to be distinguished from “capitalism”<a class="sdfootnoteanc" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=4063385487236063231#sdfootnote8sym" name="sdfootnote8anc"><sup>8</sup></a>
by the function and relative transcendence of the State; he argues
that whereas China “there could be no capitalism, except within
certain clearly-defined groups, backed by the state, supervised by
the state and always more or less at its mercy,”<a class="sdfootnoteanc" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=4063385487236063231#sdfootnote9sym" name="sdfootnote9anc"><sup>9</sup></a>
Japan of the Ashikaga period of the fourteenth century and
thereafter, by way of contrast, was characterized by “economic and
social forces independent of the state”<a class="sdfootnoteanc" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=4063385487236063231#sdfootnote10sym" name="sdfootnote10anc"><sup>10</sup></a>
and “the comparative absence of state authority.”<a class="sdfootnoteanc" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=4063385487236063231#sdfootnote11sym" name="sdfootnote11anc"><sup>11</sup></a>
Thus he argues that “in a kind of anarchy not unlike that of the
European Middle Ages, everything developed simultaneously in the
diversified arena of Japan as the country gradually formed itself
over the centuries: a central government, feudal lords, towns,
peasantry, an artisan class, the merchants.”<a class="sdfootnoteanc" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=4063385487236063231#sdfootnote12sym" name="sdfootnote12anc"><sup>12</sup></a>
Whereas in China “the bureaucracy lay across the top of Chinese
society as a single, virtually unbreachable stratum,”<a class="sdfootnoteanc" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=4063385487236063231#sdfootnote13sym" name="sdfootnote13anc"><sup>13</sup></a>
Braudel argues that Japan's rapid industrial development in the
period following the isolation of 1638 to 1868 was, at least in part,
attributable to “a long-standing merchant capitalism which it had
patiently built by its own efforts.”<a class="sdfootnoteanc" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=4063385487236063231#sdfootnote14sym" name="sdfootnote14anc"><sup>14</sup></a></span></span></div>
</div>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">
</span>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span>
</div>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">
</span>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Ultimately both
Industrial Production and Commodity-Exchange are constituted by the
Social-Subjective manipulations and control of State powers,
irrespective of to whatever extent the Commodity-Exchange that they
engender escapes the specific borders which they specify; were there
not borders, Exchange would not takes the same form that it does
under Commodity-Exchange. The State determines commodification
insofar as it determines, to an either very large or absolute extent,
the division and association of Living-Labour within a bounded and
delimited territory, and thus the correspondence between Signified
and Signifier. That said, left to its own devices, States would not
necessarily engage in either Industrial Production nor Commodity-Exchange
were it not for the intervention and development of their merchant
classes, who constitute sociologically and geographically the point
of contact between a bounded and delimited State, with its control
over Living-Labour, its fixings of value, Signification, and strata,
and its exterior. This exterior is two-fold: on the one hand there
are similar organisms, whose heterogeneous value-systems may be as
mixed and artificial as any other<span style="font-style: normal;"> -
</span><span style="font-style: normal;">'</span><i><span style="font-style: normal;">Deutschland
ist Hamlet</span></i><span style="font-style: normal;">!</span><span style="font-style: normal;">'
-</span> and on the other hand there is the marginal, submarginal,
and beyond, whose unfixed Signification and non-Signifying
semiologies are no longer truly outside, but rather merely in
between, underneath, overlaid, preserved in degraded and immiserated
form.
</span></div>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">
</span>
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span>
</div>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">
</span>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">“Modern industry
is grounded in a kind of trade that is mediated by the symbol of
inert currency, thus neutralizing the nature of the objects
exchanged, i.e., it hinges on the simulacrum of that trade – a
simulacrum contained in the workforce resources themselves, and thus
in a kind of living currency, which, though not openly declared as
such, already exists.</span></div>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">
</span>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span>
</div>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">
</span>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Pierre Klossowski,
Living Currency tr. Jordan Levinson (New York: Anti-Concept, 2012),
29.</span></div>
</blockquote>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">
</span>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span>
</div>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">
</span>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">The rendering of
bodies as exchangeable goods is not a recent phenomenon, but what is
recent, at least at Anthropological scale, is the manner in which
this rendering has been integrated into the function of the State,
the cohesion of which is inextricable from libidinal investment. The
habitual emphasis of use-value in simplistic modes of production
accounts forgets or elides that a system of total and complete
use-value is totally and completely amenable to and realized in a
despotic state, in which all functions are use functions, where the
utility is the valorization of the Despot and the bureaucratic
preservation of frozen time. Use-value can be reactionary depending
upon the particular context in which it features; value is
negotiated, yes, but it is negotiated within a specific
Social-Subjective sphere, namely, the bounded and delimited territory
in which Living-Labour is controlled and Signification is fixed, and
thus use-value can just as easily be at the service of an association
of free and equal producers among themselves as it can a despotic
armature whose sole aim is to regulate, and more often than not
impede, both unruly masses and signification. So it will not do to
simply valorize use-value above exchange value, the use values of a
particular society may be reactionary; and yet the Exchange-Value of
Commodity-Exchange value is reactionary itself insofar as it treats
the alienated Living-Labour that it encounters on the world-market as
merely an abstract and saleable commodity, whose price may be
favorably negotiated. There are, therefore, reactionary forms of
Use-Value, and emancipatory forms of Use-Value, just as there are
reactionary and emancipatory forms of Exchange-Value; each form of
value, is, in part, politically determined, and it is this political
composition which is good or bad, and not the relative proportion of
Use-Values and Exchange-Values in a given system. It is State powers
which make armaments of its use values and exploitations as its
exchange values, and these are reflected in the multiple Sign systems
which encounter one another in their historical development.
</span></div>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">
</span>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span>
</div>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">
</span>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">How then to square
the circle that Commodity-Exchange is not possible without the
intervention of a hegemonic assemblage capable of compelling Labour
and fixing Signification, and a merchant class whose interests are in
every way opposed to the natural inclinations of such assemblages? It
is precisely in Deleuze and Guattari's formulations of relative
deterritorializations and relative reterritorializations that we can
perceive the historical relation between the merchant classes and the
State; they rely on one another in torsion or contradiction,
participating in the same system with the aims or intentions of
gaining the upper hand on the other, the merchant class competes with
the bureaucracy but only within the countours of an established
Social-Subjective compact which threatens neither the interests of
the owners of the means of production and exchange nor the Imperial
organism and dominant signification; an isomorphy with respect to a
capitalist axiomatic, a compact between bureaucrats and merchants
which appears in superficially distinct forms in this or that
society. The merchants deterritorialize and the bureaucrats
reterritorialize, and the system in which they mutually participate
is the mutual subjugation and alienation of Living-Labour and the
circulation of the commodities that Living-Labour produces. This
torsion of interest between territorializing castes and
deterritorializing classes Wallerstein calls “a very special
relationship between economic producers and the holders of political
power.”<a class="sdfootnoteanc" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=4063385487236063231#sdfootnote15sym" name="sdfootnote15anc"><sup>15</sup></a>
That is, if the bureaucratic interests win out, endless accumulation
ceases to be a priority and a world-economy becomes merely a
multiplicity of distinct world-empires in relatively infrequent,
oftentimes hostile, contact with one another. On the other hand, he
writes, the merchant classes “need a multiplicity of states, so
that they can gain the advantages of working with states but also can
circumvent states hostile to their interests in favor of states
friendly to their interests.”<a class="sdfootnoteanc" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=4063385487236063231#sdfootnote16sym" name="sdfootnote16anc"><sup>16</sup></a>
Thus, the merchant classes are ultimately parasitical upon, and
oftentimes parasitoid to, the world-empires which they interconnect,
their interests oftentimes imperil the interests of one or another
imperial assemblage, while they nevertheless rely upon and are
beholden to nation-states as such.</span></div>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">
</span>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span>
</div>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">
</span>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Peter Blau argues
that “reciprocated benefactions create social bonds among peers,
whereas unreciprocated ones produce differentiation of status.”<a class="sdfootnoteanc" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=4063385487236063231#sdfootnote17sym" name="sdfootnote17anc"><sup>17</sup></a>
In other words, reciprocality characterizes lateral and autonomous
Exchange, whereas non-reciprocality characterizes vertical and
heteronomous Exchange; the former, lateral or autonomous Exchange,
pertains to inter-group and intra-group cohesion, “to establish
bonds of friendship,”<a class="sdfootnoteanc" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=4063385487236063231#sdfootnote18sym" name="sdfootnote18anc"><sup>18</sup></a>
whereas the latter, vertical or heteronomous Exchange, pertains to
ruling covenants, relations of domination and power, “to establish
subordination over others.”<a class="sdfootnoteanc" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=4063385487236063231#sdfootnote19sym" name="sdfootnote19anc"><sup>19</sup></a>
There are, moreover, two competing historical interests for control
over so-called 'noble,' non-reciprocal, exchange, who are both bound
up with forms of territorialization and the interests of control over
a given space: the bureaucrat and the aristocrat, the functionaries
of the despot and the lineal chiefs. The interests of the merchants
are more ably served by a functionary class than they are by a
dissociated series of powerful clans, and so they aid and contribute
to the endeavor to transform one into the other, while simultaneously
opposing the interests of both. The bourgeoisie deterritorializes the
feudal in order that it might enter into a relationship of
deterritorialization and reterritorialization with the bureaucracy of
a unified imperial assemblage, whose function is not beholden to the
whim and caprice of this or that petty warlord. Similarly, there are
two competing interests for control over what is viewed to be
advantageous: on the one hand the bourgeoisie, who believes what is
advantageous is the endless accumulation of capital, and the
proletariat, on the other, who believe that what is advantageous is
the supersession and transcendence of this endless accumulation. The
form of reciprocal exchange bequeathed to it by the emergent
bourgeoisie need not be understood to be culminate, in other words,
and the alternative to a despotic armature which dominates society
need not be merely a return to clan-based lineage structures<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">,</span>
peripheral langour and aristocratic stagnation. </span><br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<iframe width="578" height="320" class="YOUTUBE-iframe-video" data-thumbnail-src="https://i.ytimg.com/vi/JYqatMELV6Q/0.jpg" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/JYqatMELV6Q?feature=player_embedded" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe></div>
</div>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">
</span>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span>
</div>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">
</span>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Plekhanov writes in
Art and Social Life that, after the revolutions of 1848, the emergent
bourgeoisie, who had not considered the proletariat capable of
independent machination, came to be “infinitely more cognisant of
the import of the struggle between the bourgeoisie and the
proletariat”<a class="sdfootnoteanc" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=4063385487236063231#sdfootnote20sym" name="sdfootnote20anc"><sup>20</sup></a>
and that this exercised a degenerative influence on their art. The
French realists, he suggests, “lost the faculty for calm scientific
investigation of social phenomenon,”<a class="sdfootnoteanc" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=4063385487236063231#sdfootnote21sym" name="sdfootnote21anc"><sup>21</sup></a>
insofar as they “fail[ed] to realise that the actions,
inclinations, tastes and habits of mind of social man cannot be
adequately explained by physiology or pathology, since they are
determined by social relationships.”<a class="sdfootnoteanc" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=4063385487236063231#sdfootnote22sym" name="sdfootnote22anc"><sup>22</sup></a>
Thus, whereas Russian realism depicted the causal system by which
individual inclinations are determined, the “great whole,”<a class="sdfootnoteanc" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=4063385487236063231#sdfootnote23sym" name="sdfootnote23anc"><sup>23</sup></a>
French realism, by way of contrast, “had landed in a blind alley
and had nothing left but to relate once more the love affair of the
first chance wine-merchant and the first chance grocery woman,”<a class="sdfootnoteanc" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=4063385487236063231#sdfootnote24sym" name="sdfootnote24anc"><sup>24</sup></a>
which became “uninteresting, boring, even revolting.”<a class="sdfootnoteanc" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=4063385487236063231#sdfootnote25sym" name="sdfootnote25anc"><sup>25</sup></a>
Falling back on an earlier romanticism, which, as Plekhanov explains,
had rebelled against the social mores, conventions, and styles of the
emergent bourgeois, but not its social system, the so-called realists
became mired in a profoundly unrealistic pursuit, that of valorizing
the most elemental individual relationships which had given rise to
their social system of organization, i.e. fascination, novelty,
presentation and surface. The extent to which they emphasized these
elemental individual relations betrayed their real intent, to defend,
rather than challenge, the social system of the emergent bourgeoisie.
Thus it is wholly legitimate for the early socialists, and Marx
himself, to have been wary of any undue fixation and fetishization of
the individual relationships of Commodity-Exchange, given their
function was to obscure the social system that gave rise to such
elemental, and partial, social relations.</span></div>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">
</span>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span>
</div>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">
</span>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">The State in its
historical emergence and development determines and fixes
signification in the last instance, but in the modern period it is
given to renting the construction and enforcement of meaning out to
the highest bidder. Ambiguity of meaning, semantic indeterminacy, is
a political good, but whereas the construction of meaning ought to be
pursued in societies as a scientific endeavor, it is all too often a
cheap State auction, and this is the very business of sophistry. The
bureaucrat is an economic sophist, whose function in the modern
period is to mediate and reterritorialize the exploitation of
Living-Labour by the owners of the means of production and exchange,
it adjudicates meaning, but with an oftentimes seething indifference
to truth and rationality. Thibault calls this “a slide from the
correctly differential and analogue conception of the system of pure
values to one which projects categories from the dominant mode of
economic and social production onto the system.”<a class="sdfootnoteanc" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=4063385487236063231#sdfootnote26sym" name="sdfootnote26anc"><sup>26</sup></a></span></div>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">
</span>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span>
</div>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">
</span>
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">“It is not a
matter of a script that engenders all semiotic organization, but of
the appearance – datable in history – of writing machines as a
basic tool for the great despotic empires.”</span></div>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">
</span>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span>
</div>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">
</span>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Felix Guattari,
Molecular Revolution: Psychiatry and Politics (New York: Penguin,
1984), 75.</span></div>
</blockquote>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">
</span>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span>
</div>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">
</span>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Guattari writes
that “linguists have been over-hasty in assimilating Hjemslev's
distinction between expression and content with Saussure's
distinction between the signifier and what is signified.”<a class="sdfootnoteanc" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=4063385487236063231#sdfootnote27sym" name="sdfootnote27anc"><sup>27</sup></a>
He argues rather that whereas Hjemslev's distinction presumes no
Signifying Semiotic, Saussure's does, and thus they are not merely
describing the same systems using different terms; Hjelmslev's
distinction allows for “semiotics which are, precisely, not based
on the bi-polarity of the signified and the signifier,”<a class="sdfootnoteanc" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=4063385487236063231#sdfootnote28sym" name="sdfootnote28anc"><sup>28</sup></a>
whereas Saussure's does not. Thus Guattari distinguishes
“semiotically formed substances”<a class="sdfootnoteanc" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=4063385487236063231#sdfootnote29sym" name="sdfootnote29anc"><sup>29</sup></a>
and “non-semiotic encodings,”<a class="sdfootnoteanc" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=4063385487236063231#sdfootnote30sym" name="sdfootnote30anc"><sup>30</sup></a>
and suggests that the superiority of Hjemselv's linguistic analytic
is in its capacity to interpret, and produce, the latter. The
manifest effect upon the collective unconscious of a Signifying
Semiotic is paramount here “not because it relates back to an
archytpal written language, but because it manifests the premanence
of a despotic significance which, though arising out of particular
historical conditions, can none the less continue to develop and
extend its effects into other conditions.”<a class="sdfootnoteanc" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=4063385487236063231#sdfootnote31sym" name="sdfootnote31anc"><sup>31</sup></a>
It is the State which fixes Signification, which “by a tremendous
retroactive effort<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">. . . </span>seems to make all semiotics originate from the
signifier.”<a class="sdfootnoteanc" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=4063385487236063231#sdfootnote32sym" name="sdfootnote32anc"><sup>32</sup></a></span></div>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">
</span>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span>
</div>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">
</span>
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">“Flows must be
credited and given meaning, which is a process Deleuze and Guattari
refer to as coding. Codes are not simply applied to flows; rather,
they reciprocally determine one another: no flow can be understood
without its code. Codes operate through signs or signifying chains
(chaines signifantes), via inscription or recording, although these
signs do not represent or signify; they merely 'fix' the flows. . .
Codes ensure that flows coagulate within a particular social
configuration or form. The specific forms these codings take define
different historical systems of ownership and power.”</span></div>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">
</span>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span>
</div>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">
</span>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Nigel Dodd, The
Social Life of Money (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2014),
229-230.</span></div>
</blockquote>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">
</span>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span>
</div>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">
</span>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Guattari writes that
“all stratifications of power produce and impose signification,”<a class="sdfootnoteanc" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=4063385487236063231#sdfootnote33sym" name="sdfootnote33anc"><sup>33</sup></a></span></div>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">
</span>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span>
</div>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">
</span>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Gary Genosko writes
that, for Guattari, linguistic arbitrariness, the divorce or
separation of Sign from resemblance, is “a political form of the
reproduction of established power through officially sanctioned
expression/content packets (a lesson repeatedly drummed into one's
head about accepting the dominant codes and adapting to them).”<a class="sdfootnoteanc" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=4063385487236063231#sdfootnote34sym" name="sdfootnote34anc"><sup>34</sup></a></span></div>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">
</span>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span>
</div>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">
</span>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Guattari is
explicit, “writing machines are essentially linked to the
setting-up of State power machines.”<a class="sdfootnoteanc" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=4063385487236063231#sdfootnote35sym" name="sdfootnote35anc"><sup>35</sup></a></span></div>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">
</span>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span>
</div>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">
</span>
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">“The dialectic of
signifier and signified gives rise to stratified semiotic forms.”
</span></div>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">
</span>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span>
</div>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">
</span>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Paul Thibault,
Re-reading Saussure: The Dynamics of Signs in Social Life (London:
Routledge, 1997), 194.</span></div>
</blockquote>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">
</span>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span>
</div>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">
</span>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Both Guattari and
Karatani provide a genealogy and exposure of the processes by which
dominant Signification came to be structured in the way that it is,
presenting itself as natural and without origin. For both, the
emergence of vernacular literature is inextricably bound up with the
emergence of the nation-state. Karatani calls these processes,
collectively, the “inversion of semiotic constellation which makes
transcription possible.”<a class="sdfootnoteanc" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=4063385487236063231#sdfootnote36sym" name="sdfootnote36anc"><sup>36</sup></a>
By this he means the process by which Signification emerges and
becomes the dominant reference point from which all systems and
enunciations are interpreted, which invents an interiority
corresponding to the exteriority of the Nation-State and “transforms
our mode of perception.”<a class="sdfootnoteanc" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=4063385487236063231#sdfootnote37sym" name="sdfootnote37anc"><sup>37</sup></a>
Karatani is, in other words, articulating a political ontology of the
Sign, the history of “a political failure, whose origins had been
forgotten, and which had come to function as that which erased
politics.”<a class="sdfootnoteanc" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=4063385487236063231#sdfootnote38sym" name="sdfootnote38anc"><sup>38</sup></a>
He locates this failure, in Japan's case, in the 1890s, the third
decade of the Meiji period, but notes that this semiotic inversion
merely presents in an accelerated form the same processes which had
occurred elsewhere over a longer period of time.</span></div>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">
</span>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span>
</div>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">
</span>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Language is to
speech as the State is to exchange; homogeneity's relationship with
heterogeneity as manifest in different social functions. For Saussure
linguistics is the study of a system of signification, whereas for
Hjemslev and Charles Sanders Peirce, linguistics is the study of a
concrete existence of expressive and social interrelations, into
which such a system of signfication was historically interposed; such
a system, in other words, constitutes an object of analysis for
Hjemslev and Pierce, whereas it is analysis as such in Saussure's
framework. As Paul Thibault writes, “this 'suppression' is, of
course, a consequence of the methodological decision to privilege the
system of pure values, or langue.”<a class="sdfootnoteanc" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=4063385487236063231#sdfootnote39sym" name="sdfootnote39anc"><sup>39</sup></a>
Saussurean linguistics fails to interrogate its own conditions of
existence and methodological precepts, its irreducible expectation
and presupposition of the signification system, rendering this system
opaque as an object of analysis in and of itself, obscuring its
historical contingency. Saussure's linguistics is fundamentally
linguistics from the standpoint of, and determined by,
Commodity-Exchange and its particular historical conditons, i.e.
world-economy and the capitalist modes of production and exchange.
Thibault argues that Saussure “unconsciously projected the
categories of the dominant mode of economic production onto the
social organization of langue.”<a class="sdfootnoteanc" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=4063385487236063231#sdfootnote40sym" name="sdfootnote40anc"><sup>40</sup></a></span></div>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">
</span>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span>
</div>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">
</span>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Semiology is the
study of the system of the distinctions between, and historical
interaction of, divergent semiotics; whereas semiotics as a form of
analysis itself has no means of expressing the multiplicity of
concrete social semiotics.<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"> </span>Barthes writes that
“a system is arbitrary when its signs are founded not by
convention, but by unilateral decision,”<a class="sdfootnoteanc" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=4063385487236063231#sdfootnote41sym" name="sdfootnote41anc"><sup>41</sup></a>
but it is in fact the opposite; signification by convention, or
immanent exchange communication, is arbitrary, insofar as the
analogical relation between two or more relata would be determined by
the spontaneous social innovation of speech; whereas unilaterally
determined signification is non-arbitrary but rather intentional,
oriented towards a priori ends which signification is meant to
achieve.
</span></div>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">
</span>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span>
</div>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">
</span>
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">“Value bears a
close relation to the notion of the language (as opposed to speech);
its effect is to depsychologize linguistics and to bring it closer to
economics; it is therefore central to structural linguistics.” </span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Roland Barthes,
Elements of Semiology tr. Annette Lavers and Colin Smith (New York:
Hill and Wang, 1967),</span> 54.</span></div>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">
</span>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span>
</div>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">
</span>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">“Language is the
domain of articulations, and the meaning is above all a cutting-out
of shapes.”
</span></div>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">
</span>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span>
</div>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">
</span></blockquote>
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in; text-align: justify;">
<blockquote>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Roland Barthes,
Elements of Semiology tr. Annette Lavers and Colin Smith (New York:
Hill and Wang, 1967), 57.</span></blockquote>
</div>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">
</span>
<br />
<div id="sdfootnote1" style="text-align: justify;">
<div class="sdfootnote" style="margin-left: 0in; text-indent: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><a class="sdfootnotesym" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=4063385487236063231#sdfootnote1anc" name="sdfootnote1sym">1</a>
Pierre Klossowski, Living Currency tr. Jordan Levinson (New York:
Anti-Concept, 2012), 29.</span></div>
</div>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">
</span>
<br />
<div id="sdfootnote2" style="text-align: justify;">
<div class="sdfootnote" style="margin-left: 0in; text-indent: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><a class="sdfootnotesym" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=4063385487236063231#sdfootnote2anc" name="sdfootnote2sym">2</a>
Jean Baudrillard, The Mirror of Production tr. Mark Poster (St.
Louis: Telos, 1975), 17.</span></div>
</div>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">
</span>
<br />
<div id="sdfootnote3" style="text-align: justify;">
<div class="sdfootnote" style="margin-left: 0in; text-indent: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><a class="sdfootnotesym" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=4063385487236063231#sdfootnote3anc" name="sdfootnote3sym">3</a>
Immanuel Wallerstein, World-Systems Analysis: An Introduction
(Durham: Duke University Press, 2006), 17.</span></div>
</div>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">
</span>
<br />
<div id="sdfootnote4" style="text-align: justify;">
<div class="sdfootnote" style="margin-left: 0in; text-indent: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><a class="sdfootnotesym" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=4063385487236063231#sdfootnote4anc" name="sdfootnote4sym">4</a>
Fernand Braudel, Civilization & Capitalism 15<sup>th</sup>-18<sup>th</sup>
Century Vol II: The Wheels of Commerce tr. Siân
Reynolds (London: Collins, 1983), 582.</span></div>
</div>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">
</span>
<br />
<div id="sdfootnote5" style="text-align: justify;">
<div class="sdfootnote" style="margin-left: 0in; text-indent: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><a class="sdfootnotesym" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=4063385487236063231#sdfootnote5anc" name="sdfootnote5sym">5</a>
Felix Guattari, Molecular Revolution: Psychiatry and Politics (New
York: Penguin, 1984), 246.</span></div>
</div>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">
</span>
<br />
<div id="sdfootnote6" style="text-align: justify;">
<div class="sdfootnote" style="margin-left: 0in; text-indent: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><a class="sdfootnotesym" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=4063385487236063231#sdfootnote6anc" name="sdfootnote6sym">6</a>
Ibid.</span></div>
</div>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">
</span>
<br />
<div id="sdfootnote7" style="text-align: justify;">
<div class="sdfootnote" style="margin-left: 0in; text-indent: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><a class="sdfootnotesym" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=4063385487236063231#sdfootnote7anc" name="sdfootnote7sym">7</a>
Fernand Braudel, Civilization & Capitalism 15<sup>th</sup>-18<sup>th</sup>
Century Vol II: The Wheels of Commerce tr. Siân
Reynolds (London: Collins, 1983), 589.</span></div>
</div>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">
</span>
<br />
<div id="sdfootnote8" style="text-align: justify;">
<div class="sdfootnote" style="margin-left: 0in; text-indent: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><a class="sdfootnotesym" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=4063385487236063231#sdfootnote8anc" name="sdfootnote8sym">8</a>
Ibid.</span></div>
</div>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">
</span>
<br />
<div id="sdfootnote9" style="text-align: justify;">
<div class="sdfootnote" style="margin-left: 0in; text-indent: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><a class="sdfootnotesym" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=4063385487236063231#sdfootnote9anc" name="sdfootnote9sym">9</a>
Ibid.</span></div>
</div>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">
</span>
<br />
<div id="sdfootnote10" style="text-align: justify;">
<div class="sdfootnote" style="margin-left: 0in; text-indent: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><a class="sdfootnotesym" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=4063385487236063231#sdfootnote10anc" name="sdfootnote10sym">10</a>
Ibid.</span></div>
</div>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">
</span>
<br />
<div id="sdfootnote11" style="text-align: justify;">
<div class="sdfootnote" style="margin-left: 0in; text-indent: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><a class="sdfootnotesym" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=4063385487236063231#sdfootnote11anc" name="sdfootnote11sym">11</a>
Ibid.</span></div>
</div>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">
</span>
<br />
<div id="sdfootnote12" style="text-align: justify;">
<div class="sdfootnote" style="margin-left: 0in; text-indent: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><a class="sdfootnotesym" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=4063385487236063231#sdfootnote12anc" name="sdfootnote12sym">12</a>
Ibid, 590.</span></div>
</div>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">
</span>
<br />
<div id="sdfootnote13" style="text-align: justify;">
<div class="sdfootnote" style="margin-left: 0in; text-indent: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><a class="sdfootnotesym" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=4063385487236063231#sdfootnote13anc" name="sdfootnote13sym">13</a>
Ibid, 595.</span></div>
</div>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">
</span>
<br />
<div id="sdfootnote14" style="text-align: justify;">
<div class="sdfootnote" style="margin-left: 0in; text-indent: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><a class="sdfootnotesym" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=4063385487236063231#sdfootnote14anc" name="sdfootnote14sym">14</a>
Ibid, 593.</span></div>
</div>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">
</span>
<br />
<div id="sdfootnote15" style="text-align: justify;">
<div class="sdfootnote" style="margin-left: 0in; text-indent: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><a class="sdfootnotesym" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=4063385487236063231#sdfootnote15anc" name="sdfootnote15sym">15</a>
Immanuel Wallerstein, World-Systems Analysis: An Introduction
(Durham: Duke University Press, 2006), 24.</span></div>
</div>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">
</span>
<br />
<div id="sdfootnote16" style="text-align: justify;">
<div class="sdfootnote" style="margin-left: 0in; text-indent: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><a class="sdfootnotesym" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=4063385487236063231#sdfootnote16anc" name="sdfootnote16sym">16</a>
Immanuel Wallerstein, World-Systems Analysis: An Introduction
(Durham: Duke University Press, 2006), 24.</span></div>
</div>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">
</span>
<br />
<div id="sdfootnote17" style="text-align: justify;">
<div class="sdfootnote" style="margin-left: 0in; text-indent: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><a class="sdfootnotesym" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=4063385487236063231#sdfootnote17anc" name="sdfootnote17sym">17</a>
Peter Blau, Exchange and Power in Social Life (New York: John Wiley
& Sons, 1964), 8.</span></div>
</div>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">
</span>
<br />
<div id="sdfootnote18" style="text-align: justify;">
<div class="sdfootnote" style="margin-left: 0in; text-indent: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><a class="sdfootnotesym" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=4063385487236063231#sdfootnote18anc" name="sdfootnote18sym">18</a>
Ibid, 89.</span></div>
</div>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">
</span>
<br />
<div id="sdfootnote19" style="text-align: justify;">
<div class="sdfootnote" style="margin-left: 0in; text-indent: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><a class="sdfootnotesym" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=4063385487236063231#sdfootnote19anc" name="sdfootnote19sym">19</a>
Ibid.</span></div>
</div>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">
</span>
<br />
<div id="sdfootnote20" style="text-align: justify;">
<div class="sdfootnote" style="margin-left: 0in; text-indent: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><a class="sdfootnotesym" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=4063385487236063231#sdfootnote20anc" name="sdfootnote20sym">20</a>
G. V. Plekhanov, Unadressed Letters: Art and Social Life (Moscow:
Foreign Languages Publishing, 1957), 183.</span></div>
</div>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">
</span>
<br />
<div id="sdfootnote21" style="text-align: justify;">
<div class="sdfootnote" style="margin-left: 0in; text-indent: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><a class="sdfootnotesym" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=4063385487236063231#sdfootnote21anc" name="sdfootnote21sym">21</a>
Ibid.</span></div>
</div>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">
</span>
<br />
<div id="sdfootnote22" style="text-align: justify;">
<div class="sdfootnote" style="margin-left: 0in; text-indent: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><a class="sdfootnotesym" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=4063385487236063231#sdfootnote22anc" name="sdfootnote22sym">22</a>
Ibid.</span></div>
</div>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">
</span>
<br />
<div id="sdfootnote23" style="text-align: justify;">
<div class="sdfootnote" style="margin-left: 0in; text-indent: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><a class="sdfootnotesym" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=4063385487236063231#sdfootnote23anc" name="sdfootnote23sym">23</a>
Ibid.</span></div>
</div>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">
</span>
<br />
<div id="sdfootnote24" style="text-align: justify;">
<div class="sdfootnote" style="margin-left: 0in; text-indent: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><a class="sdfootnotesym" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=4063385487236063231#sdfootnote24anc" name="sdfootnote24sym">24</a>
Ibid.</span></div>
</div>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">
</span>
<br />
<div id="sdfootnote25" style="text-align: justify;">
<div class="sdfootnote" style="margin-left: 0in; text-indent: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><a class="sdfootnotesym" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=4063385487236063231#sdfootnote25anc" name="sdfootnote25sym">25</a>
Ibid.</span></div>
</div>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">
</span>
<br />
<div id="sdfootnote26" style="text-align: justify;">
<div class="sdfootnote" style="margin-left: 0in; text-indent: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><a class="sdfootnotesym" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=4063385487236063231#sdfootnote26anc" name="sdfootnote26sym">26</a>
Paul Thibault, Re-reading Saussure: The Dynamics of Signs in Social
Life (London: Routledge, 1997), 201.</span></div>
</div>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">
</span>
<br />
<div id="sdfootnote27" style="text-align: justify;">
<div class="sdfootnote" style="margin-left: 0in; text-indent: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><a class="sdfootnotesym" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=4063385487236063231#sdfootnote27anc" name="sdfootnote27sym">27</a>
Felix Guattari, Molecular Revolution: Psychiatry and Politics (New
York: Penguin, 1984), 74.</span></div>
</div>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">
</span>
<br />
<div id="sdfootnote28" style="text-align: justify;">
<div class="sdfootnote" style="margin-left: 0in; text-indent: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><a class="sdfootnotesym" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=4063385487236063231#sdfootnote28anc" name="sdfootnote28sym">28</a>
Felix Guattari, Molecular Revolution: Psychiatry and Politics (New
York: Penguin, 1984), 74.</span></div>
</div>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">
</span>
<br />
<div id="sdfootnote29" style="text-align: justify;">
<div class="sdfootnote" style="margin-left: 0in; text-indent: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><a class="sdfootnotesym" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=4063385487236063231#sdfootnote29anc" name="sdfootnote29sym">29</a>
Felix Guattari, Molecular Revolution: Psychiatry and Politics (New
York: Penguin, 1984), 74.</span></div>
</div>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">
</span>
<br />
<div id="sdfootnote30" style="text-align: justify;">
<div class="sdfootnote" style="margin-left: 0in; text-indent: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><a class="sdfootnotesym" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=4063385487236063231#sdfootnote30anc" name="sdfootnote30sym">30</a>
Felix Guattari, Molecular Revolution: Psychiatry and Politics (New
York: Penguin, 1984), 74.</span></div>
</div>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">
</span>
<br />
<div id="sdfootnote31" style="text-align: justify;">
<div class="sdfootnote" style="margin-left: 0in; text-indent: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><a class="sdfootnotesym" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=4063385487236063231#sdfootnote31anc" name="sdfootnote31sym">31</a>
Felix Guattari, Molecular Revolution: Psychiatry and Politics (New
York: Penguin, 1984), 75.</span></div>
</div>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">
</span>
<br />
<div id="sdfootnote32" style="text-align: justify;">
<div class="sdfootnote" style="margin-left: 0in; text-indent: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><a class="sdfootnotesym" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=4063385487236063231#sdfootnote32anc" name="sdfootnote32sym">32</a>
Felix Guattari, Molecular Revolution: Psychiatry and Politics (New
York: Penguin, 1984), 75.</span></div>
</div>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">
</span>
<br />
<div id="sdfootnote33" style="text-align: justify;">
<div class="sdfootnote" style="margin-left: 0in; text-indent: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><a class="sdfootnotesym" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=4063385487236063231#sdfootnote33anc" name="sdfootnote33sym">33</a>
Felix Guattari, Molecular Revolution: Psychiatry and Politics (New
York: Penguin, 1984), 168.</span></div>
</div>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">
</span>
<br />
<div id="sdfootnote34" style="text-align: justify;">
<div class="sdfootnote" style="margin-left: 0in; text-indent: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><a class="sdfootnotesym" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=4063385487236063231#sdfootnote34anc" name="sdfootnote34sym">34</a>
Gary Genosko, “Guattari's Contribution to the Theory of
Semiocapitalism” in The Guattari Effect ed. Eric Alliez and Andrew
Goffey (London: Continuum, 2011), 120.</span></div>
</div>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">
</span>
<br />
<div id="sdfootnote35" style="text-align: justify;">
<div class="sdfootnote" style="margin-left: 0in; text-indent: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><a class="sdfootnotesym" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=4063385487236063231#sdfootnote35anc" name="sdfootnote35sym">35</a>
Felix Guattari, Molecular Revolution: Psychiatry and Politics (New
York: Penguin, 1984), 75.</span></div>
</div>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">
</span>
<br />
<div id="sdfootnote36" style="text-align: justify;">
<div class="sdfootnote" style="margin-left: 0in; text-indent: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><a class="sdfootnotesym" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=4063385487236063231#sdfootnote36anc" name="sdfootnote36sym">36</a>
Kojin Karatani, Origins of Modern Japanese Literature tr. Brett de
Bary (Durham: Duke University Press, 1993), 61.</span></div>
</div>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">
</span>
<br />
<div id="sdfootnote37" style="text-align: justify;">
<div class="sdfootnote" style="margin-left: 0in; text-indent: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><a class="sdfootnotesym" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=4063385487236063231#sdfootnote37anc" name="sdfootnote37sym">37</a>
Kojin Karatani, Origins of Modern Japanese Literature tr. Brett de
Bary (Durham: Duke University Press, 1993), 27.</span></div>
</div>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">
</span>
<br />
<div id="sdfootnote38" style="text-align: justify;">
<div class="sdfootnote" style="margin-left: 0in; text-indent: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><a class="sdfootnotesym" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=4063385487236063231#sdfootnote38anc" name="sdfootnote38sym">38</a>
Kojin Karatani, Origins of Modern Japanese Literature tr. Brett de
Bary (Durham: Duke University Press, 1993), 188.</span></div>
</div>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">
</span>
<br />
<div id="sdfootnote39" style="text-align: justify;">
<div class="sdfootnote" style="margin-left: 0in; text-indent: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><a class="sdfootnotesym" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=4063385487236063231#sdfootnote39anc" name="sdfootnote39sym">39</a>
Paul Thibault, Re-reading Saussure: The Dynamics of Signs in Social
Life (London: Routledge, 1997), 188.</span></div>
</div>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">
</span>
<br />
<div id="sdfootnote40" style="text-align: justify;">
<div class="sdfootnote" style="margin-left: 0in; text-indent: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><a class="sdfootnotesym" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=4063385487236063231#sdfootnote40anc" name="sdfootnote40sym">40</a>
Paul Thibault, Re-reading Saussure: The Dynamics of Signs in Social
Life (London: Routledge, 1997), 202.</span></div>
</div>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">
</span>
<br />
<div id="sdfootnote41" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">
</span><br />
<div class="sdfootnote" style="margin-left: 0in; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><a class="sdfootnotesym" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=4063385487236063231#sdfootnote41anc" name="sdfootnote41sym">41</a>
Roland Barthes, Elements of Semiology tr. Annette Lavers and Colin
Smith (New York: Hill and Wang, 1967), 51.</span></div>
</div>
Dock Curriehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09979072460617749796noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4063385487236063231.post-42438308101144595412016-04-16T22:04:00.002-07:002016-04-17T01:43:20.558-07:00The NDP is dead; Long live the NDP!<div style="text-align: justify;">
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">See past the dust clouds, brothers,
sisters, friends, neighbors, house NDP is strong, unified, and
vibrant, irrespective of what the bourgeois, richy-rich press and
their celebutant talking heads would have you believe. The New
Democratic Party is strong, unified, and vibrant, moreover, precisely
because of the wild, unprecedented, and inspiring events in Edmonton,
and not in spite of them. You see, while most Liberals are clueless
enough to indulge in MacLeans magazine pablum concerning the demise
of Social Democracy in Canada (and enjoy a hearty, if bewildered,
guffaw), or nod their heads approvingly, line by line, at billowing
low-life Conrad Black's cynical concern trolling and crocodile tears, most Liberals also have no
idea what a catastrophic, unstoppable, and unrelenting shitstorm is
about to hit them. The hard edges of the NDP family squabbles are
over, they took place in Edmonton and were left there, and now the
nature of the discussion is rather how we are to comport ourselves
with respect to Justin Trudeau's crooked Liberal government, the
character, content, and manner of the ferocious criticism that will
be directed towards him and his cronies, and the basis of how society
ought to be organized differently.</span><br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both;">
<a href="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-hxdHnRXXIvw/VxMaWGiqRnI/AAAAAAAAAZc/j9WrGRTMGPotmF-VcBhAPmLpJaZFGBsMgCLcB/s1600/naomi.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="480" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-hxdHnRXXIvw/VxMaWGiqRnI/AAAAAAAAAZc/j9WrGRTMGPotmF-VcBhAPmLpJaZFGBsMgCLcB/s640/naomi.jpg" width="578" /></a></div>
</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">
</span>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">
</span>
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">The unifying principle of the Social
Democracy Party of Canada is precisely its commitment to Social
Democracy, not merely as an option to choose once every few years,
but rather as a process and practice. The function of a Social
Democratic Party is to be relentlessly critical, to identify, analyze,
and liquidate exploitative, oppressive, and undemocratic relations
within both society and the party's own processes, practices, and
everyday operation, and to be proud of its criticality with respect
to both society at large and its own conduct, procedures, principles
and convictions. The function of a Social Democratic Party is to
subject all of these suspect actors and actions in society to
rigorous critique, and, in so doing, articulate, advocate for, and
construct together, superior forms of political and economic
organization.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">
</span>
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span>
</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">The commitment to these processes and
practices of Social Democracy, which the NDP so profoundly and
unambiguously reaffirmed and evidenced in Edmonton in voting for new
leadership and discussions surrounding the LEAP manifesto, will
become the touchstone, symbol, and rubric of the renewed and
reinvigorated party. The old guard proved beyond a shadow of a doubt
that it can run a tough bureaucratic show. They didn't get beat by
the owners of the means of production and exchange, they got beat by
their own grassroots and rank and file, and that is the best kind of
getting beaten for a Social Democratic party. If one is a Social
Democrat then one ought to relish being outwitted by the grassroots
of one's own party! That position ought to inspire one with hope!
What the ouster of Tom Mulcair in Edmonton and the adoption of the
resolution to debate and discuss the LEAP manifesto means is that the
Social Democratic youth and grassroots of Canada are craving a big
spot in front of a microphone where they can voice their hopes,
fears, and aspirations. What the events in Edmonton signify is pure
want and desire for the future.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">
</span>
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span>
</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">
</span>
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">What has been checked and rebutted in
Edmonton is not Tom Mulcair but rather something larger, that is, the
tepid professionalization and bureaucratization of the party that
characterized the 1990s<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">, 2000s, </span>and 2010s under both his and Jack Layton's
respective tenures, and the functioning of a party apparatus that is
neither substantively oriented by its most vibrant and powerful
elements, nor disposed to let those components shine. Now Tom Mulcair
will have an opportunity to sing where he shines and to shine where
he sings, i.e. in Parliament, holding the Liberals to account. Nobody
wanted to impugn his capabilities to do that, nobody wanted to make
him look shabby or unwanted either as a man or as a Social Democrat,
far from it. Tom Mulcair is a gritty and ferocious parliamentarian,
who did, and will continue to do, a very good job as a fierce and
unremitting critic. He was good at holding Stephen Harper to account,
for which he should be greatly credited, and he won't make Justin Trudeau's
life easy, either, for which he should be greatly credited. He
inherited the reigns of the party in a period of incredible
uncertainty in the wake of Jack Layton's death, and he did a great
deal for the party given the circumstances. What was at issue,
rather was the functioning of the NDP as a party, and making the
point that there was a disconnect between the bureaucratic apparatus
and the rank and file and grassroots of the party. The rebuke, or
challenge, was precisely in overcoming a party apparatus that
expected the service and participation of the grassroots and rank and
file, but <span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">was nonetheless </span>relatively disinterested in making that rank and file
foremost in deciding the objectives and aims of the party.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-gt_aWtHwLqg/VxNHZI8mmlI/AAAAAAAAAZw/LUj0SDXBxKcUuFeOLEyVJggfVCdSMvXKACLcB/s1600/conf.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="330" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-gt_aWtHwLqg/VxNHZI8mmlI/AAAAAAAAAZw/LUj0SDXBxKcUuFeOLEyVJggfVCdSMvXKACLcB/s640/conf.jpg" width="578" /></a></div>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">
</span>
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span>
</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">
</span>
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">What Mulcair's ouster and the adoption of the
resolution to discuss the LEAP manifesto demonstrates is that the
party apparatus is merely one powerful component of a yet more
powerful composite assemblage that is, considered as a whole,
invincible and indomitable. It is the uncomfortable and necessary
obverse of the character of the relationship that will inevitably
develop hereafter, that is, a tight and inextricable feedback between
a steely and hard-nosed apparatchik core, and a passionate, literate, <span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">a<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">nd savvy</span></span> sea of supporters who see themselves reflected in the
operation and voice of the party. In Edmonton, these forces were
briefly, unfortunately, but nonetheless necessarily opposed; and the
consequence of Edmonton is that their opposition has been
transcended. Social Democracy is not a series of personalities, it is
a crowd, a mass, out of which lucid, brilliant, articulate visions of
how to orient and operate society differently radiate and emerge,
get hashed-out and articulated, and it is the force and practice by which
these visions will be realized. Who will lead Social Democracy?
Social Democracy will lead Social Democracy. The function of a Social
Democratic Party is fractious, contentious, and democratic, and isn't
hindered by strenuous disagreement; it's very structure is fostered,
strengthened and amplified by disagreement, it's veins are full of
disagreement. Such disagreements concern different forms of social
and political organization, forms of life, and analysis of and
practice oriented toward combating predatory and exploitative
interests in society. The function of a Social Democratic Party is to
take all those energies which are opposed to exploitation and
oppression in society and channel them most effectively against the exploiters and oppressors in
society, and, by concerted practical action and the use of the
ballot-box, to end such predatory elements and interests in society.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">
</span>
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span>
</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">
</span>
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">The function of a Social Democratic
Party is to rationally process and analyze historical, social, and
political events, and make them interpretable to the marginalized and
working class in society, with the least degree of mystification,
falsification, and obscurity as possible, such that the marginalized
and working class in society can act on this information and
intervene in historical, social, and political events. Thus, a Social
Democratic Party is not merely a representative body but is moreover
an environment in which those who are compelled to sell their
labour-activity and those who are marginalized in society <span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">are able to</span> hone
themselves and learn how to oppose those who buy labour-acitivty and
those who marginalize in society. Very often Social Democratic
parties find that those who own things in society use their power and
wealth in such a way as to reproduce political and economic systems
which serve their interests and nobody else's, and the function of a
Social Democratic Party is to call such people to account and to
advocate for a political and economic organization of everyday life
in which such people cannot game the system in this way. Just as it's
purpose is to call to account haughty aristocrats and toady
politicians, the function of a Social Democratic Party is equally
well to call to account those who are misusing their wealth in
society, abusing their privileges of ownership to grossly malform
society, to arrange and engineer institutions of exploitation and
oppression over top of and in spite of society. Those who own and
exploit in society, and who appear to be so grossly and wantonly
abusing the privilege and function of their ownership in society,
ought to feel threatened! These owners and exploiters in society
should be made to feel as though the framework that serves as the
juridical basis of their ownership and exploitation is fundamentally
uncertain, in question, under scrutiny, mutable, and the object of
working class expropriation and transformation.
</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">
</span>
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span>
</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">
</span>
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">The function of a Social Democratic
Party is to remember in scales of decades and centuries, precisely to
keep a record of exploitations and fixes, mangy deals and cheats that
hurt working families, and to not let the exploiters and cheats in
society profit from the amnesia that they produce for and in the
working class. The function of a Social Democratic Party is to break
open and expose the falseness of easy answers, to refuse complacency
with rhetorical schemes which fuck around the marginalized and
working class, to ruthlessly expose the ways exploiters in society
obscure and mystify their malfeasance, and to bring the marginalized
and working class in society into a conversation about, and fight
for, a fundamentally different kind of society in which exploitation
and oppression <span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">are</span> abolished.
</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">
</span>
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span>
</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">
</span>
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">The Social Democratic Party of Canada
has elected to have a conversation about what Social Democracy means
for the present moment, socially, politically, economically, and
environmentally. The Social Democratic Party has elected to serve as
the venue for a discussion on the different interests in Canadian
society surrounding oil and gas development, how to develop the
productive forces, logistics and infrastructure of Canadian industry
in a sustainable way, and how to transition off a dependence on
fossil fuels entirely. Instead of capitulating to the false choice
of jobs or the environment that the Liberals and Conservatives
espouse, Social Democracy asks rather who owns wealth in society,
what it is being spent on, and interrogates if their continued
ownership of the means of production and exchange is best for
society. If a rational defence cannot be made for the particular
activities of those who own wealth in society then it has to be
seriously asked why they are allowed to exert such a controlling
influence over both the industrial development of society, and the
discourse surrounding it. These are fundamental social and ecological
questions that have been put off for too long, and the function of a
Social Democratic Party is to put those questions to the powerful,
even and especially if the wealthy and powerful in society find such
questions uncomfortable. Who owns what in society, why, and are the
things these people are doing with their wealth beneficial or
detrimental to society? The function of a Social Democratic Party is
to fight, on a daily basis, the interests of the exploiters and
plutocrats, whose interests are in every way served by the corrupt
political and economic organization of present society. The function
of a Social Democratic Party is to expose material relations as they
really are, and to explain and advocate for how they could otherwise
be. The foundational and aspirational aim of a Social Democratic
Party is to say 'this is how things are, this is the basic
organization of society with all its exploitations and oppressions
right now, and this is how it can be transformed and changed.'</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">
</span>
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span>
</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">
</span>
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">The Social Democratic Party expects
Justin Trudeau to live up to his lofty talk about social license, but
also expects and is planning that he won't, and is thus preparing as
a government in waiting insofar as the Liberals are proving every day
that they are socially, politically, and economically incompetent,
conceited, arrogant, and aristocratic. The rhetorical functions of
the very rich and their political mouthpieces are, in and of
themselves, very different from the rhetorical functions of those who
don't own the means of production and exchange in society. The
failure of social license is tearing Canadian society apart, and the
crisis of contemporary capitalism, and the daily reality of
austerity, is wholly inseparable from this. Justin Trudeau is shiny
and fake in a way basically everyone can see, and his government is
already serving the very whim of every two-bit fat-cat plutocrat in
Canada. Every cynical and fake word that dribbles out of the side of
phoney spoon-fed jackal, Justin Trudeau, is ammunition for the next
election, in which a reinvigorated, vibrant, and savvy Social
Democratic Party, will soundly trounce hollow-suit, Justin Trudeau,
and his gaggle of shabby and vestigial 1990s wonks.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">
</span>
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span>
</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">
</span>
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">The Liberals should be afraid of a
Social Democratic Party that knows the force and determination of its
own grassroots. The Liberals should be afraid of a Social Democratic
Party whose members will not accept spectacle. The Liberals should be
terrified and quaking in their boots of a Social Democratic Party
that is going to be making intelligent and rational critiques of
forms of ownership society, and the oftentimes exploitative
implications of such forms of ownership in society. Whence comes this
furious and invincible critique? It stems from the unifying force and
function of Social Democracy itself.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">
</span>
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span>
</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">
</span>
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Many different voices will come to the
fore in the coming months to articulate new visions for Canadian
democracy, each with a novel, considered, and principled stand with
respect to both the LEAP manifesto and energy and infrastructural
development in Canada. In Edmonton the NDP has affirmed that it is a
Social Democratic Party, informed by Socialist economics and rational
environmental critique, and it will conduct itself in this manner.
Hereafter the story will go that Tom Mulcair was a fearless and
indestructible opponent of every low and dispicable thing that Justin
Trudeau tried to do, the provincial and the federal wings of the NDP
unified under a banner of rational discussion and critique, prompted
and informed by the LEAP manifesto, and, together, held the
government to account, and went on to form the Government of Canada.
The NDP is dead! Long live the NDP!</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">
</span></div>
Dock Curriehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09979072460617749796noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4063385487236063231.post-58938877838792472012016-03-12T14:46:00.002-08:002016-03-19T12:21:37.166-07:00Empire, the Glitch: Integrated World Capitalism and Inter-Imperialist Struggle<blockquote class="tr_bq" style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">“</span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Events,
strikingly analogous, but occurring in different historical milieux,
led to quite disparate results. By studying each of these evolutions
on its own, and comparing them, one will easily discover the key to
the phenomenon, but it will never be arrived at by employing the
all-purpose formula of a general historico-philosophical theory whose
supreme virtue consists in being supra-historical.”</span> </blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq" style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">- Karl Marx, “Letter
to Otechestvenniye Zapiski (1877)” <u>Collected Works Vol XXIV</u> (New
York: International Publishers, 1989), 201.</span> </blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq" style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">“<span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-size: small;">History
is not the history of repetition, anti-historic history, the history
of kings and queens; it is finding the signifying breakthrough,
recognizing the point when the scales were tilted.”</span></span></span> </blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq" style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: small;">-
Félix Guattari, “Causality, Subjectivity and History (1965)” in
<u>Psychoanalysis and Transversality</u> tr. Ames Hodges (South Pasadena:
Semiotext[e], 2015), 241.</span></span> </blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq" style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">“Marx's
theory of historical repetition, as it appears notably in The
Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte, turns on the following
principle which does not seem to have been sufficiently understood by
historians: historical repetition is neither a matter of analogy nor
a concept produced by the reflection of historians, but above all a
condition of historical action itself.”</span> </blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq" style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">- Gilles Deleuze,
<u>Difference and Repetition</u> tr. Paul Patton (London: Continuum, 2001),
91.</span> </blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq" style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">
“At present, in
keeping with the general plan of the present work, we must examine
the exact economic data on this question. . . 'From the purely
economic point of view,' is 'ultra-imperialism' possible, or is it
ultra-nonsense?”</span> </blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq" style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">- V. I. Lenin,
“Imperialism: The Highest Stage of Capitalism” <u>Collected Works
Vol XXII</u> tr. Yuri Sdobnikov (Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1964), 271.</span> </blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq" style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">
“You will find out
this is not enough. Not to think is only barking at the good stuff.
Was it worth the shit, when it comes down? You will not know what the
holding out was good for. This is pretty much it.”</span> </blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq" style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">- Bottom of the
Hudson, “Pretty Much It” <u>Fantastic Hawk</u>, 2007.</span></blockquote>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<iframe allowfullscreen="" class="YOUTUBE-iframe-video" data-thumbnail-src="https://i.ytimg.com/vi/7zRJdFv4nic/0.jpg" frameborder="0" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/7zRJdFv4nic?feature=player_embedded" width="578"></iframe><br />
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Empire is the
Inertia of the End of History, the present made obscure to itself, its mystification and disconnection from political and economic reality and all antecedent
facts. Empire is characterized by the perpetual re-emergence of the
economic conditions of finance, monopoly, cartels, and capital
outflows from the dominant imperial assemblages; the social
conditions of austerity, impoverishment, xenophobia, and cognitive
dissonance; and the political conditions of competition between
belletristic demagogues. Empire and its repetitions are the
consequence of unresolved class antagonism, i.e. the existence of
economic classes and the disjunct between the interests of those who
own the means of production and exchange, and those who are, by
circumstance, compelled to sell their labour-activity. The political and economic antagonisms that gave rise to the world wars were never resolved, and thus they are now re-emerging. This lack of resolution and cyclical repetition is Empire. </span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Empire is necessary
for the continued reproduction and enlargement of
Capital-Nation-States and the further development of Real
Subsumption, i.e. “an evolutionary pattern in which the dominant
governmental-business complex increased over time in size, power, and
complexity - including social complexity;”</span><sup style="font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif;"><a class="sdfootnoteanc" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=4063385487236063231#sdfootnote1sym" name="sdfootnote1anc" style="font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif;">1</a> </sup></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Empire serves four
functions:</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br />
</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">(1) it resets rates
of profit for the ruling economic classes of the victorious imperial
organisms, which had erstwhile been falling, by contracting their
imperial organism to destroy their competitors and consuming the
social and economic resources of the disturbed and defeated (and is
thus characteristic of the relationship between ongoing “So-Called
Primitive Accumulation”<a class="sdfootnoteanc" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=4063385487236063231#sdfootnote2sym" name="sdfootnote2anc"><sup>2</sup></a>
and the so-called “counteracting factors”<a class="sdfootnoteanc" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=4063385487236063231#sdfootnote3sym" name="sdfootnote3anc"><sup>3</sup></a>
to “the Law of the Tendential Fall in the Rate of Profit.”<a class="sdfootnoteanc" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=4063385487236063231#sdfootnote4sym" name="sdfootnote4anc"><sup>4</sup></a>);</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">(2) it checks the
power of the developing working classes of the respective
Capital-Nation-States by subjecting them to conditions of total war
and mass slaughter against one another;</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">(3) it socially
mystifies the cyclical movements and disconnects the most proximate
cycle, materially and superstructurally, from previous social and
historical cycles and the causes and consequences of their specific
degeneration. Empire does this to, as Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri
write, “enlarge the realm of the consensuses that support its own
power,”<a class="sdfootnoteanc" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=4063385487236063231#sdfootnote5sym" name="sdfootnote5anc"><sup>5</sup></a>
“dissolving identity and history;”<a class="sdfootnoteanc" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=4063385487236063231#sdfootnote6sym" name="sdfootnote6anc"><sup>6</sup></a></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">(4) it selects by
competition the more industrially advanced and 'competitive' imperial
organs, i.e. those which are most efficiently able to extort the most
surplus labour from the working class in their own territorial
assemblages to design and operate the most extravagant weapons
against others. </span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">These four functions are really one and the same, namely that capitalist subsumption brings the working class into progressively more associated relations with one another – production and exchange are increasingly socialized - and thus successful conflict against the owners and directors of the means of production and exchange who exploit them – ultimately semi-unified finance capital - who, for their part, when confronted with the consequences of their own trans-national fixing agreements, drape themselves in the colours of their respective Capital-Nation-States and gin up an inter-imperialist conflict, in which, as </span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Debord
writes, fascism is “eliminated by stronger and more rational
forms of the same order.”</span><sup style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><a class="sdfootnoteanc" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=4063385487236063231#sdfootnote7sym" name="sdfootnote7anc">7</a></sup></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">To combat the degeneration you must understand mass psychology. Socially
damaged life demands dictatorial authority. Socially damaged life
demands that the State transform itself into a suicidal body without
organs. A perverse hatred of truth, concrete facts, proliferates
unchecked among the socially asphyxiated. Thus gangsters and thieves,
imperialist thugs, prey upon the sense of disorder and confusion to
reinstitute stronger forms of the same fascistic structure. Empire is
the entire cycle of the attempt of semi-unified finance capital to inaugurate
their joint exploitation of the entire world and its degeneration
into Inter-Imperialist Struggle.</span></div>
<blockquote class="tr_bq" style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">
“The incapacity
for freedom on the part of the masses of people is not innate. People
were not always incapable of freedom. Hence, fundamentally speaking,
they can become capable of freedom.”</span> </blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq" style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: small;">- Wilhelm
Reich, <u>The Mass Psychology of Fascism</u> tr. Vincent R. Carfagno (New
York: Noonday Press, 1970), 218.</span></span></blockquote>
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</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Beverly J. Silver
and Giovanni Arrighi write that “a comparison with past periods
that are broadly analogous with the present can help both in
explaining the shifting perceptions and in dissipating the global fog
that still surrounds us.”<a class="sdfootnoteanc" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=4063385487236063231#sdfootnote8sym" name="sdfootnote8anc"><sup>8</sup></a>
Maurizio Lazzarato writes that the “two major phases in the
domination of finance capital”<a class="sdfootnoteanc" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=4063385487236063231#sdfootnote9sym" name="sdfootnote9anc"><sup>9</sup></a>
were “from 1870 to 1914, during which, for the first time, the
complete process of capital developed – including industrial,
commercial, and finance capital – in conformity with the exigencies
of finance capital”<a class="sdfootnoteanc" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=4063385487236063231#sdfootnote10sym" name="sdfootnote10anc"><sup>10</sup></a>
and the second, which “began in the 1970s, after which it would no
longer be a question of hegemony but of a total reconfiguration of
the planet by finance capital and its axiomatics.”<a class="sdfootnoteanc" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=4063385487236063231#sdfootnote11sym" name="sdfootnote11anc"><sup>11</sup></a>
What characterizes our day today is precisely the completion of the
process of competition. So if capitalism was once associated
producers competing with one another, then monopoly is merely the
consequence and culmination of this competition. Giovanni Arrighi and
Beverly J. Silver argue that, in both the periods 1870 to 1914, and
from 1970 to present day, “finance capital rose to a dominant
position in the global economy relative to capital invested in
production. In both periods, moreover, the financialization of
economic activities proved destabilizing, culminating in major
crises, notably in 1929 and 2008.”<a class="sdfootnoteanc" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=4063385487236063231#sdfootnote12sym" name="sdfootnote12anc"><sup>12</sup></a>
The monopolist or financier has thus, once again, come to occupy a
position of both incredible power in virtue of their abstract wealth,
thus ownership over the means of production and exchange, and
incredible social reaction and sabotage with respect to the societies
that they prey upon.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">The repetitions
inherent to capitalism and the state, and the repetitional functions
immanent to the composite forms and mixed semiotics of
Capital-Nation-State, occur in the manner of the rise and decline of
respective hegemonies, and the restructuring of the world hegemonic
system on ever larger foundations. Giovanni Arrighi writes that “the
modern world system. . . has been formed by, and has expanded on the
basis of, recurrent fundamental restructurings led and governed by
successive hegemonic states.”<a class="sdfootnoteanc" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=4063385487236063231#sdfootnote13sym" name="sdfootnote13anc"><sup>13</sup></a>
He argues that capitalism and territorialism – i.e. what Deleuze
and Guattari call relative deterritorialization and
territorialization – function “as opposite modes of rule or
logics of power,”<a class="sdfootnoteanc" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=4063385487236063231#sdfootnote14sym" name="sdfootnote14anc"><sup>14</sup></a>
or rather “different combinations of coercion and capital in
processes of state-making and war-making which may be oriented
towards the same objective as far as gaining control over
territory/population or means of payments is concerned.”<a class="sdfootnoteanc" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=4063385487236063231#sdfootnote15sym" name="sdfootnote15anc"><sup>15</sup></a>
In other words, the two respective logics of power do not operate “in
isolation from one another”<a class="sdfootnoteanc" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=4063385487236063231#sdfootnote16sym" name="sdfootnote16anc"><sup>16</sup></a>
but rather “in relation to one another, within a given
spatio-temporal context.”<a class="sdfootnoteanc" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=4063385487236063231#sdfootnote17sym" name="sdfootnote17anc"><sup>17</sup></a>
Karatani writes that “the different stages of global capitalism
arise as changes in the nature of the union between capital and the
state and that these moreover unfold not as a linear development but
as a cyclical process.”<a class="sdfootnoteanc" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=4063385487236063231#sdfootnote18sym" name="sdfootnote18anc"><sup>18</sup></a>
He argues that “repetition does not arise simply because people
borrow patterns from the past,”<a class="sdfootnoteanc" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=4063385487236063231#sdfootnote19sym" name="sdfootnote19anc"><sup>19</sup></a>
but rather because they have to, because there is “a structure of
repetition unique to the state”<a class="sdfootnoteanc" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=4063385487236063231#sdfootnote20sym" name="sdfootnote20anc"><sup>20</sup></a>
which “transcends the consciousness of individual persons.”<a class="sdfootnoteanc" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=4063385487236063231#sdfootnote21sym" name="sdfootnote21anc"><sup>21</sup></a>
Accounts of these repetitions, their social, political, and economic
causes, functions, and consequences, can be found in the work of Marx
(The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Napoleon), Gilles Deleuze &
Felix Guattari (Thousand Plateaus), Kojin Karatani (The Structure of
World History: From Modes of Production to Modes of Exchange - 2014),
Giovanni Arrighi (Geometry of Imperialism and The Long Twentieth
Century), and Maurizio Lazzarato (Making of Indebted Man and
Governing by Debt). This satisfactory account (to my eye, anyway)
centers around Marx, Karatani, and Guattari, though the phenomenon
they chart are also the substance of Nikolai Dmitriyevich
Kondratiev's work; Lenin's Imperialism: The Highest Stage of
Capitalism (1917); Trotsky's The Curve of Capitalist Development
(1923); Joseph Schumpeter's Business Cycles (1939); Makoto Itoh's The
Basic Theory of Capitalism: The Forms and Substance of the Capitalist
Economy (1988); and Ernst Mandel Long Waves of Capitalist Development
(1995).
</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br />
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<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Empire is thus much
like a glitch in history, insofar as it continually returns us back
into an approximation of prior conditions that, as a function of
Empire itself, remains only partially or obscurely recognized or
understood. Empire is thus the indeterminacy or suspension of
capitalist social relations within a play of Capital-Nation-States
and their possible articulations with respect to one another in such
a way as to preserve, and never imperil, bourgeois property rights,
and indeed rather to circuitously and indirectly strengthen them
through catastrophic social damage and warfare.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Marx writes that:</span></div>
<blockquote class="tr_bq" style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">
“The whole
movement. . . seems to turn around in a never-ending circle, which we
can only get out of by assuming a primitive accumulation (the
'previous accumulation' of Adam Smith) which precedes capitalist
accumulation; an accumulation which is not the result of the
capitalist mode of production but its point of departure.”<br /> </span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">- Karl Marx, <u>Capital
Vol I</u> tr. Ben Fowkes (London: Penguin, 1990), 873. </span></blockquote>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Anna Kornbluh writes that:</span></div>
<blockquote class="tr_bq" style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">
“The glitching
circuit distills the topos of drive as a lurching, incomplete
circulation propelled forth by its own failure to approach its
object. We arrive at the end of a lengthy journey only to find
ourselves back at the beginning. Later Marxist reformulations of
primitive accumulation as a constant feature of capitalism, rather
than a stage, make explicit what unfurls implicitly in this image of
the glitching circuit.”</span></blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq" style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">- Anna Kornbluh, “On
Marx's Victorian Novel” <i>Mediations</i>, 25;1, 2016.</span></blockquote>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Gavin Walker writes that:</span></div>
<blockquote class="tr_bq" style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">
“[T]he 'sublime
perversion' presented in the nucleus of capital is this torsion
between on the one hand capital's endlessness, its untraceable and
repeating origin, which is erased over and over again by the
expression of the exchange process, which appears as a smooth circle
without beginning or end, and on the other capital's seeming
impossibility, its inability to control its drive toward its own
suicide or transcendence of itself, expressed in the fact that
capital must pursue the immiseration of the historical body of the
worker, on which it nevertheless relies for the reproduction of labor
power, that is, for the consumption of the very products it would
produce. This 'vicious circle' in Marx is described by the term
fehler-haften Kreislauf, which we might rather translate as a
'defective circle,' a circuit that arrogates itself as a circular
interiority but can never completely overwrite the internal elements
that undermine its very operation.”<br /> </span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">- Gavin Walker, <u>The
Sublime Perversion of Capital: Marxist Theory and the Politics of
History in Modern Japan</u> (Durham: Duke University Press, 2016), 12.</span></blockquote>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Empire
is <span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-size: small;">a
“mass psychology of submission,”<a class="sdfootnoteanc" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=4063385487236063231#sdfootnote22sym" name="sdfootnote22anc"><sup>22</sup></a>
an “eternity of noisy insignificance.”<a class="sdfootnoteanc" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=4063385487236063231#sdfootnote23sym" name="sdfootnote23anc"><sup>23</sup></a>
</span></span>Empire
is the metastasis of Capital to every sphere of life; Empire is “the
globalisation of the false”<span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><a class="sdfootnoteanc" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=4063385487236063231#sdfootnote24sym" name="sdfootnote24anc"><sup>24</sup></a>
and </span></span>“the
falsification of the globe,<span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-size: small;">”<a class="sdfootnoteanc" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=4063385487236063231#sdfootnote25sym" name="sdfootnote25anc"><sup>25</sup></a>
it </span></span>invades
vertically from a spaceless instantenaity, transpiercing the exposed
nervous system of the terrestrial and social aggregates; <span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-size: small;">“an
independent empire in the spectacle,”<a class="sdfootnoteanc" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=4063385487236063231#sdfootnote26sym" name="sdfootnote26anc"><sup>26</sup></a>
“the empire of modern passivity”<a class="sdfootnoteanc" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=4063385487236063231#sdfootnote27sym" name="sdfootnote27anc"><sup>27</sup></a>
which “covers the entire surface of the world and bathes endlessly
in its own glory;”<a class="sdfootnoteanc" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=4063385487236063231#sdfootnote28sym" name="sdfootnote28anc"><sup>28</sup></a>
Empire is administrated decay, collapse, and the excise of duty upon
the consequences of collapse, “a paroxystic form of integration of
different types of machinisms: technical machines, economic machines,
but also conceptual machines, religious machines, aesthetic machines,
perceptual machines, desiring machines;”<a class="sdfootnoteanc" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=4063385487236063231#sdfootnote29sym" name="sdfootnote29anc"><sup>29</sup></a>
Empire is “an increased capacity for the machinic integration of
all human activities and faculties,”<a class="sdfootnoteanc" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=4063385487236063231#sdfootnote30sym" name="sdfootnote30anc"><sup>30</sup></a>
“optimal libidinal consent,”<a class="sdfootnoteanc" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=4063385487236063231#sdfootnote31sym" name="sdfootnote31anc"><sup>31</sup></a>
“active submission,”<a class="sdfootnoteanc" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=4063385487236063231#sdfootnote32sym" name="sdfootnote32anc"><sup>32</sup></a>
and thus “the high point of the ascendency of capital over
society;”<a class="sdfootnoteanc" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=4063385487236063231#sdfootnote33sym" name="sdfootnote33anc"><sup>33</sup></a>
Debord writes that:</span></span></span></div>
<blockquote class="tr_bq" style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: left;">
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">“</span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-size: small;">In
the integrated spectacle, the laws are asleep; because they were not
made for the new production techniques, and because they are evaded
in distribution by new types of agreement. What the public thinks, or
prefers, is of no importance. This is what is hidden by the spectacle
of all these opinion polls, elections, modernizing restructurings. No
matter who the winners are, the faithful customers will get the worst
of it, because that is exactly what has been produced for them. The
widespread talk of a ‘legal state’ only dates from the moment
when the modern, so-called democratic state generally ceased to be
one. The fact that the expression was only popularized shortly after
1970 and, appropriately, in Italy is far from accidental. In many
fields, laws are even made precisely so that they may be evaded, by
those who have the means to do so.”</span></span></span> </div>
</blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq" style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: left;">
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">- Guy
Debord, <u>Comments on the Society of the Spectacle</u> tr. Malcom Imrie
(London: Verso, 1990), 70.</span></span></div>
<span style="font-size: small;">
</span></blockquote>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: left;">
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br />
</span></div>
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: left;">
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;">Empire
is “a geopolitics of crisis” in which “internal crisis. . . is
not the sign of collapse but the motor of development,”<a class="sdfootnoteanc" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=4063385487236063231#sdfootnote34sym" name="sdfootnote34anc"><sup>34</sup></a>
that is, “a regime that effectively encompasses the spatial
totality, or really, that rules over the entire 'civilized' world. .
. an order that effectively suspends history and thereby fixes the
existing state of affairs for eternity;”<a class="sdfootnoteanc" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=4063385487236063231#sdfootnote35sym" name="sdfootnote35anc"><sup>35</sup></a>
</span><span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-size: small;">Empire
</span></span><span style="font-size: small;">“sets
itself up 'above' and 'below' the pre-capitalist and capitalist
segmentary relations (that is to say, at once and the same time, at
the world level and at the molecular level);”<sup><a class="sdfootnoteanc" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=4063385487236063231#sdfootnote36sym" name="sdfootnote36anc">36</a> </sup></span></span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; text-align: justify;">Lenin argues that
the phenomenon of so-called ultra-imperialism, described by Karl
Kautsky, is “inevitably nothing more than a 'truce' in periods
between wars.”</span><a class="sdfootnoteanc" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=4063385487236063231#sdfootnote37sym" name="sdfootnote37anc" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; text-align: justify;"><sup>37</sup></a><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; text-align: justify;">
He writes that:</span></div>
</div>
<blockquote class="tr_bq" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">
“Peaceful
alliances prepare the ground for wars, and in their turn grow out of
wars; the one conditions the other, producing alternating forms of
peaceful and non-peaceful struggle on one and the same basis of
imperialist connections and relations within world economics and
world politics.”</span> </blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">- V. I. Lenin,
“Imperialism: The Highest Stage of Capitalism” <u>Collected Works
Vol XXII</u> tr. Yuri Sdobnikov (Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1964), 295.</span></blockquote>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: small;">Lenin is asserting
that so long as classes exist, so too will inter-imperialist
struggle, that capitalist states cannot choose not to go to war with one
another, that they are programmed to go to war with one another at a
certain stage of class struggle and inevitably will as a constituent
element of their very nature. He argues that the respective imperial
organisms and their respective bourgeois financial oligarchies do not
“divide the world. . . out of any particular malice”<a class="sdfootnoteanc" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=4063385487236063231#sdfootnote38sym" name="sdfootnote38anc"><sup>38</sup></a>
but rather as a function of “the degree of concentration which has
been reached [which] forces them to adopt this method in order to
obtain profits,”<a class="sdfootnoteanc" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=4063385487236063231#sdfootnote39sym" name="sdfootnote39anc"><sup>39</sup></a>
and that while “the forms of the struggle may and do constantly
change in accordance with varying, relatively specific and temporary
causes, but the substance of the struggle, its class content,
positively cannot change while classes exist.”<sup><a class="sdfootnoteanc" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=4063385487236063231#sdfootnote40sym" name="sdfootnote40anc">40</a> </sup></span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">That said, if what Comrade Lenin argues is that no matter how arduous, how crazed its twists and turns, the consequence of inter-imperialist struggle – the theatre of gangsters of all stripes – can only be proletarian victory, then he may yet be proved right. If, however, what Comrade Lenin says is that the consequence of the immediate and specific inter-imperialist struggle that lay before him, and which he bore witness to, could only be one of the immediate and progressive victory of the proletariat, then clearly he was wrong - irrespective of however much one may wish Comrade Lenin to have been right - clearly it was not. Comrade Lenin would be off in his estimation by at least one Kondratiev wave! And just how many historical repetitions ought one allow Comrade Lenin, if he is allowed this one? </span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br />Karatani contends, c</span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">ontra Hardt and Negri, that the contemporary period is neither
characterized by the emergence of Empire in their terms, nor the
continuation of the kind of American Empire that characterized the
period from the fall of the Soviet Union and into the Second Iraq
War, but rather by “the emergence of multiple Empires.”</span><a class="sdfootnoteanc" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=4063385487236063231#sdfootnote41sym" name="sdfootnote41anc" style="font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif;"><sup>41</sup></a><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">
Karatani therefore contends that the contemporary period is a
repetition, a new “imperialistic period,”</span><a class="sdfootnoteanc" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=4063385487236063231#sdfootnote42sym" name="sdfootnote42anc" style="font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif;"><sup>42</sup></a><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">
in which “supranational state[s],”</span><a class="sdfootnoteanc" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=4063385487236063231#sdfootnote43sym" name="sdfootnote43anc" style="font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif;"><sup>43</sup></a><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">
“former world empires that were situated at the periphery of the
modern world system – China, India, the Islamic world, Russia, and
so on – have begun to reermege.”</span><a class="sdfootnoteanc" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=4063385487236063231#sdfootnote44sym" name="sdfootnote44anc" style="font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif;"><sup>44</sup></a><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">
He contends that while “the state will undoubtedly go to great
lengths in attempting to preserve the possibility of capital
accumulation,”</span><a class="sdfootnoteanc" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=4063385487236063231#sdfootnote45sym" name="sdfootnote45anc" style="font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif;"><sup>45</sup></a><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">
“the world in which commodity exchange (mode of exchange C) is
predominant will regress to a world based on plunder and violent
appropriation carried out by the state,”</span><a class="sdfootnoteanc" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=4063385487236063231#sdfootnote46sym" name="sdfootnote46anc" style="font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif;"><sup>46</sup></a><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">
and that “the likely result of a general crisis of capitalism is
war.”</span><sup style="font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif;"><a class="sdfootnoteanc" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=4063385487236063231#sdfootnote47sym" name="sdfootnote47anc">47</a></sup></div>
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</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">As Silver and Arrighi ask:</span></div>
<blockquote class="tr_bq" style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">“What are the
implications for the present of this pendulum swing back and forth
between 'extensive' (cosmopolitan-imperial) regimes and 'intensive'
(corporate-national) regimes superimposed on a linear trend of
increasing complexity? If the pattern were to hold into the future,
then we would expect the strategies and stucture of the
governmental-business complex leading the next long century to be
'extensive' in comparison with the 'intensive' US regime, although of
greater formal compexity than in the nineteenth-century
British-centered material expansion of the world system.”</span> </blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq" style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">- Beverly J. Silver
and Giovanni Arrighi, “The End of the Long Twentieth Century” in
<u>Business as Usual: The Roots of the Global Financial Meltdown</u> ed.
Craig Calhoun and Georgi Derluguian (New York: New York University
Press, 2011), 62.</span></blockquote>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br />
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Lazzarato writes that:</span></div>
<blockquote class="tr_bq" style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">“In the period
beginning in the 1970s, the global market is no longer fragmented
into a multiplicity of national imperialisms embroiled in a bitter
struggle, as had been the case before the First World War. It is
configured, rather, as a polycentric transnational space traversed
with tensions, antagonisms, and contradictory interests that manage
momentarily to reconcile more or less well. In this configuration,
'the integrally economic state' is, given its diminished sovereignty,
only one constituent of the power apparatuses that facilitate and
guarantee the existence and proliferation of the logic of finance
capital (M-M'). The state is no longer able to represent the general
interest; on the contrary, it is radically subordinated to financial
logic, functioning as a component part of its mechanisms.”</span> </blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq" style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">- Maurizio Lazzarato,
<u>Governing by Debt</u> tr. Joshua David Jordan (Los Angeles: Semiotext[e],
2015), 230.</span></blockquote>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br />
</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">What is the
relationship between Integrated World Capitalism and
Inter-Imperialist Struggle?; </span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">What are the
durations and durabilities of the so-called 'peacetimes' between
periods of Inter-Imperialist Struggle, and why have they consistently
degenerated into Inter-Imperialist Struggle?; </span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">What positive
content, if any, ought we assign to periods of so-called 'peacetime'
with respect to the periods of Inter-Imperialist Struggle which
punctuate and bracket them?; Does the association of the means
of production and exchange require a 'revolutionary crisis' as
catalyst, as Lenin believed, or can this end be achieve without such
a catalyst?; </span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">What is the current
situation? Will a 'extensive' regime, of 'greater formal complexity,'
arise to supplant US hegemony, as Arrighi and Silver argue? Is it 'a
polycentric transnational space traversed with tensions, antagonisms,
and contradictory interests that manage momentarily to reconcile more
or less well' as Lazzarato holds? Is it a 'global regime of lex
mercatoria,' an 'internal expression of agreement among capitalists'
as Hardt and Negri argue? Or is it a new “imperialistic period. . .
a fierce struggle to become the next hegemonic power," with
world war being merely a capitalist crisis away, as Karatani holds?</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Guattari and Alliez
write that:</span></div>
<blockquote class="tr_bq" style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">
“The power of the
productive process of Integrated World Capitalism seems inexorable,
and its social effects incapable of being turned back; but it
overturns so many things, comes into conflict with so many ways of
life and social valorizations, that it does not seem at all absurd to
anticipate that the development of new collective responses – new
structures of declaration, evaluation and action – coming from the
greatest variety of horizons, might finally succeed in bringing it
down.”</span> </blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq" style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">- </span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Félix</span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"> Guattari &
Eric Alliez, “Capitalist Systems, Structures and Processes” <u>The
Guattari Reader</u> ed. Gary Genosko (Cambridge: Blackwell, 1996), 246.</span></blockquote>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div id="sdfootnote1">
<div class="sdfootnote" style="margin-left: 0cm; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div class="sdfootnote" style="margin-left: 0cm; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: "courier new" , "courier" , monospace; font-size: xx-small;"><a class="sdfootnotesym" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=4063385487236063231#sdfootnote1anc" name="sdfootnote1sym">1</a>
Beverly J. Silver and Giovanni
Arrighi, <i>“The End of
the Long Twentieth Century”</i>
in <u>Business as Usual:
The Roots of the Global Financial Meltdown ed. Craig Calhoun and
Georgi Derluguian</u>
(New York: New York University Press, 2011), 56.</span></div>
</div>
<div id="sdfootnote2">
<div class="sdfootnote" style="margin-left: 0cm; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: "courier new" , "courier" , monospace; font-size: xx-small;"><a class="sdfootnotesym" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=4063385487236063231#sdfootnote2anc" name="sdfootnote2sym">2</a>
Karl Marx, <u>Capital Vol
I</u> tr. Ben Fowkes
(London: Penguin, 1990), 872.</span></div>
</div>
<div id="sdfootnote3">
<div class="sdfootnote" style="margin-left: 0cm; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: "courier new" , "courier" , monospace; font-size: xx-small;"><a class="sdfootnotesym" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=4063385487236063231#sdfootnote3anc" name="sdfootnote3sym">3</a>
Marx, <u>Capital Vol. III</u> tr. David Ferbach (London: Penguin,
1991), 339.</span></div>
</div>
<div id="sdfootnote4">
<div class="sdfootnote" style="margin-left: 0cm; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: "courier new" , "courier" , monospace; font-size: xx-small;"><a class="sdfootnotesym" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=4063385487236063231#sdfootnote4anc" name="sdfootnote4sym">4</a>
Ibid, 316.</span></div>
</div>
<div id="sdfootnote5">
<div class="sdfootnote" style="margin-left: 0cm; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: "courier new" , "courier" , monospace; font-size: xx-small;"><a class="sdfootnotesym" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=4063385487236063231#sdfootnote5anc" name="sdfootnote5sym">5</a>
Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri, <u>Empire</u> (Cambridge: Harvard
University Press, 2000), 15.</span></div>
</div>
<div id="sdfootnote6">
<div class="sdfootnote" style="margin-left: 0cm; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: "courier new" , "courier" , monospace; font-size: xx-small;"><a class="sdfootnotesym" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=4063385487236063231#sdfootnote6anc" name="sdfootnote6sym">6</a>
Ibid, 34.</span></div>
</div>
<div id="sdfootnote7">
<div class="sdendnote" style="margin-left: 0cm; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: "courier new" , "courier" , monospace; font-size: xx-small;"><a class="sdfootnotesym" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=4063385487236063231#sdfootnote7anc" name="sdfootnote7sym">7</a>
Guy
Debord, <u>Society
of the Spectacle</u>
(Detroit: Black & Red Press, 1970), 109.</span></div>
</div>
<div id="sdfootnote8">
<div class="sdfootnote" style="margin-left: 0cm; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: "courier new" , "courier" , monospace; font-size: xx-small;"><a class="sdfootnotesym" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=4063385487236063231#sdfootnote8anc" name="sdfootnote8sym">8</a>
Silver and Arrighi, <i>"The
End of the Long Twentieth Century,”</i>
54.</span></div>
</div>
<div id="sdfootnote9">
<div class="sdfootnote" style="margin-left: 0cm; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: "courier new" , "courier" , monospace; font-size: xx-small;"><a class="sdfootnotesym" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=4063385487236063231#sdfootnote9anc" name="sdfootnote9sym">9</a>
Maurizio Lazzarato, <u>Governing by Debt</u> tr. Joshua David Jordan
(Los Angeles: Semiotext[e], 2015), 214.</span></div>
</div>
<div id="sdfootnote10">
<div class="sdfootnote" style="margin-left: 0cm; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: "courier new" , "courier" , monospace; font-size: xx-small;"><a class="sdfootnotesym" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=4063385487236063231#sdfootnote10anc" name="sdfootnote10sym">10</a>
Ibid.</span></div>
</div>
<div id="sdfootnote11">
<div class="sdfootnote" style="margin-left: 0cm; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: "courier new" , "courier" , monospace; font-size: xx-small;"><a class="sdfootnotesym" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=4063385487236063231#sdfootnote11anc" name="sdfootnote11sym">11</a>
Ibid.</span></div>
</div>
<div id="sdfootnote12">
<div class="sdfootnote" style="margin-left: 0cm; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: "courier new" , "courier" , monospace; font-size: xx-small;"><a class="sdfootnotesym" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=4063385487236063231#sdfootnote12anc" name="sdfootnote12sym">12</a>
Silver and Arrighi, <i>"The
End of the Long Twentieth Century,”</i>
54.</span></div>
</div>
<div id="sdfootnote13">
<div class="sdfootnote" style="margin-left: 0cm; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: "courier new" , "courier" , monospace; font-size: xx-small;"><a class="sdfootnotesym" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=4063385487236063231#sdfootnote13anc" name="sdfootnote13sym">13</a>
Arrighi, <u>The Long Twentieth Century: Money, Power, and the
Origins of Our Times</u>
(London: Verso, 2010), 31-32.</span></div>
</div>
<div id="sdfootnote14">
<div class="sdfootnote" style="margin-left: 0cm; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: "courier new" , "courier" , monospace; font-size: xx-small;"><a class="sdfootnotesym" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=4063385487236063231#sdfootnote14anc" name="sdfootnote14sym">14</a>
Ibid, 34.</span></div>
</div>
<div id="sdfootnote15">
<div class="sdfootnote" style="margin-left: 0cm; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: "courier new" , "courier" , monospace; font-size: xx-small;"><a class="sdfootnotesym" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=4063385487236063231#sdfootnote15anc" name="sdfootnote15sym">15</a>
Ibid, 35.</span></div>
</div>
<div id="sdfootnote16">
<div class="sdfootnote" style="margin-left: 0cm; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: "courier new" , "courier" , monospace; font-size: xx-small;"><a class="sdfootnotesym" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=4063385487236063231#sdfootnote16anc" name="sdfootnote16sym">16</a>
Ibid.</span></div>
</div>
<div id="sdfootnote17">
<div class="sdfootnote" style="margin-left: 0cm; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: "courier new" , "courier" , monospace; font-size: xx-small;"><a class="sdfootnotesym" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=4063385487236063231#sdfootnote17anc" name="sdfootnote17sym">17</a>
Ibid.</span></div>
</div>
<div id="sdfootnote18">
<div class="sdfootnote" style="margin-left: 0cm; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: "courier new" , "courier" , monospace; font-size: xx-small;"><a class="sdfootnotesym" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=4063385487236063231#sdfootnote18anc" name="sdfootnote18sym">18</a>
Kojin Karatani, <u>The Structure of World History: </u><u>From Modes
of Production to Modes of Exchange</u> tr. Michael K. Bourdaghs
(Durham: Duke University Press, 2014), 272.</span></div>
</div>
<div id="sdfootnote19">
<div class="sdfootnote" style="margin-left: 0cm; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: "courier new" , "courier" , monospace; font-size: xx-small;"><a class="sdfootnotesym" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=4063385487236063231#sdfootnote19anc" name="sdfootnote19sym">19</a>
Ibid, 274.</span></div>
</div>
<div id="sdfootnote20">
<div class="sdfootnote" style="margin-left: 0cm; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: "courier new" , "courier" , monospace; font-size: xx-small;"><a class="sdfootnotesym" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=4063385487236063231#sdfootnote20anc" name="sdfootnote20sym">20</a>
Ibid.</span></div>
</div>
<div id="sdfootnote21">
<div class="sdfootnote" style="margin-left: 0cm; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: "courier new" , "courier" , monospace; font-size: xx-small;"><a class="sdfootnotesym" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=4063385487236063231#sdfootnote21anc" name="sdfootnote21sym">21</a>
Ibid.</span></div>
</div>
<div id="sdfootnote22">
<div class="sdendnote" style="margin-left: 0cm; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: "courier new" , "courier" , monospace; font-size: xx-small;"><a class="sdfootnotesym" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=4063385487236063231#sdfootnote22anc" name="sdfootnote22sym">22</a>
Debord,
<u>Comments
on the Society of the Spectacle</u>
tr. Malcom Imrie (London: Verso, 1990), 27.</span></div>
</div>
<div id="sdfootnote23">
<div class="sdendnote" style="margin-left: 0cm; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: "courier new" , "courier" , monospace; font-size: xx-small;"><a class="sdfootnotesym" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=4063385487236063231#sdfootnote23anc" name="sdfootnote23sym">23</a>
Ibid,
15.</span></div>
</div>
<div id="sdfootnote24">
<div class="sdendnote" style="margin-left: 0cm; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: "courier new" , "courier" , monospace; font-size: xx-small;"><a class="sdfootnotesym" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=4063385487236063231#sdfootnote24anc" name="sdfootnote24sym">24</a>
Ibid,
10.</span></div>
</div>
<div id="sdfootnote25">
<div class="sdendnote" style="margin-left: 0cm; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: "courier new" , "courier" , monospace; font-size: xx-small;"><a class="sdfootnotesym" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=4063385487236063231#sdfootnote25anc" name="sdfootnote25sym">25</a>
Ibid,
10.</span></div>
</div>
<div id="sdfootnote26">
<div class="sdendnote" style="margin-left: 0cm; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: "courier new" , "courier" , monospace; font-size: xx-small;"><a class="sdfootnotesym" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=4063385487236063231#sdfootnote26anc" name="sdfootnote26sym">26</a>
Debord,
<u>Society
of the Spectacle</u>,
22.</span></div>
</div>
<div id="sdfootnote27">
<div class="sdendnote" style="margin-left: 0cm; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: "courier new" , "courier" , monospace; font-size: xx-small;"><a class="sdfootnotesym" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=4063385487236063231#sdfootnote27anc" name="sdfootnote27sym">27</a>
Ibid,
13.</span></div>
</div>
<div id="sdfootnote28">
<div class="sdendnote" style="margin-left: 0cm; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: "courier new" , "courier" , monospace; font-size: xx-small;"><a class="sdfootnotesym" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=4063385487236063231#sdfootnote28anc" name="sdfootnote28sym">28</a>
Ibid.</span></div>
</div>
<div id="sdfootnote29">
<div class="sdfootnote" style="margin-left: 0cm; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: "courier new" , "courier" , monospace; font-size: xx-small;"><a class="sdfootnotesym" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=4063385487236063231#sdfootnote29anc" name="sdfootnote29sym">29</a>
Félix
Guattari & Eric Alliez, <i>“Capitalist
Systems, Structures and Processes”</i> <u>The Guattari
Reader</u> ed. Gary Genosko (Cambridge: Blackwell, 1996), 235.</span></div>
</div>
<div id="sdfootnote30">
<div class="sdfootnote" style="margin-left: 0cm; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: "courier new" , "courier" , monospace; font-size: xx-small;"><a class="sdfootnotesym" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=4063385487236063231#sdfootnote30anc" name="sdfootnote30sym">30</a>
Ibid, 244.</span></div>
</div>
<div id="sdfootnote31">
<div class="sdfootnote" style="margin-left: 0cm; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: "courier new" , "courier" , monospace; font-size: xx-small;"><a class="sdfootnotesym" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=4063385487236063231#sdfootnote31anc" name="sdfootnote31sym">31</a>
Ibid, 238.</span></div>
</div>
<div id="sdfootnote32">
<div class="sdfootnote" style="margin-left: 0cm; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: "courier new" , "courier" , monospace; font-size: xx-small;"><a class="sdfootnotesym" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=4063385487236063231#sdfootnote32anc" name="sdfootnote32sym">32</a>
Ibid, 238.</span></div>
</div>
<div id="sdfootnote33">
<div class="sdfootnote" style="margin-left: 0cm; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: "courier new" , "courier" , monospace; font-size: xx-small;"><a class="sdfootnotesym" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=4063385487236063231#sdfootnote33anc" name="sdfootnote33sym">33</a>
Ibid, 244.</span></div>
</div>
<div id="sdfootnote34">
<div class="sdfootnote" style="margin-left: 0cm; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: "courier new" , "courier" , monospace; font-size: xx-small;"><a class="sdfootnotesym" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=4063385487236063231#sdfootnote34anc" name="sdfootnote34sym">34</a>
Hardt and Negri, <u>Multitude:
War and Democracy in the Age of Empire</u>
(New York: Penguin, 2004), 314.</span></div>
</div>
<div id="sdfootnote35">
<div class="sdfootnote" style="margin-left: 0cm; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: "courier new" , "courier" , monospace; font-size: xx-small;"><a class="sdfootnotesym" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=4063385487236063231#sdfootnote35anc" name="sdfootnote35sym">35</a>
Hardt and Negri, <u>Empire</u>, xiv.</span></div>
</div>
<div id="sdfootnote36">
<div class="sdfootnote" style="margin-left: 0cm; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: "courier new" , "courier" , monospace; font-size: xx-small;"><a class="sdfootnotesym" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=4063385487236063231#sdfootnote36anc" name="sdfootnote36sym">36</a>
Guattari and Alliez, <i>“Capitalist Systems, Structures and
Processes,”</i> 244.</span></div>
</div>
<div id="sdfootnote37">
<div class="sdfootnote" style="margin-left: 0cm; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: "courier new" , "courier" , monospace; font-size: xx-small;"><a class="sdfootnotesym" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=4063385487236063231#sdfootnote37anc" name="sdfootnote37sym">37</a>
V. I. Lenin, <i>“Imperialism: The Highest Stage of Capitalism”</i>
<u>Collected Works Vol XXII</u> tr. Yuri Sdobnikov (Moscow: Progress
Publishers, 1964), 295.</span></div>
</div>
<div id="sdfootnote38">
<div class="sdfootnote" style="margin-left: 0cm; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: "courier new" , "courier" , monospace; font-size: xx-small;"><a class="sdfootnotesym" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=4063385487236063231#sdfootnote38anc" name="sdfootnote38sym">38</a>
Ibid, 253.</span></div>
</div>
<div id="sdfootnote39">
<div class="sdfootnote" style="margin-left: 0cm; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: "courier new" , "courier" , monospace; font-size: xx-small;"><a class="sdfootnotesym" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=4063385487236063231#sdfootnote39anc" name="sdfootnote39sym">39</a>
Ibid.</span></div>
</div>
<div id="sdfootnote40">
<div class="sdfootnote" style="margin-left: 0cm; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: "courier new" , "courier" , monospace; font-size: xx-small;"><a class="sdfootnotesym" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=4063385487236063231#sdfootnote40anc" name="sdfootnote40sym">40</a>
Ibid.</span></div>
</div>
<div id="sdfootnote41">
<div class="sdfootnote" style="margin-left: 0cm; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: "courier new" , "courier" , monospace; font-size: xx-small;"><a class="sdfootnotesym" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=4063385487236063231#sdfootnote41anc" name="sdfootnote41sym">41</a>
Karatani, <u>The Structure of World History</u>, 282.</span></div>
</div>
<div id="sdfootnote42">
<div class="sdfootnote" style="margin-left: 0cm; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: "courier new" , "courier" , monospace; font-size: xx-small;"><a class="sdfootnotesym" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=4063385487236063231#sdfootnote42anc" name="sdfootnote42sym">42</a>
Ibid.</span></div>
</div>
<div id="sdfootnote43">
<div class="sdfootnote" style="margin-left: 0cm; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: "courier new" , "courier" , monospace; font-size: xx-small;"><a class="sdfootnotesym" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=4063385487236063231#sdfootnote43anc" name="sdfootnote43sym">43</a>
Ibid, 283.</span></div>
</div>
<div id="sdfootnote44">
<div class="sdfootnote" style="margin-left: 0cm; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: "courier new" , "courier" , monospace; font-size: xx-small;"><a class="sdfootnotesym" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=4063385487236063231#sdfootnote44anc" name="sdfootnote44sym">44</a>
Ibid.</span></div>
</div>
<div id="sdfootnote45">
<div class="sdfootnote" style="margin-left: 0cm; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: "courier new" , "courier" , monospace; font-size: xx-small;"><a class="sdfootnotesym" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=4063385487236063231#sdfootnote45anc" name="sdfootnote45sym">45</a>
Ibid, 284.</span></div>
</div>
<div id="sdfootnote46">
<div class="sdfootnote" style="margin-left: 0cm; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: "courier new" , "courier" , monospace; font-size: xx-small;"><a class="sdfootnotesym" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=4063385487236063231#sdfootnote46anc" name="sdfootnote46sym">46</a>
Ibid.</span></div>
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
</div>
<div id="sdfootnote47">
<div class="sdfootnote" style="margin-left: 0cm; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: "courier new" , "courier" , monospace; font-size: xx-small;"><a class="sdfootnotesym" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=4063385487236063231#sdfootnote47anc" name="sdfootnote47sym">47</a>
Ibid.</span></div>
</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<div id="sdfootnote115">
</div>
</div>
<div id="sdfootnote47">
</div>
<div id="sdfootnote115">
</div>
Dock Curriehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09979072460617749796noreply@blogger.com0