Getting defensive

I recently read a book by Cass Sunstein where he moves away from his previous support of deliberative democracy (not direct democracy) and toward neoliberal methods for aggregating information and preferences (price, prediction markets). I had a weird sense as I read a sentence to the effect that the problems of deliberation aren't solved by more deliberation. I have said something similar about communication or publicity. What bothered me was the overwhelming sense of sadness and loss I felt--I need others to believe in the very things I doubt, the very things I criticize.

If I am more sensible, then I acknowledge that the problem was his solution--look to the market. But, if I am honest, I recognize an affective dimension at work here: I can not believe through others (or at least this other). Maybe it's something like this: if even the mainstream and moderate supporters of democracy are abandoning ship, then we are really fucked. If even he can't muster the energy to defend deliberation, then we are in a different place. Or, maybe it's a kind of confrontation with something like the truth of what I say and write: democracy is past, over, done.

Simply to say "deal with it" ignores the loss, a very real loss. I think this is what Wendy Brown has been exploring in a series of recent articles, although she tends to write about the loss of liberalism.

I wonder if some academic left energies (my own included) have been too oriented to critique and criticism, and not enough to the continued development of arguments in favor of a certain set of principles and ideals. I wonder if some of us have taken Marx for granted, failing to grapple with the theoretical as well as the political consequences of 1989--as far as the mainstream of the US and Europe is concerned, 1989 was the defeat of socialism. To cite Marx is to say nothing at all, to wallow in a lost cause. And it's to fail to build anew the arguments, the vision, that would, that might, occupy that site again.

I suspect that these views are out there, that I might even know them, even if the tabloid crack that crowds out my brain prevents me from locating them. Here are the elements, then, that should be filled in:

1.  Why from each according to her ability to each according to her needs is and should be the fundamental basis for a political group (state, governing constitution) and how it provides the justification for redistributive policies;
2.  A defense of collective action and possibility (over and against prevailing individualism);
3.  A defense of government and the state as an arrangement for attending to general interests and large-scale concerns;
4.  Identification of the key issues at stake: global poverty and inequality (includes critique of role of corporations as associations of share-holder interest, insurance companies as designed to profit from adversity, climate change, global arms/weapons trade, oil/car dependency).

I would think that each number would fairly quickly generate a bibliography that could then be culled and synthesized. The task of making it happen or proving the feasibility of it coming about, well, someone else could do that.

Comments

[McKenzie Wark]

"I wonder if some of us have taken Marx for granted, failing to grapple with the theoretical as well as the political consequences of 1989--as far as the mainstream of the US and Europe is concerned, 1989 was the defeat of socialism."

Indeed.

Two curmudgeonly thoughts:
1. It wasn't that the communists did terrible things to the Russians, but that the Russians did terrible things to the communists.

2. Communism was and is a huge success -- in western Europe. Universal sufferage, free education, (partial) socialization of the means of production. That's most of what the Manifesto called for.

The flexiblity and plurality of the Marxist tradition has, for reasons it would be interesting to track, been largely abandoned. Let's hear it for Ernst Wigforss!

How did a bunch of Maoists and crypto-Spinozists get to speak in the stead of such a rich and varied tradition?

[Jodi]

Ken--here, here! Well said (I particularly like the last remark). Who is Ernst Wigforss? Anyway, if this were a wiki, I'd use your point number 2 to revise the first item on my little list--to claim the successes as crucial to what must be defended.

[marcegoodman]

I will confess to having my own Cass Sunstein moment a couple of weeks ago when I was saddened and dismayed to hear him on NPR talking about a recent study purportedly demonstrating a deterrent effect for the death penalty. I hadn't been aware that Sunstein's position had changed from opposition to a conditional support based on the conclusions of previous such studies. While my own politics track well to the left of Sunstein's, my reaction suggested that I likewise regarded him as a bellwether figure.

[Alain]

Jodi I agree with you the key point is "if even the mainstream and moderate supporters of democracy are abandoning ship, then we are really fucked." While this may be true in the theoretical setting I don't think we are there yet in practice. This may be an old distinction but it still seems valid to me that many people still crave a more civil, dare I say reasonable, politics in the United States. Whether those voices continue to get drowned out by the multi-media noise machine has not yet been decided.

[pebird]

FWIW:

1. This is the basis of every successful human organization - from family to community to corporation. When an economic-entity fails to heed this principle, they have become parasitic and have stopped adding value. They are stealing from you, and what do you do when someone steals from you?

2. If we can defend ourselves collectively, who needs a state? Doesn't everyone want smaller government?

3. Sorry, cannot help you here. The state is not your friend, despite the smiley face and occasional handout. Perhaps in a different setting, but we probably wouldn't call it a government.

4. Key issues need to be defined individually and linked collectively - start with basic human desire for freedom - in all of its forms. Remove abstraction - there is no oil/car dependency, etc. There are simply people who need to live different(ly).

[McKenzie Wark]

"Now win the peace" was Labour's slogan for the '45 UK election. The war was, among other things, a socialist victory. The Communists were the backbone of the resistance in France, Italy, Greece and the Balkans. The Americans bank-rolled social democracy in Germany, France and Italy to keep the Moscow-aligned left in check.

Mixed market socialism was the least-worst option available to the Atlantic ruling classes. When you mobilize a whole people in service to the state's war aims they invariably come home and demand something in exchange.

How western 'communism' was defeated is a long story. But for present purposes what's interesting is that what we now take to be the authorities on Marxist thought were outside this tradition: Maoists and Trotskyites. But not much in Negri or Althusser really makes much sense unless one knows a little about the various other legacies from Marx from which they were dissenting.