Conservatives (Righties) Are so Full of Shit!

Conservatives (Righties) are so full of shit.  First, thats why I call them Righties, because they don't really believe in conserving anything except the worst and most regressive aspects of society.

Hat tip to Dispatches from the Culture Wars.


Item 1: In a study conducted by a public policy professor and his students, they rated the predictions of pundits published in major newspapers or who were guests on the Sunday morning political talk programs.  Krugman came out on top.  But more interestingly it was the righties Cal Thomas and George Will among others who gained an "ugly" designation for getting a negative score and absolutely nothing correct.

Item 2: Religious right Perkins, and this needs no explanation.

Review of and Ruminations on "Why Marx was Right" by Terry Eagleton Part I

It’s about time somebody wrote a popularly accessible book, "Why Marx Was Right" refuting all the bullshit straw man slander against Marx and the school of thought that he founded.  My first inclination is to wish it wasn't Terry Eagleton, the dean of Marxist literary criticism.  Why? Mainly because I don’t read much fictional literature, I don’t know much about literary criticism, Marxist or otherwise.  Perhaps this was a task for a Marxist social scientist or economist?  Of the many things that Marx got right, what needs to be emphasized and exposed is the nature of capitalist economic production; who does it, and who walks off with the surplus value like it was they who allegedly “earned” it.   Thus, the contemporary grand explainer of Marx’s magnum opus, Capital, David Harvey, or radical economist Michael Perelman, if they had written this book, might have approached the defense of Marx primarily from that angle.  But Eagleton does do a good job in defending Marx by showing not only why Marx was right, but why so many slanderers of Marx really don’t know what they are talking about.  Yet, Eagleton also makes clear that there is plenty to be found in Marx’s work that is open to criticism, revision, and qualification.

Eagleton takes aim at the most common misunderstandings, misrepresentations, ignorance and lies about Marx’s thought.  Each chapter begins with an extensive quote that characterizes these misrepresentations:  “Marxism is finished….” (it has lost its relevancy in the modern world), “Marxism may be all very well in theory…” (but when put in practice leads to tyranny and terror), “Marxism is a form of determinism.., Marxism is a dream of utopia…, Marxism reduces everything to economics…, Marx was a materialist, he believed nothing exists but matter.., Nothing is more outdated about Marxism’s tedious obsession with class…,  Marxist are advocates of violent political action…, Marxism believes in an all-powerful state...”  Many of these are cliches and oversimplifications commonly repeated without substantiation in the actual writings of Marx; or they are willful ignorance of the conditions of modern capitalism.   Unfortunately, Eagleton doesn’t cite the source of these quotes, potentially opening himself up the charge of constructing straw men to knock down.   I myself have heard much of the same boilerplate platitudes, and can bear witness that these quotes indeed represent common slanders of Marx.

From the outset of chapter 1, in response to the claim that Marx(ism) is irrelevant, Eagleton clarifies that Marxism is a critique of capitalism, “the most searching, rigorous, comprehensive, critique of its kind ever to be launched,” therefore as long as there is capitalism there is something to be found in the thought of Marx.  Of course apologist for capitalism, wishing that Marx(ism) would go away make the counter claim that capitalism has changed from “the dark satanic mills” of the mid 1800s, and reformed itself into something much more humane and tolerable.  In the case of the developed world of the United States and Western Europe, Marxists would concede that conditions for the working class have much improved from the mid-1800s.  Eagleton neglects to mention the necessary fact that in part these improved conditions were due to working class struggles.  Eagleton does argue that the capitalist system since the 1970s has gone through dramatic changes which has included deregulated markets and a renewed assault on the working class’ wages, conditions, and abilities to organize and defend itself.  There has been an increased globalization of the capitalist system resulting in the moving of manufacturing industries to countries where capital can employ labor at a lower wages and weaker environmental and safety regulation.  Eagleton argues that Marxism might seem discredited because so many of these changes served to disillusion leftist radicals, but not because everything is peachy for the working class under capitalism, but because the capitalist system seems un-defeatable.    It is truly ironic that just at a time when the capitalist system launches into an era of increased globalization, a process analyzed and predicted by Marx, and an era of increased inequality and greater insecurity and immiseration for working people, also predicted by Marx, that Marx’s thought would be considered “irrelevant.”  Au contraire, Eagleton 1, anti-Marxist critics’ 0.

Of course another factor that would seem to discredit Marx(ism) is the tyrannical history of so-called “Marxist regimes” like the Soviet Union and Maoist China.  In my reading of chapter 2, Eagleton makes no attempt to be an apologist for this history of tyranny.

“Taken overall, Maoism and Stalinism were botched, bloody experiments which made the very idea of socialism stink in the nostrils of many of those elsewhere in the world who had the most to benefit from it.”

However, he does make note of the hypocrisy of those who ideologically denounce this history of tyranny while ignoring the fact that:

“Modern capitalist nations are the fruit of a history of slavery, genocide, violence, and exploitation every bit as abhorrent as Mao’s China or Stalin’s Soviet Union.  Capitalism, too, was forged in blood and tears; it is just that it has survived long enough to forget about much of this horror, which is not the case with Stalinism and Maoism.”

This should be self-evident for those who are fair minded and have the relevant historical knowledge.  However, it’s hard to find apologists for capitalism that acknowledge these ugly facts.  On the other hand, those familiar with the history of socialist and communist movements, and the Marxist tradition know that there have always been internal critics of socialism's errors, from Rosa Luxembourg’s criticism of Lenin’s heavy handed state policies, to the critics of Stalinism by Trotskyists and others.   Furthermore, anybody actually familiar with Marx’s writings will know that it is impossible to connect the dots from Marx’s actual thought to the actual deeds of Stalin, Mao, and Pol Pot.  Marx was a staunch anti-authoritarian and advocate of freedom.  But apologists for capitalism and slanderers of Marx are not interested in the truth of these matters.

In countering the charges that Marxism and attempts to build socialism are inevitably tied to tyrannical dictatorships and massacres, there are other facts I wished Eagleton had mentioned.  That is that the repression and overthrow of leftist and socialist movements and governments has also resulted in dictatorships and massacres.  The historical examples are ubiquitous; in 1973 the Chilean military, supported by the U.S., overthrew socialist president Allende’s Popular Unity government which lead to thousands being murdered and a fifteen year dictatorship; U.S. supported Indonesian dictator Suharto murdered millions of members and supporters of the Indonesian Communist Party; the  U.S. has supported the domestic bourgeoisies, dictatorships, and military and paramilitary forces in countries too numerous to name in an effort to repress popular efforts at reforms of capitalism's worst abuses.
  

Eagleton fair mindedly calls attention to the fact that both the history of capitalism and the efforts to build socialism have common histories of benefits and costs.  Capitalism in its association with the European Enlightenment and bourgeois revolution was progressive in establishing a heritage of individual liberty, liberal democracy, civil rights, and scientific progress.  But also savage economic depressions, child labor in sweatshops, fascism, and imperial wars and environmental degradation.  So to, the Soviet and Chinese revolutions embarked on a path of breaking out of economic backwardness and industrial development; also at a tremendous human and environmental cost.  He claims the Soviet Union and it's eastern bloc did many things to advance the social welfare of its citizens, advanced and supported the arts and sciences, but doesn’t run away from the fact that individual liberty was significantly repressed.  The coming of capitalism to Eastern Europe also did not result in some capitalist utopia either, with dramatic increases in poverty, unemployment and general social despair, while legalized robbery occurred in the form of privatization, with many of the beneficiaries being the former state elite of the so-called socialist bloc.

Those who claim that the failure of so-called socialism in the former Soviet Union and other places is the failure of Marx(ist) theory are willfully ignorant of Marx’s theory of socialist revolution.  Eagleton does a fair but incomplete job of explaining that Marx hypothesized that a socialist revolution would have the greatest chance of success in a well-developed capitalist country with a self-aware and assertive working class.  Early twentieth century Russia was a comparatively under-developed, mostly peasant country, with a relatively small working class.  The same could be said of China and the many other Third World countries that have had revolutions lead by socialists and Marxists.  Lenin, Trotsky and the Bolsheviks were well aware that they were not operating under good conditions for building socialism, and they hoped that other parallel socialist revolutions would occur in Germany and elsewhere in Europe in the wake of devastation of World War I.  Instead, these revolutions never occurred and the Soviet Union was isolated and attacked by domestic counter-revolutionaries and hostile western powers.  Eagleton argues that this set the stage for Stalinism, and rather than discrediting Marx, validates his ideas on what conditions are necessary to establish and sustain a socialist society.

In the latter part of Chapter 2 Eagleton address the claim that socialism is unworkable based on the idea that a complex modern economy requires markets.  From there he launches into a discussion of “market socialism” in refuting the idea that socialism and markets are necessarily incompatible; then he discusses alternative visions of socialism such as “Parecon” from non-market socialists.  This latter part of the chapter is all a valuable discussion but would have been better treated in a chapter of its own.  It does fit in with the overall theme of the chapter in arguing that just because the Soviet style state-socialism is a historical failure, it is not necessarily true that socialism must always fail.  But it is discontinuous from the primary emphasis of the first part of the chapter that focuses on refuting the alleged intrinsic connection between Marxism, socialism, and tyranny.

Overall, the first two chapters Eagleton’s book does a fine job in tackling two primary misconceptions and slanders of Marx.  In subsequent posts I will review and discuss other chapters of Eagleton’s Why Marx Was Right.   

Recommended Web Reads This Week May 1-7

Article on the relevancy of Rosa Luxemburg:

The spontaneous mass revolts in north Africa and the Middle East, especially in Tunisia, Egypt and Libya, underline the importance of Luxemburg’s contribution. She understood better than any Marxist of her time (and better than most after it) that revolution is never ‘made’ by some enlightened party or individuals, but rather emerges spontaneously from the response of masses of people to social conditions. She was always looking for the unexpected to come from the masses, and her work helps train our eyes in precisely that direction. 

Equally important is her understanding of what happens after the revolution. She held that there is no socialism without democracy, just as there is no democracy without socialism. She gave grief to anyone, whether friend or foe, who fell short of envisioning social change as a liberation and freeing of humanity’s innate and acquired talents and abilities. In this sense she was part of an idealist strain within Marxism that has been neglected for far too long. Let’s not forget that in 1844 Marx defined his philosophy as humanism that consists of the unity of idealism and materialism. We need that unity now more than ever.

An Arab American reacts to the "frat boy" reaction at Ground Zero after the Bin Laden killing: 

I moved to the US a year before 9/11. The day after the attack, a drunk tried to set the local mosque on fire. I first visited Ground Zero in July 2002 and could only cry and pray. "Good riddance, Bin Laden," I wanted to shout on Monday; but this new American instead quietly recited Al Fatiha, the opening chapter of the Qur'an, with "USA, USA USA" as my backdrop. I recited it for the innocent lives taken in NYC, Washington DC, Shanksville in Pennsylvania, Afghanistan, Iraq and Pakistan – wherever the war on terror left its stains.

Being a "foodie" is not elitist:

This name-calling is a form of misdirection, an attempt to evade a serious debate about U.S. agricultural policies. And it gets the elitism charge precisely backward. America’s current system of food production — overly centralized and industrialized, overly controlled by a handful of companies, overly reliant on monocultures, pesticides, chemical fertilizers, chemical additives, genetically modified organisms, factory farms, government subsidies and fossil fuels — is profoundly undemocratic. It is one more sign of how the few now rule the many. And it’s inflicting tremendous harm on American farmers, workers and consumers.

Bush and Co. Wanted a War That Could Have Been Avoided

Ten years of war in Afghanistan could have been avoided, and Bin Laden arrested in the Fall of 2001.  But the governmental and corporate elites wanted war.  Gareth Porter's article linked here.

God's Miscommunication with Christians

Dear Reader,

On Easter Sunday of 2011 I suddenly felt inspired write this blog post based  on ideas floating around in my head for some time.

Generally speaking all Christian sects, whether they are Jehovah’s Witnesses (JWs), traditional mainstream, fundamentalist, and evangelical Protestants, Catholics, Eastern Orthodox, Mormons or any other Christian sect, believe in a few basic things.  First they believe that God sent his son, Jesus Christ, to earth to die on a cross (or stake in the case of JWs), so that this sacrifice would atone for the sins of man.  Nearly all Christians seem to believe that God considers it important that humans believe in him, have faith in him, obey him, and live according to his will, and repent of their sins.  All these varieties of Christianity believe this, and most also strongly advocate that people should belong to their particular church, believe in that church’s particular doctrine, and that people accept their particular church as God's true and exclusive representative organization on earth.1

So we might ask, if God is a perfect being, and he wills that people hold correct religious beliefs, practice correct religious rituals, and belong to the correct church that propagates those correct church teachings, why has he not communicated more clearly exactly which church is his true organizational representative? Exactly what religion is the sincere truth seeking Christian supposed to belong to? 

The pastor of any of the above mentioned churches would surely answer that by reading the Bible, it is clear that the Bible and God clearly favors his church   Most any JW, Mormon, Evangelical Christian, Catholic, or other Christian sect can offer support from some translation of the Bible that their Church holds the correct doctrine according to the Bible.  Mormon’s may be slightly different in this regard as they believe that their organization has been blessed with a second book of God’s revealed truth, The Book of Mormon.  Various churches of Evangelical and Protestant Christianity regard the doctrines of Jehovah’s Witnesses, Mormons and often the Catholic Church as false Christianity, frauds, that mislead people away from God’s true church.  JWs also regard all the other Protestant, Catholic, and Eastern Orthodox churches as false prophets that mislead people away from God’s true will, and insist that salvation is only found in their organization.  The Catholic Church regards itself as Jesus’ and the apostle Paul’s original and true Christian Church, and regards all later Christian churches as apostates.             

For the sincere truth seeking would-be Christian and potential church member who desires to make the right choice, this seems to be an intractable dilemma.  This would be Christian can accept Jesus Christ as his personal savior, repent of his sins, practice the appropriate rituals, show love to his neighbor, live a moral life according to the strictures of the Bible and church he chooses to join, attempt to convert others, and study his Bible.  And still he could make the wrong choice of churches hypothetically speaking.  

I can imagine that it could be quite perplexing in attempting to choose the correct church by reading the Bible and attempting to match sacred scripture with the appropriate church doctrine.  Might the truth seeking Christian see strong points in the Jehovah’s Witnesses’ interpretation of the Bible on one question, while seeing other strong points in the Baptist’s interpretation of the Bible on another question?  Or worse, might the truth-seeker find compelling reasons to agree with two different interpretations of the Bible regarding the same question?  To resolve these problems the recruiting Christian witness will undoubtedly implore the truth seeker to open his heart to the Holy Spirit in prayer asking for guidance in choosing with which church to affiliate with; confident of course that the aforementioned Holy Spirit will guide the truth seeker to his church. 

If the Holy Spirit doesn’t lead the truth seeker to the recruiter’s church, but chooses another, then from the recruiter’s perspective the truth-seeker must have made some error, not the Holy Spirit.  Nor do I think it happens very often that the Christian recruiter entertains the possibility that he might have chosen the wrong church.  Regardless, it seems that if any of the Christian religions are true, then somebody is going to hell, despite their best efforts to be a good Christian in what they think is God’s chosen church.2 

So it seems that there is a strong possibility that this want-to-be sincere Christian can make the wrong choice.  Even after Bible study, prayer, and opening oneself up to the Holy Spirit.  According to the doctrine of most of the religious organizations I mention above, being in the right church, THEIRS, is part of being the right kind of Christian and gaining that reward of afterlife in heaven (or on earth, as JWs believe).  Christian sects basically compete for market share for the available souls in need of saving.  To do this they must persuade Christian believers that they must be a Baptist, or a Pentecostal, or a Catholic, and not another sect, if they hope to acquire the after-life reward in heaven, or be resurrected, or live forever in some fashion.   

So we must ask ourselves a few questions.  If the Christian God is real and demands that we believe the correct religious doctrines and belong to the right Christian church, why then has he not communicated much more clearly to his disciples regarding his desires and correct doctrines?    All of them at least share some common interpretations of the Bible, yet their divergent interpretations they regard as serious enough to split into a number of different religious organizations.  Shouldn’t a perfect God communicate much more clearly as to what his specific will is? Given this, it seems nearly certain that the Bible is not the inspired word of a real God, or that any version of Christianity is true. 

1--There are some more liberal Protestant Churches who don’t necessarily insist on loyalty to their own church and are less dogmatic in this regard.  Regardless, for the sake of this argument, let’s put them aside.

2—I should also note that JWs and some other liberal Christians do not believe in hell.  JWs believe the unrepentant sinner simply dies without the reward of life ever after. 

Response to Nils Jansma's Continued Mis-Representations and Evasions

The following is a response to Nils Jansma who responded to my critique of  a blog post of his comparing Atheists and Jehovah's Witnesses as "judgmental".  Follow the links back for context.


Nils, Thank you for your response,
With all due respect Nils, you seem to make your best effort to avoid even acknowledging the arguments I had written, let alone addressing them.  I won't go into too much detail, because quite frankly arguing about these topics doesn't interest me much anymore. 


First, I have no necessary problem with the dictionary definition of atheism, and in fact my position would fall under it, I do not think there is a God, therefore I do not believe that a god(s) exist.  I would lean towards the stronger atheist position.  So no, I am perfectly comfortable with the term atheism and applying it to myself.  I still maintain that agnostics are a weak form of atheism as they lack an affirmative belief in god (and weak doesn't have any pejorative meaning in this context).  Dictionary definitions are fine to an extent, but as surely you know words can have multiple meanings, and people regularly clarify the definitions they are operating under.    

You insist that disbelief in God is a position that requires "faith".  Then you should define faith.  Define faith.  I think this is a misapplication of the term "faith."  To doubt that there is a god does not require faith, but is exactly the opposite, it is a lack of faith that a god exists.  One can come to the tentative conclusion that there probably is no god based on philosophical arguments. REASON.  And quite frankly, this effort to classify either naturalistic science or atheism as a religion is tortured logic.


I thought I also made it quite clear that I don't agree with Dawkins' style of atheism, so why do you press me to defend what he says?  For the record, I don't think people who believe in God are mentally ill, just wrong.  If Dawkins has said or has implied such, then I think he is dead wrong.  Dawkins is not our high priest, nor does he speak for all atheists.


My academic background is in anthropology, and from these studies I know that religious belief is a universal feature of human societies, and a normal aspect of human psychology.  Interestingly enough, coming from this appreciation for the vast cultural and religious diversity of the human species leads me to doubt not only the religious beliefs of some tribe in Papua New Guinea, or the ancient Greeks, but also the religious beliefs of my own society.  As soon as you come to an understanding of why you don't believe in the many other gods of other cultures, then perhaps you will understand why I don't believe in yours. 


And why do you insist on stereotyping me as the "angry atheist", and charging that I am projecting it on to you?  I left the JW's a long time ago, and I am over it.  I was simply annoyed at your misrepresentations and over generalizing comparison of JWs and atheists as equally judgemental.  My flippant remark of "so what", was in the context of noting you could say that about any group. An observation like "flowers are red".  I directly addressed why this is simply a sloppy comparison, which you simply ignore.  It would be more accurate to say that JWs, Evangelical Christians, Catholics, and Muslims are judgemental, as we can take a large set of people and organizations within these parameters and see how they are judgemental of people who don't share their religious dogmas.  Furthermore, they attempt to enforce behavioral conformity not only within their organizations, but within society at large.  There is no comparable "judgmental" efforts made by atheists.  While I don't doubt that there are some atheists who are "judgemental," and there may be some religious believers who are not, it seems silly to focus on atheists as judgemental in light of the history of most of monotheistic religion.


You may know of an anecdotal account that some scientist and professor, who happens to be an atheist abused his power in enforcing atheism on his students.  Yet, there is no reason to believe that this happens with any regularity.  99% of science can be done without having to even consider the question of god.  Of course this is exactly what bothers the religious believer.  They presuppose that God must be an agent in there somewhere, looking for some gap with which to fill up with God, and it bothers them that scientists proceed without god(s).

"Most, if not all, of the “facts” I have been exposed to, support my belief in God more often than not.  Fortunately, we are living at a time when science is learning more and more about the complexity of the universe and life, resulting in a continuous list of surprises as more and more is learned, causing Hugh Ross to exclaim something like, “if you don’t believe in God, wait a week and maybe then you will.”  Nevertheless, there are still many issues I have yet to resolve but I am confident that the outcome will be likewise supportive.  So “what if” God doesn’t exist, what have I lost? nothing--  it is like Pasqual’s wager, better to be safe than sorry.  In saying this, I don’t want to imply that my belief in God is nothing more than a life insurance policy because I actually do believe He exists."

You claim that the continual advances of science in understanding the complexity of life and the universe supports your belief in God.  If that is your interpretation, that is fine with me.  (Again you want to have it both ways, science supports God, can't disprove God).  And that is the second time you have quoted Hugh Ross saying the same things, as if the quote stands on its own.  I asked you for specifics, you gave none. However, I do find it curious that all of this scientific discovery advances without appeal to God's alleged agency.  It is only post-hoc reasoning that the scientific facts support your belief in God.  

"So, the bottom line is, if you can show me a better way of life that maintains good mental health with a character building philosophy that I can teach my children to pursue, I will change.  However, I have to say, I have covered a lot of ground since leaving the Witnesses and sincerely doubt there is anything that can take the place of God in my life and still allow me to maintain my sanity, especially now with the future looking so bleak."  

I note that you claim that belief in God supports you psychologically, emotionally, and morally in coping with life.  I will be completely non-judgemental in stating that there is nothing necessarily wrong with that.  That doesn't mean God exists, but If it works for you, then go with it.  However, I do recommend that you should also acknowledge that others have come up with alternative solutions to the problems that religion solves for you.  Secularists are perfectly capable of living sane and moral lives without belief in God.  I am perfectly capable of teaching my son the difference between right and wrong, to be honest, compassionate, and to do the right thing, without God, and the promise of a reward of eternal life of some variety.  It does seem to me that my lack of belief in God is seen as a threat by you as a believer. 


So in conclusion, if a person chooses to believe in God I don't have any problem with that.  There are problems with Religion as an oppressive institution (somewhat distinct from the issue of god-belief)  that I wish to address in another post.  


Nils, if you do wish to continue our dialogue, I ask you to address the following questions.  Now that you are not a Jehovah's Witness, what do you believe?  Do you believe in hell? An afterlife? Do people need to accept Jesus Christ as their savior for what reward?  How accepting are you of other lifestyle choices (homosexuality, intimate relations outside of wedlock etc.)?  Also, what are your opinions of mainstream American Christianity and its collusion with right-wing politics?        

International Worker's Day, Nice day for a revolution: Why May Day......David Harvey

Update: Ooops, should have given a hat tip to one of my favorite blogs, Pink Scare!

Nice day for a revolution: Why May Day should be a date to stand up and change the system - World Politics, World - The Independent

May Day is the occasion we celebrate the grand achievements of the workers of the world in making our world a far, far better place to live in. There is, unfortunately, not too much to celebrate these days. The past 30 years are littered with battles and skirmishes that have resulted in defeat after defeat for organised labour.

A capitalist class gone rampant has now consolidated its power to command or corrupt almost all the major institutions that regulate the body politic – the political parties (of both left and right), the media, the universities, the law, to say nothing of the repressive state apparatus and international institutions. The democracy of money power now rules. A global plutocracy exerts its will almost everywhere unchallenged.

So what is there to celebrate? We would not, of course, have what we still have now (from pensions to the remnants of reasonable health care and public education) had it not been for the labour movement. But waxing nostalgic over the undoubted achievements and heroism of the past will get us nowhere.

May Day should therefore be about relaunching a revolutionary movement to change the world. The very thought of doing that – even just saying it and writing it down – is as exhilarating as it is astonishing.

Continues at link above.