2/19 Anarchism and the Critique of Hierarchy

Readings for class on 2/19

1. Bakunin and Kropotkin in Great Theories, pp. 352-358.

2. David Graeber, “What is Anarchism?”

Recommended

David Graeber, “Occupy Wall Street’s anarchist roots”

Notes on Marxism

Why Marx is becoming relevant again: “For thirty years after 1945 a high rate of growth in the advanced economies was accompanied by a rise in incomes that benefitted all classes. Severe wealth inequality came to seem a thing of the past (which is why, in 1980, people could quite reasonably call Marx’s predictions mistaken). It now appears that those thirty years were an anomaly. The Depression and the two world wars had effectively wiped out the owners of wealth, but the thirty years after 1945 rebooted the economic order. After 1945, wages rose as national incomes rose, but the income of the lowest earners peaked in 1969, when the minimum hourly wage in the United States was $1.60. That is the equivalent of $10.49 today, when the national minimum wage is $7.25.  And, as wages for service-sector jobs decline in earning power, the hours in the workweek increase, because people are forced to take more than one job.” - Louis Menand

A. Class Analysis

1. Marxist economic theory places class conflict at the center of the analysis, the most important phenomenon left out of classical economics.

New concept of class: 

not distinguished by wealth or power per se but defined in terms of means of production and distinction of resources to support human life. (173) That is, one’s class is defined in terms of one’s participation in the production of surplus labor. 

In the “fundamental class process,” some members of the society - direct laborers - produce both necessary and surplus goods and services. 

Necessary: what they need to survive

Surplus: what is produced over and above what is required to maintain the process.

2. Exploitation: 

a situation in which the laborers do not directly appropriate their own surplus labor. (slave to master, serf to lord, wage worker to capitalist boss)

Key question: How is this surplus distributed and who controls it?

3. The Dirty Secret of Capitalism: Surplus value is appropriated by the capitalist, a new form of slavery. Capitalism does not do away with classes but brings a new set of class relations, between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat. 

B. Capitalism’s Contradictions

4. Ever greater exploitation

For exploitation veiled by religious and political illusions, it has substituted naked, shameless, direct, brutal exploitation.” (p.160-61) Capitalism destroys feudal society, a good thing, but its unfettered desire for ever more profit leads it to destroy itself. There is no natural limit to the appropriation of money. Endless growth leads to imperialism, economic centralization, every-increasing wealth inequality.

5. Alienation

The commodification of labor: Man’s own deed becomes an alien power opposed to him, which enslaves him instead of being controlled by him. The medieval worker as individual producer, owns the fruits of his/her labor. the modern worker does not. Industrialization and mechanization as a tool for increasing exploitation. No democracy in the workplace. (164) 

6. Contradictions

Capitalism creates the conditions for its demise and transition to socialism, then communism

Increasing inequality destroys the means of its continued productivity.

Increasing misery of the proletariat leads to the “socialization of labor” - class consciousness, in the form of labor unions, worker’s political parties, socialist takeover of states, state takeover of productive resources. (168)

C. Marxist Prophesies

7. True Freedom

World history as moving towards freedom - self-mastery and self-understanding without illusions through the overcoming of contradictions, moving inexorably towards harmony.

8. The Promised Land

True communism would be a classless society governed by the principle of socialism: 

“To each according to their needs, from each according to their abilities.” 

- the social ethics of families, tribes, and communities not dominated by market exchange.

9. Withering away of the State

As a tool of capitalists, the state exists to maintain the capitalist mode of production, as having a monopoly on the use of force (police, judges, jails and prisons). In the transition to socialism, the state slowly makes itself unnecessary. (180) 

10. Many Marxisms, many Socialisms

Former Soviet Union, China, Cuba, Venezuela, Scandinavia, France/Germany/italy

But generally, socialists believe the government should provide a range of basic services to the public, such as health care and education. In the present day, "Democratic socialist" and "socialist" are often treated as interchangeable terms, which can be confusing given Democratic socialists don't necessarily think the government should immediately take control of all aspects of the economy.

They do, however, generally believe the government should help provide for people's most basic needs and help all people have an equal chance at achieving success. The call for universal health care as a right reflects the socialist view that since everyone needs health care, it should be provided to all out of the collective wealth of the society. 

11. Socialism as Economic Democracy

If the basic problem with capitalism is exploitation of workers, then the most simple Marxist solution is the democratization of the workplace by the dissolution of the class distinction between owners and workers. 

A worker cooperative is a cooperative that is owned and self-managed by its workers. This control may be exercised in a number of ways. A cooperative enterprise may mean a firm where every worker-owner participates in decision-making in a democratic fashion, or it may refer to one in which management is elected by every worker-owner, and it can refer to a situation in which managers are considered, and treated as, workers of the firm. In traditional forms of worker cooperative, all shares are held by the workforce with no outside or consumer owners, and each member has one voting share. In practice, control by worker-owners may be exercised through individual, collective, or majority ownership by the workforce; or the retention of individual, collective, or majority voting rights (exercised on a one-member one-vote basis). A worker cooperative, therefore, has the characteristic that each of its workers own one share, and all shares are owned by the workers.

2/11 Marxism and the Communist Manifesto

Reading for 2/11
Karl Marx, "Communist Manifesto" in Great Political Theories, pp. 155-180

First Paper Assignment

Requirements:

Due: February 19th

Length: Three pages (min).
Format: However you wish
Sources: Use at least two arguments from texts we’ve discussed
Topic: Make your own or pick one from below.
Submission: Via email to Justin@oursanctuary.org.

Some topics for papers

What is the relationship between liberty and equality? What does Rousseau mean when he talks about equality?

What is Burke’s critique of the French Enlightenment in the context of his observations of the French Revolution? Is his critique valid? If so, why? If not, why not?

Which of the modern political thinkers we’ve studied most resembles Socrates’ call for the “examined life”?

Is lying morally permissible? Examine and evaluate the utilitarian argument in your response.

Is heirarchy necessary for social order?

Are states necessary for human flourishing?

Is love possible?

What is the true meaning of the Enlightenment values of freedom and equality?

Is human society really composed of selfish individuals who only associate with others in order to exchange?

Is England’s wealth in the 1780s really based simply on division of labor and machine labor?

Are markets truly infallible?

Is material growth the sole purpose of economies?

Can happiness be quantified?

Do human beings have rights?

Can we harm some to maximize pleasure for the greatest number?

Does morality require us to treat all human beings equally without any preferential treatment?

Are there moral obligations that the present owes to the past, to the future?

Is wealth inequality desirable (morally/politically)?

2/7 Early Socialism and Positivism

Readings for this class
Great Political Theories, Section V: Early Socialism and Positivism, pp. 130-154.









Critiques of Liberalism & Conservatism:
Technocratic Socialism, Libertarianism, Anarchism

Notes on Saint-Simon and Pierre Proudhon

Saint-Simon (1760-1825) Technocratic Socialism

1. Inefficiency of Government (140-141) > Industrial Technocracy

Government is a holdover from feudal Europe, is unproductive and based on privilege and inheritance, not on merit or productivity. - Following Smith, believes that the new economy has the potential to be a self-regulating system, provided it can be restructured along scientific guides - the origins of ‘sociology’ - the science of society.

Government can be replaced by a rationally-organized industrial society optimized along utilitarian grounds to focus on genuinely positive (quantifiable material well-being) for all.

2. The incompetence of the noble, “idling” class (142) > Meritocracy

Eligibility to rule is not based on sound rational principles but privilege or liberal concepts of popular sovereignty, but neither is rational.

Technocratic socialism - rule by merit-based experts, intellectuals, scientists, economists. - an authoritarian view which cuts against liberal-democratic views of political rights. Need for hierarchy of expert beaurocrats.

3. The immorality of individualism (143-44) > Secular religion of Love

Modern culture which focusses on individual liberty is creating ego-centric people who are morally superficial, materialistic, selfish, recapitulating feudal caste and increasing misery for the working poor.

The need for civil religion, a “New Christianity” - moral vision divested of theology and superstition, creating a brotherhood of man. The need for “spiritual reorganization.”

“New Christianity is called upon to achieve the the triumph of the principles of universal morality in the struggle which is going on with the forces aiming at the individual instead of public interest.” (145)

4. Influence on the “utopian socialists”

Focussed not on abstract slogans of liberty and equality but more rationally-organized social-economic existence, created and managed by scientific experts.

Examples

Robert Owen (1771–1858) was a successful Welsh businessman, student of J. S. Mill who devoted much of his profits to improving the lives of his employees. His reputation grew when he set up a textile factory in New Lanark, Scotland, co-funded by his teacher, the utilitarian Jeremy Bentham and introduced shorter working hours, schools for children and renovated housing.

1. New Lanark - improving conditions for the working poor

Owen's utopian model changed little during his lifetime. His fully developed model considered an association of 500 to 3,000 people as the optimum number for a good working community. While mainly agricultural, it would possess the best machinery, offer a variety of employment, and, as far as possible, be self-contained. Owen further explained that as the number of these communities increased, "unions of them federatively united shall be formed in circle of tens, hundreds and thousands"[35] linked in a common interest.

2. New Harmony

New Harmony, Indiana - Of the 130 identifiable communitarian experiments in America before the American Civil War, at least sixteen were Owenite or Owenite-influenced communities. New Harmony was Owen's earliest and most ambitious experiment. Robert Owen, purchased the town in 1825 with the intention of creating a new utopian community and renamed it New Harmony. While the Owenite social experiment was an economic failure two years after it began, the community made some important contributions to American society. New Harmony became known as a center for advances in education and scientific research. Town residents established the first free library, a civic drama club, and a public school system open to men and women.

4. Auroville

Auroville (/ˈɔːrəvɪl/; City of Dawn) is an experimental township in Viluppuram district mostly in the state of Tamil Nadu, India with some parts in the Union Territory of Puducherry in South India.[3] It was founded in 1968 by Mirra Alfassa (known as "the Mother”) The inauguration ceremony attended by delegates of 124 nations was held on Wednesday 28 February 1968. Handwritten in French by the Mother, its four-point charter set forth her vision of integral living:
Auroville belongs to nobody in particular. Auroville belongs to humanity as a whole. But to live in Auroville, one must be the willing servitor of the Divine Consciousness.
Auroville will be the place of an unending education, of constant progress, and a youth that never ages.
Auroville wants to be the bridge between the past and the future. Taking advantage of all discoveries from without and from within, Auroville will boldly spring towards future realisations.
Auroville will be a site of material and spiritual researches for a living embodiment of an actual Human Unity.

Pierre Proudhon (1809-1865) Anarchism as Libertarian Socialism

5. “Property is Theft”

Modern concept of private ownership includes three senses of right:

1. Usus (use) is the right to use or enjoy a thing possessed, directly and without altering it.

2. Fructus (fruit, in a figurative sense) is the right to derive profit from a thing possessed: for instance, by selling crops, leasing immovables or annexed movables, taxing for entry, and so on.

3. Abusus (literally abuse), the right to alienate the thing possessed, either by consuming or destroying it (e.g. for profit), or by transferring it to someone else (e.g. sale, exchange, gift).

“The earth belongs in usufruct to the living, and that the dead have neither powers nor rights over it.” - Jefferson

6. “Property is despotism”

“Laws! We know what they are, and what they are worth! Spider webs for the rich and powerful, steel chains for the weak and poor, fishing nets in the hands of the Government.”

Capitalism as based on the skimming of surplus value of labor by capitalists, leads to class conflict:

What Proudhon really objected to with respect to private property was the earning of income from the labour of others through such means as rent, interest and wage labour. After paying employees their wages, the capitalist retains the remaining profit without contributing any productive labour himself. Associated together, the workers create a productive capacity greater than the sum of their individual powers, but it is the capitalist who reaps the benefit. The workers acquiesce in their own exploitation because their only alternatives are starvation and misery.

He contrasts property with possession, the former being “the right to use [something] by his neighbour’s labour.” Property results in the farmer toiling for a landlord or the worker producing for a capitalist. Possession is when those who use a resource control it: the worker in a co-operative or the self-employed artisan. Only the former creates “the exploitation of man by man” and authoritarian social relationships.

Property must be socialised for just “as the traveller does not appropriate the route which he traverses, so the farmer does not appropriate the field which he sows” and “all accumulated capital being social property, no one can be its exclusive proprietor.” Workers’ self-management must replace wage-labour as managers “must be chosen from the labourers by the labourers themselves.”

7. Implications

Anti-capitalism: Need to socialize property - possession versus property rights or “ownership in usufruct” - use-rights

Self-management: Workers’ self-management must replace wage-labour as managers “must be chosen from the labourers by the labourers themselves. Beginning of the cooperative movement.

Anarchism: anti-statism- the concept that the state is not necessary for order and stability, rather the source of chaos.

Liberal democracy by justifying the state as having a monopoly on the use of force, is still an oppressive structure. (137).

When the economy becomes more cooperative, government will be unnecessary.

Critique of hierarchical order (139)

2/5 Utilitarianism, Capitalism and Modernity

Reading for this class
Great Political Theories, 
Section IV: Utilitarianism, pp. 105-129

Homo economicus 

The Capitalist Manifesto, or Foundations of materialistic human culture

PH1104 / J.Good / Spring 2019 UCONN

A. Key concepts

From Adam Smith’s Wealth of Nations (1776)

1. The source of wealth is the system of division of labor.  E.g. the new textile mills appearing in England.

Rooted in the “propensity in human nature to truck, barter and exchange one thing for another.” (108)

All human relationships are a form of exchange. 

2. Humans are fundamentally selfish, and to be rational just means to follow your self-interest. It is our economic dependence on each other that ties society together. Selfishness is good.

3. Markets, where people come together to barter and trade, function perfectly when “left to follow their natural course.” Gaps between supply and demand are caused by interference with markets. 

Markets are godly - omniscient, self-regulating, moral. 

4. Economic growth is a natural tendency in human individuals to be frugal - to save a surplus value of what is produced in order to invest in the future. The purpose of the economy is to grow.

The goal is growth of capital.

5. International trade should be free - based on principle of the comparative advantage.

6. Governments wishing to become wealthy should do nothing to interfere with markets beyond protecting the liberty (property rights and freedom of trade) of individuals. In this way, an “invisible hand” will lead to the most optimal distribution of goods. “Without any intervention of law, the private interests and passions of men naturally lead them to divide and distribute the stock of every society, among all the different employments carried on in it, as nearly as possible in the proportion which is most agreeable to the interest of the whole society.” (117)

Questions

Is human society really composed of selfish individuals who only associate with others in order to exchange? 

Is England’s wealth in the 1780s really based simply on division of labor and machine labor?

Are markets truly infallible?

Is material growth the sole purpose of economies?

From Jeremy Bentham’s Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation (1781)

7.“By the principle of utility is meant that principle which approves or disapproves of every action whatsoever, according to the tendency which it appears to have to augment or diminish the happiness of the party whose interest is in question... I say of every action whatsoever; and therefore not only of every action of a private individual, but of every measure of government.” (117)  The purpose of every act is to maximize utility

8. Happiness = the greatest pleasure overall - a hedonistic view of human beings

Utilitarianism is a consequentialist theory of normativity. When a theory holds that the only thing relevant to determining whether or not an action is right are the consequences produced by that action, the account is consequentialist. 

9. Hedonistic Theory of Happiness: Pleasure is the only value we choose for its own sake. Pleasure can be quantified, hence made subject to scientific analysis. What is pleasure? A sensation that can be measured.

Using a matrix along the following 7 parameters or dimensions

1. intensity 2. duration 3. certainty or uncertainty 4. propinquity or remoteness 5. fecundity 6. purity 7. extent

From J. S. MIll’s Essay on Utilitarianism (1861)

10. Not all pleasures are equal (125-6)

11. Utilitarianism as not egoistic. requires strict impartiality (128)

12. Selfishness makes people miserable. Education for public spiritedness required. Mill the socialist? (128)

B. Two key progressive implications from Utilitarian thinking

13.  Wealth should be redistributed downwards: Due to “diminishing marginal utility” – one unit of utility will mean more to those who are disadvantaged, making it far more likely that the best distribution of goods will be roughly equal.  

14. The moral significance of non-human-animals: “The Principle of Utility implies that anThe French have already discovered that the blackness of the skin is no reason why a human being should be abandoned without redress to the caprice of a tormentor. It may come one day to be recognized, that the number of legs, the villosity of the skin, or the termination of the os sacrum, are reasons equally insufficient for abandoning a sensitive being to the same fate.” Bentham, Principles of Morals, p. 283.

C. Ethical Questions raised by Utilitarian thinking

15. What about the value of that we (conventional morality) places on Special Relationships?

Utilitarianism demands that we maximize good impartially considered. Thus, I should give a present not necessarily to my own child, but rather to the person who would be made most happy by the gift…. This seems highly counterintuitive. It is part of my role as parent that I show special consideration to my children. And surely the role of parent is not incompatible with morality.

16. Should we always keep our promises? If so, why? If not, why not?

J. J. C. Smart on Desert Island Promises: “I have promised a dying man on a desert island, from which subsequently I alone am rescued, to give his hoard of gold to the South Australian Jockey Club. On my return I give it to the Royal Adelaide Hospital, which, we may suppose, badly needs it for a new x-ray machine. Could anybody deny that I had done rightly without being open to the charge of heartlessness? (Remember that the promise was known only to me, and so my action will not in this case weaken the general confidence in the social institution of promising.)

17. Can we harm some to maximize pleasure for the greatest number?

From John Rawls, A Theory of Justice: “The striking feature of the utilitarian view of justice is that it does not matter, except indirectly, how this sum of satisfactions is distributed among individuals any more than it matters, except indirectly, how one man distributes his satisfactions over time…“Thus there is no reason in principle why the greater gains of some should not compensate for the lesser losses of others; or more importantly, why the violation of the liberty of a few might not be made right by the greater good shared by many.” 

18. Does utilitarianism dehumanize us?

 The Problem of considering the value of everyone/everything merely as a means to maximizing utility. 

It seems that the utilitarian is also committed to viewing these close relationships, including friendship as well as love, as having only instrumental value. Thus, friendship can only be justified on the basis of producing pleasure – but this seems quite incompatible with how we are supposed to regard our friends and the friendships that we have. We value our friends, not simply the pleasure that they produce; and, indeed, it is conceivable that a friendship might well be valuable.

Notes on Edmund Burke’s, Reflections on the Revolution in France (1790)

Key Question: Are there moral obligations that the present owes to the past, to the future?

1. Conservatism versus Liberalism versus Reactionism

- Tradition is good, sometimes small change (adjustment) is necessary to maintain tradition. 

- The Glorious Revolution of 1688 and American Revolution of 1776 versus French Revolution of 1789

- The central tenets of conservatism include wisdom of tradition, human imperfection, organic perfection of social institutions, goodness of heirarchy and authority, sacredness of property rights and wealth inequality.

2. Dangers of abstraction - society is a complex organic whole that we tamper with at our risk.

3. Liberal versus Conservative view of rights

- Rights as universal, unconditional, existing prior to and independent of human society versus existing only within and as an expression of the inner, historical tapestry of social relations. (53)

- Rights as connected to social relationships (57)

- Abstract view of rights undermines restraint, the key civil right. (57)

4. Against radical equality, change - the example of Le Terreur - The Reign of Terror, during the French Revolution. 

- Between June 1793 and the end of July 1794, there were 16,594 official death sentences in France, of which 2,639 were in Paris

- M. Robespierre, in February 1794 in a speech explained the necessity of terror:

If the basis of popular government in peacetime is virtue, the basis of popular government during a revolution is both virtue and terror; virtue, without which terror is baneful; terror, without which virtue is powerless. Terror is nothing more than speedy, severe and inflexible justice; it is thus an emanation of virtue; it is less a principle in itself, than a consequence of the general principle of democracy, applied to the most pressing needs of the patrie [homeland, fatherland].

5. Aristocracy and Hierarchy are good

- Virtue is the only rational criterion for rule.

- Wealth inequality is good - supports investment in the future.

- We have a natural inclination to respect aristocracy

6. The Principle of Caution 

- society is too complex to be able to control, reengineer, remake. (58)

- New insights into morality are unlikely (59)

- slow is beautiful (63)

7. Limits to Rationality, science 

- too simplistic to serve as a critique of the status quo.(59)

- there is wisdom in prejudices (59)

- Religion is natural in humans, society cannot be secularized (60)

8. The Social Contract is intergenerational

- The world does not belong per se to the living. (61)

- Cannot be broken like a commercial contract (62)