What does Global Warming Threaten? A Critique of David Miliband

Just a point on a statement made by the UK's Foreign Secretary David Miliband at the United Nations the other day.

Miliband was at the UN speaking on the need for all countries to approach climate change with "common, but differentiated responsibilities", a laudable goal in and of itself. But along the way, he made a reference which seemed quite contradictory: that climate change threatens equality.

Taken at face value, this statement makes logical sense - rising water levels, drought, decreased agricultural production are likely to affect the poorest people in the poorest countries most. And in both principle and in practice, I thoroughly agree with the need to address the atrocious conditions we have created for our planet, and the people in it, therefore it's important not to take what I'm about to say out of context.

In a grand display of pomp and arrogance, Miliaband declares that "we must address the greatest longterm threat to our aspirations to tackle inequality". Given that British inequality is at a 40yr high (for a thorough study see Poverty, Wealth and Place, courtesy of the Rowntree Foundation http://www.jrf.org.uk/bookshop/eBooks/2019-poverty-wealth-place.pdf), this statement is typical New Labour Party doublespeak. The governments of most 'western' nations have had thirty years to prove they are interested in creating even a modicum of equality. Instead, they have chosen to dismantle basic welfare institutions that at least kept inequality in check in favor of flexible accumulation for only the most wealthy. To speak of a common resolve to combat global inequality, which has already increased considerably in recent years, in light of all the efforts made by these same elites to perpetuate that inequality is beyond irony - it's macabre.

When you consider that the poorest of the poor that Miliband references have never recieved the sinister fruits of global warming and pollution, in the form of even basic comforts such as running water and 24hr access to electricity, its quite ridiculous to talk about 'common' responsibility. The history of global capitalism has demonstrated just what the commitment to fighting inequality by those benefeciary nations is: handouts to the poor, so long as they remain poor (and thus dependent on low wages) at the best of times, violent repression or silent ignorance at the worst.

To top it off, the real threat brought on by global warming is not equality. Yes, some nations will be in much better positions to weather the storm brought on by drastic changes to ecosystems, rising water levels, the influx of refugees and global depression. But there is more likely to be a reduction in the security of countries, and especially on the 'developed' countries who are so dependent on fragile infrastucture networks and grids to function, if the catastrophe that is predicted does arrive in great magnitude. Rather, the real threat that global warming will cause is to the capitalist system. Any system that can cause such grave damage to an entire planet in such a relatively short amount of time (~150-200 yrs) is not viable, and must be altered (if not drastically transformed) if these catastrophic outcomes prove correct. Urging action now is a way of trying to keep the growth machine alive, with its constant reiteration of the trickle down myth - directly anathema to the hopes of any substantive equality for the worlds poorest, even if absolute poverty levels diminish slightly.

What Miliband is really saying, is that we urgently need to resolve the crisis of capitalism brought about by global warming if we, as the developed core, want to continue to reap the advantages of the inequalities inherent in the capitalist world system. Those on the periphery need to be able to keep those agricultural and manufacturing workshops open: we can't have work stoppages due to bad weather. The world must keep watching what kind of climate change plan that views "common, but differentiated responsibilities" as integral, and see what actually emerges. If the 'west' is anything like it was - and it is - the rhetoric will far outweigh the reality.

Knocked Up

I just finished watching Knocked Up and thought I would make a few critical points about the movie. After chatting with a number of people, I was told the movie was extremely funny and decided I would check it out. Besides a few jokes here and there, I didn't find it particularly hilarious, and instead was struck by the arguments the film made about marriage, childbirth, and responsibility.

The first major point of note is how the movie effectively rules out abortion as a possible solution to unwanted pregnancy. The word is never mentioned in the movie directly, and only twice in a "rhymes with" reference. This option is quickly shut down, by a 'Canadian' of all people (and likely from Vancouver of all places, the same city as the main male character) . While it is true that the Canadian equivalent to Roe v. Wade did not come until 1988, there has not been the same kind of agitation for abortion criminalization in the mainstream public discourse as has recently occurred in the US, least of all in a relatively progressive city like Vancouver, which has active pro-choice organizations that routinely advertises on public transportation. The film attempts to fabricate a cross-national consensus that abortion is not an option by choosing the Canadian to decry that possibility, and then quickly assumes that the only option is to follow through with the birth, despite other potential alternatives (e.g. adoption).

The story quickly shifts to the explicitly unlikely scenario that the expecting parents, Ben and Alison, will try to form a viable relationship (that is, not one for the sole sake of the child) despite the lack of similar values, professional paths, lifestyles, and age. In the process, a complicated, but clearly identifiable statement is made about "taking responsibility for oneself". Ben, a young, unemployed, carefree, pothead, generally uninterested in conspicuous consumption and suburban family living (at least with the little of his personal aspirations that we get to know), is slowly directed to grow up and be "responsible". What this is codeword for is falling in line with the capitalist ethos - work hard, avoid illegal indulgences, engage in conspicuous consumption and the acquisition of wealth, and more generally, submit to the dominant norms of your time.
Consistently throughout the film, Ben's 'immaturity' creates difficulties for him in his pursuit of a relationship with the future mother of his child, which he must overcome in order to be a respectable member of society, a competent father, and an appropriate husband. But all the symbolic representations of this immaturity, described above, point to a certain construction of a worker-citizen that is conducive to the general project of capital accumulation.

Second, formal relationships are held up to the highest ideal, even when they must be achieved at all costs. There is a moment as the plot develops where Alison questions this ideal - she makes the point that relationships should not have to be forced, but must be 'natural'. Yet, as they break off their fledgling relationship, things begin to go sour for each of their individual lives (cue the sad music), and they aren't happy. The only way for them to be happy is if they form a family union (with marriage ultimately in mind) and give up their single lives. This of course reinforces the social reproduction funtions of the family that capitalism requires.

There is also a debate over relationship strategies between Alison and her sister. While the former argues to accept the irksome characteristics of her partner, the latter opts to criticize her partner until he conforms to her standards. It is quite clear which strategy wins out in the end. Ben becomes the responsible person that Alison wants him to be, while her sister's husband foregoes any form of social friendship (such as a scandalour fantasy baseball pool) and conforms to the dictates of his wife: he becomes the selfless 'family man'. Together, both couples reaffirm the concept of marriage and the nuclear family, leaving little room for potential alternative relationships (not necessarily gay marriage, which could conceivably fit into this mold, but single parenthood, extended families, etc.).

Knocked Up romanticizes the stressful realities of child rearing by those in precarious financial situations, or who, at a particular point in their lives, are ill-equipped and unenthusiastic about the prospect by creating a personal conflict between the two future parents during the pregnancy whose climax and resolution occur with the childbirth. The birth of the baby automatically produces the rebirth of their relationship, and the rest is happily ever after. Many points that the movie brings up are important ones, such as the difficulties in negotiating personal and social relationships, and the need to constantly reflect on one's life. But it ultimately works to regularize coupled relationships, encourage reproduction at any cost, and attain a specific form of responsibility - all of which directly and indirectly support the capitalist system. This is not to say that coupledom, babies and responsibility are bad things in and of themselves. But given the historical prejudice of Hollywood towards a certain class and ideology, one should always think critically of the messages movies are actually giving.

Update to the Last Post

My apologies for not including the links to the articles I referenced below. Here they are:

AP article, available from CNN: http://www.cnn.com/2007/WORLD/americas/09/17/chavez.venezuela.ap/index.html

Venezuelanalysis.com article is self-explanatory

The Trials of Hugo Chavez

For anyone following the course of events upon which Chavez has led Venezuela for the last nine years, two things are immediately clear: the mainstream American press has sought to discredit and attack his policies from day one, and the alternative, broadly 'left', press has sought to vindicate him, and where this was not possible, provide rational justification or at least explanation for his policies. I feel it is necessary to join in this rhetorical struggle by examining two articles on the recent curriculum change in Venezuela that is being ushered in with the new school year.

An AP article covering this story immediately focuses on the least important part of the story: the 'threat' of 'nationalization' if the schools do not adhere to the curriculum. Instead, an article at venezuelanalysis.com delivers a much more informative piece detailing the real newsworthy item: that Venezuela is changing its school curriculum and what they are changing it to. To be clear, this article does not shirk the statement made by Chavez that there must be public oversight of all schools within the country, and that private schools who refuse this will be forced to shut down (with the slack being picked up by the public school system - so called 'nationalization'). Yet it does so in a way this actually informative instead of simply fear-mongering.

While the AP article claims in a trite little sentence that "Just what the new curriculum will include and how it will be applied to all Venezuelan schools and universities remains unclear", the article at Venezuelanalysis.com provides an answer. "The new Bolivarian education is based on four pillars: learn to create, learn to participate and coexist, learn to value, and learn to reflect", which would include revised readings of history that take into consideration relatively recent developments in Latin American historiography. Thus, earlier textbooks glorified 'heroic' conquistadores and portrayed the development and evolution of the Venezuelan nation from the perspective of the contemporary economic elite, conveniently silencing voices in the past who in the present might pose a problem to the tenuous official nationalism geared towards capital accumulation and special privilege. AP conveniently leaves this explantion out, instead editing Chavez only to include the apparently self-explanatory phrase "They taught us to admire Christopher Columbus and Superman", which to an Anglo-American audience with the sort of education system that Chavez is decrying will only make him sound ludicrous.

Of course, Chavez's "Bolivarian" curriculum is clearly designed to serve the interests of his own state to the detriment of his capitalist and elite competitors. No curriculum can ever claim neutrality, for such neutrality does not exist, and Chavez does not deny this. As quoted on venezuelanalysis.com, Chavez states that "we want to create our own collective, creative and diverse ideology". Still, the question of the relative value of two equally normative education systems (the Bolivarian and the capitalist ones) should be secondary to a much more fundamental question. 'Nationalization', a usual suspect on the list of dirty words used to describe Venezuelan developments, in this context merely means standardizing a publicly-developed curriculum across various tiers of education. As Chavez notes, this is something that has been a pillar of western education for nearly a hundred years (to see why, take a look at George Orwell's novel A Clergyman's Daughter!). Private schools in 'developed' countries, perhaps with a few exceptions, cannot teach 'murder and mayhem' or 'bacci ball' and expect to recieve the same accreditation as public schools. Standards are imposed by the state to, at least theoretically, suit the social context in which the recipients of education are living. Hugo Chavez simply is altering the curriculum for precisely the same reasons Americans do not restrict women to home economics and men to shop class anymore or racially segregate their public education (although I understand Southwestern Baptist Seminary, a university under different regulations than public schools, is bucking this trend with regard to the former example).

Opponents of Chavez in the media usually fall into two camps. Those who know precisely what Chavez is trying to do and are worried that his success might spread to their own countries and threaten their elite privilged position, and those completely unaware of larger historical struggles who, jumping on the bandwagon of this former camp, feed off their rhetoric. It is amazing to me how much effort and toil goes into defending this privilege, when half of that effort is probably enough to yield benefits for all but the most privileged pretty comparable to what they get today. But I guess that's just the irrationality of the capitalist logic that we in the west like to infuse into our 'rational' education system.

The Road to Serfdom is a Good Book

There, I said it. Likely all who stop reading this post at the title, and who have done the same with Hayek's book will be appalled, and will proceed to lambast me somewhere (oh wait, I'm not that important!). But it's something that needs to be said, though perhaps not for the reasons that one usually praises a book for. Many on the left know the frustration of having certain author's taken out of context by their ideological opponents, whether it be Marx or Chomsky, two very common candidates. Hayek is an equal candidate, and like Marx, he is misunderstood and misinterpreted by both the left and the right. And especially since it is those who have championed the actual implementation of neoliberalism and claim Hayek as their ideological founder that obscure his - at least as stated - positions, and thus wrap themselves in yet another shawl of false legitimacy, it is especially frustrating. But I digress. Why then is The Road to Serfdom a good book?
Mainly, or at least from my uninformed position, because it actually presents serious challenges to the positions of socialists of varying stripes. In short, it forces one, unless they choose not to read the book or uncritically shrug Hayek's arguments off, to actually ponder and critically analyze the positions that they hold. The basic argument, that certain aspects of state planning produce the propensity towards greater power concentrations ('totalitarianism', as he puts it), though not a truism, is certainly borne out in historical practice. Thus, for proponents of national state socialism, Hayek provides the perfect springboard for critically approaching the practical dilemmas of coordination, decision-making, power distribution and adjudication. Indeed, those radical democrats who decry technocratic rulership that, at least currently, goes hand in hand with national centralization will share at least one common point with Hayek. For the growing number that views the national state with the same distrust as capital, be they liberal anarchists, social libertarians, left communitarians or any of the myriad political distinctions out there, Hayek's book is largely dated. Almost all of Hayek's arguments assume the national state, which is increasingly being contested in the scholarly community - but there is still value in reading this book as a way of further contextualizing their positions within a long strand of intellectual history.
But of course, The Road to Serfdom is not without its flaws. Hayek's use of rhetoric is conniving and distracts from his actual message, which he explicitly states is his intention. As an example, Hayek crudley equates "fascism" (which is almost never used in the book) with "socialism". This is clearly an attempt to reframe the word to include the negativity of Britain's Nazi enemies without regard to the qualitative differences between the two terms. It would be like claiming that 'anarchism', in the pejorative sense, is liberalism, in the Hayekian sense. Chapter 12 seeks to trace "The Socialist Roots of Naziism", an endeavor with about as much validity as tracing the roots of British slavery to the rediscovery of Aristotle during the Renaissance. These two factors are clearly correlated, and indeed, many proponents of slavery did rely on the classic texts, but they are clearly not causally linked in any rigorous way. Hayek's spuriousness and imprecision in making this argument leaves him open to ridicule, such as that German democracy sprang from Naziism - after all, Hayek says himself that the Nazi's viewed themselves as practicing the 'true democracy'.
But for me at least, these flaws are balanced by the intellectual honesty that Hayek displays in the first paragraph of the preface to his original book. He states, "This is a political book.[...] But, whatever the name, the essential point remains that all I shall have to say is derived from certain ultimate values. I hope I have adequately discharged in the book itself a second and no less important duty: to make it clear beyond doubt what these ultimate values are and on which the whole argument depends" (xlv, 1994 ed.). We may, and should, criticize those "ultimate" values for being utopian, selfish, insufficient, inefficient and irrational, almost all of which Hayek has a counter-argument for that will spark important debates, but we must also commend him for not hiding behind "scientific fact" or determinism, and (not entirely) relying on reductive and static conceptions of human nature, unlike his future 'disciples'.
For me, the most fundamental fallacy Hayek makes is to equate the decentralization of power in society with the automatic propensity for competition (214). We have the historical 'advantage' of living through what Peck and Tickell call 'roll-out neoliberalism', where Schumpeterian creative destruction reigns free (ironically still carefully regulated of course), and can see that competition is only a classificatory means of changing who will hold power, rather than a progressive end, or even a sustainable process. Those who have subverted Hayek's proscriptions in chapter 14, those unlucky recipients of neoliberal policy, have only redecorated for a new era of monopoly capitalism.
Avoiding The Road to Serfdom is an easy thing to do, if we choose to hole away in hospitable intellectual enclaves, but we do so at our peril, while those who manipulate Hayek's ideas work to advance the interests of those whom he condemns (namely monopoloy capitalists, or just about all of them!). And for those who think that reading this book is unnecessary due to its antiquated publication date, it's not, at least not to the uninitiated like myself. Just as Karl Polanyi's The Great Transformation has garnered so much attention in recent years (an absolutely perfect complement and critique to Hayek, written in the same year by yet another Austrian - perhaps the subject of another post), The Road to Serfdom is still highly relevant for those engaged in the critique of contemporary North American society. I encourage everyone who is interested in the values underpinning socialism, and critical thought, to actually read this book - it will make criticizing Thatcher and Reagan a little easier!