On the Globalization of Gossip (Jon Kofas, Greece)

Posted on November 26th, 2009 

Gossip is an inherent part of human nature and it has no particular definition other than what people engaged in it give it. Whether in politics or business, malicious gossip can be intended to harm an opponent, while “idle” office or neighbourhood gossip can be harmless conversation as a way people relate to each other so they avoid talking about themselves. Examples of institutionalized gossip as a form of institutional conformity include everything from the 17th-century witch trials to Stalin’s purge trials to the anti-Communist hysteria of the late 1940s-early 1950s in the US designed to institutionalize an ideology and way of life at home and abroad. Today the culture of commercialized gossip has taken over the world and faithfully serves the capitalist system to distract people from what matters in their lives to focusing on the private lives of celebrities. Most magazines, TV shows, newscasts, newspapers, books, and now Internet blogs deal in gossip. This is not just in the US that is the center of such organized multi-billion dollar business, but rather the culture of gossip is now on a global commercial scale. Inane and tantalizing details about the private lives of celebrities of all types from billionaires and politicians to entertainers and serial killers, glorifying them in one way or the other and distracting the focus of people from their material lives and real interests as institutions impact and shape them is what the commercialization of gossip has become. Multinational media corporations make immense profits from commercialized gossip while at the same time serving a political/cultural agenda that perpetuates mediocrity in society. The issue is very serious because the culture of commercialized gossip has infiltrated educational systems that are an integral part of the rest of society fascinated by and immersed in gossip. Because of the media’s culture of gossip, students respond much better when their professor conveys something about the personal lives of John Maynard Keynes and Ludwig Wittgenstein, instead of their scholarly contributions. Similarly, the media makes certain that people are far more fascinated about the personal lives of politicians like Clinton or Berlusconi than their policies and their impact on society. What is worse, of course, is that celebrities remain in the spotlight if they engage in “value-added” gossip conduct, otherwise they face oblivion in the age when all publicity is good publicity. The question is the extent to which the corporate-owned media has moulded public opinion throughout the world and the extent to which it is exploiting the “gossip impulse” in human nature to the benefit of existing institutions. Gossip as a tool of conformity is also an issue of value systems and ideology that financial and political elites through institutions wish to impose on society. For example, when there is a story about an alcoholic politician, a drug addict actor, a gambling-addicted sports figure, more than likely the focus is on the individual instead of the wider societal problem. Gossip alleviates responsibility from the social order that is hardly ever at fault and places all blame or praise on the individual, thus reinforcing the individualist value system. Moreover, imbedded in the culture of gossip is anti-intellectualism and promotion of populism that appeals to people at the emotional level. It is of course inevitable that “globalization” would have an obvious cultural impact in every domain from soft drinks and chewing gum to media gossip that is shaping institutions and the way people think about each other. The question is whether the globalization of the culture of gossip best serves human needs and human creativity, or it is indeed serving to retard anthropocentric progress.

Economics: Twilight of the “Credit Middle Class”

Originally posted on March 7th, 2009

 

In all economic contracting cycles throughout finance capitalism’s history, labor (blue-collar skilled to unskilled, agricultural day laborers to small farmers, and white collar, clerical to professionals and mid-management) ultimately pays the price for dislocation. The middle class, as the media and governments define it today to include a very broad range from upper working class to highly paid professionals, experiences downward pressure toward “proletarization” status instead of upward mobility as it envisions its destiny. Very clear in the 1930s, this phenomenon is taking place today amid the current crisis not only because people are losing jobs, homes, retirement savings, etc., but because the future looks bleak for them and their children.
Besides part-time and contract work, blue-collar and white-collar workers are asked to accept pay cuts, reduced benefits, reduced work schedules, flexible working conditions, all of which will be accompanied by the expectation of retiring at a later age. Where are the blue collar, white collar, and the recently “proletariatized” middle class headed and will they emerge stronger than they did during the Great Depression, helped immensely by the war, or will the middle class society lapse into chronic decline? There is a fundamental question of whether the “middle class” was on sound footing, or artificially created by a deficit-spending system now in crisis. On paper, the combination of low labor values in the Third World that allowed for higher incomes in the advanced countries and the postwar credit economy accounted for the quantitative and qualitative growth of the middle class in core countries. A large percentage of the population in the West, Japan, Taiwan, South Korea experienced upward mobility in the past 40 years, but a large percentage of the middle class mobility was because of the credit economy. The “wealth effect” was a mirage because the middle class lived on credit and hoped values in everything from their incomes to homes and securities would continue to rise.
The current crisis has exposed the bourgeois facade of endless progress and revealed that a large percentage of the middle class was really working for the banks–all along, the proletariatization of the middle class was taking place serving both an economic and political purpose. The US Congressional Budget Office estimates that in the next three years there will be a $2.9 trillion gap between productive capacity and actual output; in short, more than 300% the amount that congress approved as part of Obama’s stimulus package. Such a gap will mean that the state must decide if the top 10% of income earners bare the brunt of the cost, or if the middle class and workers will have to endure lower living standards. Because capital accumulation on a world scale can take place by the more thorough exploitation of labor, the state will support financial elites’ efforts to squeeze out the maximum from middle class and workers short of precipitating social upheaval and political instability. Arbiter of social relations through control of the fiscal system, the state will largely determine how weak the working class and middle class will be for society to function without paying the price of radicalization and violence.
Hovering around 20% in the US and rising as it is throughout the world, chronic poverty will remain a permanent legacy of the current recession. “Third World-type” conditions already exist within the advanced capitalist countries–families in the American Deep South and northern inner cities subsist on a couple hundred dollars per month and rely on food stamps to feed themselves. Conditions for the bottom 20% of the population are not that much better in the EU where the prospects for recovery are not as bright as in US, and even less so for Japan. If finance capitalism is to survive with the inevitable wealth concentration within the top 10%, there must necessarily be downward income pressure on the middle class and workers. Generating greater surplus than the market can absorb will keep the capitalist economy in a limited-growth mode for at least a decade, unless the state absorbs the surplus and spends it for social development instead of defense.
Because the effective demand is limited by the earning power of workers and middle class in the post-credit crisis of the early 21st century, and the sharply reduced personal wealth (drop in real estate values, private pensions, and stock portfolios) the illusory middle class “wealth effect” will remain low and accumulated surplus capital high, thus keeping the world economy under limited growth prospects for a long time. Of course, China with a strong state structure and dynamic economy is the exception and of course, we must science and technology innovation take into account, as well as the degree to which the state will intervene to limit capital accumulation by the financial elites. But given existing conditions in the advanced capitalist countries, what impact will they have on the social order? Because there are multiple institutional means that condition people toward conformity, most people exercise self-restraint toward the status quo as they are convinced that there may be rewards in such behavior and punishment for social dissidence. There is also the cultural difference in every society–for example, in western countries historically the individual assumes responsibility for success or failure and thus internalizes what is in essence an outward or objective phenomenon like job loss. The internalization process entails that the individual feels guilty and may act against himself or loved ones, instead of criticizing or striking out at the system. Naturally, the mass media, schools, religion, business, and the state inculcate such thinking into the minds of the individual who blames himself as a failure, not realizing that the financial and political elites that control institutions have failed.
Accountant John Smith in Denver lost his life’s savings in the stock market, he cannot find work, his wife divorced him, and it is all his fault because he has failed to receive the requisite training to conform to the “new market conditions.” People permit their lives to be conditioned and ruled, and sometimes often ruined by man-made systems that the entitlement-minded financial and political elites have forged to retain their privileged status. The individual has been conditioned to equate man-made systems with natural disasters like earthquakes or floods. Part of this thinking is a testament to the resounding success of a ubiquitous “birth-to-death” PR campaigns that have convinced people to accept capitalism as “natural,” a premise that both Adam Smith and Thomas Malthus shared. Once people accept that premise, and they aspire to upward mobility possible only within the system, they never even consider working class consciousness for to do so is to demean their own self-image the credit economy makes possible and to lack ambition for individual (bourgeois) success.
How many ads are there online, in newspapers, etc., about “assistant manager” in everything from office clerical positions to fast food jobs, when in reality those are low-paying jobs veiled by a bourgeois “status title” people appreciate more than income? After all, the “real worth” of the individual was “creditworthiness” bundled as part of net worth, thereby giving the illusion to a large percentage of people that they were part of capitalism’s success. Class-consciousness is the enemy of the financial and political elites that constantly inculcate the idea that “all of us must work together and sacrifice” for the greater good, when in fact the “greater good” is largely the domain of the elites. As proletarization of the middle class become more apparent, the current global crisis will evolve into a middle class crisis of alienation, stratification, and erratic class/status identity.
Additionally, there will be the increasingly prohibitive costs of higher education, especially graduate school that will be out of reach for a larger percentage of people in the next decade and possibly the next half century. At the same time, there will be fewer positions available for the college-educated population that will have to be highly mobile not only within its own country but internationally and must accept jobs unrelated to their college degree–a phenomenon that has been growing in the past decade. Though society will become increasingly polarized and likely to remain so because of capital accumulation in a credit-tight environment, the cyber-eco-bourgeoisie will co-opt and thus de-radicalize a segment of the recently created “proletariatized” middle class and working class aspiring to upward mobility and lifestyle. More realistic and self-aware than the “credit bourgeoisie” of the past half century, the cyber-eco-bourgeoisie of the 21st century will also be useful to the political and financial elites in promoting corporatism whether that is in the US, Japan, or EU.

Europe's Werewolves: Roma (Gypsies) on the Run (Jon Kofas, Greece)

Posted on August 28th, 2010

“Roma” (gypsies) have been Europe’s werewolves for nearly one thousand years. As the mythological werewolf in Hollywood motion pictures is attacking “normal folk” and then running to save its life, “Roma” have that kind of mythological reputation. This is the case even among those who romanticize gypsies as free spirits, exotic dancers and mesmerizing musicians that gave the world the intoxicating Flamenco. Mystical creatures from Indian heritage that appear to reject European flags and Christ’s cross, they can see the future in the eyes or palms of the other, they celebrate funerals by providing all worldly possessions, with music, dance and fire.
Growing up in the 1960s, I watched women gypsy fortune tellers pass by my neighborhood to engage the “proper Christian ladies” for a session of fortune-telling. At the time, I did not know that the priest in the 1960s as the Pope 500 years before, in collaboration with governments Catholic and Protestant alike, launched a campaign to criminalize gypsies who posed a threat to Christendom. “Pope Benedict XVI on Sunday (Aug. 22, 2010) urged French-speaking Catholics to ‘accept legitimate human diversity’ and practice ‘universal fraternity.’”
Periodically, EU politicians trying to win popular support or in trouble with the public try to use the gypsies as scapegoats, as did Silvio Berlusconi in spring 2008 and now Nicolas Sarkozy. It has been many years since I was in France, but the last time I was there the socio-cultural ambiance romanticized in my mind appeared friendlier and more cosmopolitan than any other western country I have ever visited. That Sarkozy, who traces his lineage to Eastern and South-Eastern European Jews, has decided to exile Roma from France is reminiscent of the Nazi persecution after 1935, leading to the “gypsy holocaust.” Today’s civilized and pluralistic France cannot throw gypsies in concentration camps. Instead, it pays them 300 euros to leave for Romania or Bulgaria, both associate EU members whose citizens have the legal right to live in EU countries–an issue debated by legal scholars, but who really sheds tears and treasure for gypsies! Presumably, if a few thousand gypsies leave France, the country that gave the world the first modern socio-political revolution would be free of crime, free of social chaos, free of social ills, free to be “purely French.”
Mired in political scandals, suffering Bush-like approval in public opinion polls, confronting very serious social opposition owing to the current global recession and trimming of the welfare state, and losing the movie-star luster that he and his model wife commanded a couple of years ago, Sarkozy chose to persecute the “Roms.” For centuries gypsies have survived on the margins of the institutional mainstream, engaged in legal and illegal activities as the rest of mainstream population, as one would expect of a nomadic people not integrated into the mainstream. Sarkozy is engaging in “rightist populism,” and he is safe knowing that the majority not just of the French population but Europeans, especially Eastern Europeans, dislike gypsies. Naturally, “political correctness,” yet another treacherous brick on Liberal society’s wall of hypocrisy, does not permit them to say so openly, no matter the Vatican’s noble protestations. Sarkozy knows how to and he ably exploits popular prejudices on the cheap. But a Jew of the diaspora, a Jew who should empathize with the holocaust’s “other victims,” a Jew in charge of one of the most advanced countries in the world with a history of permitting dissidents to seek sanctuary in Paris! Maybe he is denying his heritage, and is more proud that his grandmother was Greek and he identifies with the Gentiles more these days as he implied when he spoke before the Greek Parliament, “I, the grandson of a Greek!” But is France any different than the rest of EU, should it be, and isn’t Sarkozy doing what he needs to survive in politics whether he is a Jew or not? Europe has a history of admiring the werewolf for its defiance of civilization, a history of chasing the werewolf away, confined back to its gypsy tent far from the view of the flag and the cross.

POLITICS OF TERRORISM: Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia - FARC

Originally published in 2005 at: http://cgi.stanford.edu/group/wais/cgi-bin/

"Professor Hilton's analysis and commentary on the "two faces of FARC" raises important questions about the definition and the politics of terrorism. Just as the Cold War produced its own rhetoric and oversimplification of "international Communism", a generic term that did not mean very much, similarly we have today an industry of people analyzing terrorism as a generic concept. Is FARC a "terrorist" organization because the Bush administration placed it on its Terrorism list, is it one because it uses tactics that may fit a dictionary definition, is it so because the Colombian government sees it in that light, or is it so because there is some international understanding, let us say an OAS consensus, that designates it so? The word terrorism evokes emotion and the concept is politically subjective. To the Zionists in the 1940s, Manachem Begin was a freedom fighter, but not to the British and the Palestinians. To the white South Africans, Nelson Mandela a terrorist when he was struggling to end white rule in the 1960s, but he was a freedom fighter to the majority of the population. Political violence assumes various forms, including random destruction of innocent civilians targeted largely for symbolic significance and publicity for a cause. Individual groups engaged in political violence for the sake of achieving a goal that may include social justice as in the case of FARC is unacceptable, it lacks legitimacy, it is "terrorism." Mass killings in the form of state-sanctioned warfare have always carried a sense of glory, virtue, and honor, though the end result is destruction just as in the case of guerrilla groups carrying out political violence. Is FARC a terrorist organization? Created in 1964 by the Colombian Communist Party, FARC was a response to endemic poverty in southern Colombia, to concentration of land-ownership, government repression, and La Violencia that devastated the country from 1948 to 1958. Organized society produces guerrilla organizations like FARC or the New Peoples' Army in the Philippines, Sendero Luminoso in Peru, etc. as a response to state-sponsored violence and oppression. This is not to say that the tactics of such organizations should not be strongly condemned, but modern societies, whether the U.S., Russia, the EU, Colombia, Saudi Arabia, etc. do not address the conditions that give rise to insurgent organizations. Instead, they opt for the military solution which actually exacerbates political violence. Only a political solution that takes into account social justice can end political violence".

Learning History in America

Learning history is a reflection of any society's current cultural, ideological, and political trends at any particular era. If we lived in Victorian England, we would not be exposed to the same interpretation of the aristocracy's role in society during the Tudor dynasty, for example, as we are today at a U.S. or European university. Curriculum is always revised to reflect societal trends and prevailing social values. The current trend in American historiography is that there are "many Americas" reflecting the country's heterogeneous cultural composition and evolving values. When I went to school in Greece in the 1960s, there was never any talk about the role of gays and lesbians in history, or of the Ottoman Empire's contributions to civilization, to mention two of many examples. Historical interpretations are a reflection of changing times. One hundred years from now, historians will not view the Cold War in the same manner as Acheson and Gromyko did. As a historian in the U.S., I find it disturbing that increasingly there is a lack of focus on substance, and more on style, superficialities, and appearances. Mass media reflect this trend as well. News is about style that makes people feel good, not substance which may be painful. T.S. Elliot's "Hollow Men" is just as appropriate today as when he wrote it. With apologies to many excellent education professors for generalizing, the "hollow trend" is a reflection of college courses in Education Departments that focus so much on methods, rather than content. Even when content is the focus, historical figures are rarely given a multi-dimensional character that best represents them. I agree with Professor Hilton that Stalin has been stereo-typed, as have Napoleon, Caeser Augustus, Mao, Kennedy, De Gaulle, and countless others. The reason is because superficial analysis is the easy, painless, and popular way of explaining complex multi-dimensional personalities. Regrettably, complex policies and events are explained in the same manner by many educators, journalists, and politicians. Was Nicolo Machiavelli, among many others, correct to argue that people judge by appearances whether in politics or business, etc.? Perhaps the existentialists are correct to argue that there may be an innate proclivity in human nature to reduce people, events, policies, etc. to simple terms that best reflects one's world-view of objectifying the other, and of making sense of the outside world in simple terms".

Propaganda as Subjective Reality; on Wikipedia (Jon Kofas, Greece)

Posted on: http://cgi.stanford.edu/group/wais/cgi-bin/?p=51341#comments
August 27th, 2010

 

With the ushering in of mass politics after the European revolutions of 1848, coinciding with the publication of the Communist Manifesto, it became necessary to constantly propagate for the hearts and minds of the masses. The Second Industrial Revolution and the “Age of Imperialism” also made propaganda more significant in all domains of life from businesses interested in selling their products to the non-Western World to missionaries trying to spread their faith.
Naturally, the most effective means of propaganda have always rested with the state, religious, and business elites. However, intellectuals from Marx to Marcuse as well as trade unionists and leftist opposition politicians engaged in propaganda and in many cases very effective. Even the rebuttal to propaganda is itself another form of propaganda regardless of the stated intention. The Nazi regime raised propaganda to new levels, until of course the Cold War, when propaganda became superimposed reality whether for the Soviets, US and NATO, Mao, Nasser, or De Gaulle. Each side engaged in propaganda gained legitimacy by presenting the other side as propaganda and issuing data to support its position. Institutions–from foreign ministries to universities–became part of the propaganda campaign serving a political agenda: domestic or foreign policy. Amid the epoch of mass politics and mass propaganda in every segment of society from politics to business designed to indoctrinate the masses, a segment of the population became co-opted and another apathetic–neutralized as far as the propagandist goal is concerned.
One reason for the attraction of many to Existentialism, Phenomenology, Nihilism, Hinduism, Buddhism, Zen for example, is because of the hypocritical Western culture and value system as it has unfolded especially in the past 100 years. The withering away of “objective reality” in the age of a narcissistic materialistic culture compels people to accept propaganda so they can experience the pleasures that conformity yields and avoid the pain of dissent. Naturally, safety and security are of paramount significance in the lives of people as Palmiro Togliatti argued in Lectures on Fascism. I have no problem with any government, organization, or other entity propagating, as long as there is full disclosure and there is no attempt to propagate for example against the rights of women, but in fact the goal is to curtail such rights. Similarly, I have no problem with Wikipedia engaged in “Zionist editing” (Soraya Sepahpour-Ulrich, 26 August) as long as that is fully disclosed to the reader/audience. In fact, that I respect and could defend as “free speech” and of course would be free to propagate against it if I so choose. If Wikipedia, however, tries to present the killing of unarmed Palestinian children in the Gaza by Israeli fire as a case of Tel Aviv defending “human rights” of its citizens, then only those who already share the pro-Israeli position will read Wikipedia.

Mosque at Ground Zero (Jon Kofas, Greece)

 Posted on August 14th, 2010

 

Obama’s speech on the mosque at “Ground Zero” makes sense for his administration.
It makes sense politically for him to be in favor of building the mosque, because presumably it entails co-opting the “non-violent Muslim majority” and embracing America’s pluralistic tradition instead of yielding to right-wing Judeo-Christian ideologues. To oppose the project would in fact entail that the US is anti-Muslim and follows a double standard on religious tolerance, one for the Judeo-Christian tradition and another for all others. The mosque is all about symbolism and I have no doubt that intelligent US government analysts have looked at this issue from every possible angle. To advise Obama to hold a news conference in favor of the mosque is indicative that they concluded the “positives” outweigh the minuses in this case, namely, the mosque could be presented by the US government as a sort of “apology” and /or reconciliation for what fanatics did on 9/11. Of course, Democrats have no choice but to oppose Newt Gringrich and his crowd who want an open and indiscriminate Judeo-Christian crusade against Islam. Given the US problems with Iran, to say nothing of the rest of the Muslim world, there is no choice before the Obama administration but to give the green light, no matter where the $100 million to build the mosque comes from–and those who follow the trail of money in various extreme Islamic organizations know that the sources are often from well-respected conservative Arabs.