A Frank (not Ronald) Discussion of the Republican Primary Debates

The best thing anyone can do is pay close attention to something they have a general disdain for, and consider it, not with an 'objective' eye, but with the exclusion of the aspects that are most frustrating for them. For me, the California Republican debate fit that bill quite well, mostly because of the radical disconnect between the consciously crafted rhetoric of the Republican candidates and the utterly destructive consequences of Republican policies on the American working poor, to say nothing of the millions worldwide that have suffered at their hands over the years. So (recalling that I have waived any claims of objectivity) with the debates as my focal point, let me offer an alternative analysis to what will certainly be a massive spectacle in the coming 24 hours.

Putting everything aside, in my opinion, the big winner in this debate was Huckabee - when he had the opportunity to speak, he delivered a clear, concise and even passionate response. Both he and Paul, perhaps from their vantage points as the "future Republican nominee drop outs", gave heated and concerned responses to questions asked of them, or seized their own space to present points from their platforms. McCain was obviously the big loser in these debates, and as I write this, I will concurr with Amy Holmes' pointed comment on CNN's aftershow that he appeared "surly". To take that further, I saw his performance resembling that of a cocky candidate, drunk on the fruits of his endorsements. Nevertheless, CNN, eager to back "power", no matter its stripe, was quick to remedy his less than stellar performance in the aftermath of the debate.

Which brings me to a major point of contention with these debates. Both Huckabee and Paul at some point in the night mentioned that they would like to speak about the issues, rather than - in the words of Huckabee - be an "umpire at a ballgame". Unfortunately, neither of them ever got a chance to really "swing a few" themselves, with no thanks to the questioners. But an even bigger issue was the entire questioning format. With no rules, CNN was at the helm to dictate what kind of debate this would be. Their decision: bring out the talkshow. CNN consistently would ask questions of either McCain or Romney, and after hearing their response, instead of letting the other give their own response to the question, would ask them to respond to their competitors point. This is a practice that blatantly obscures the issues. Instead, it encouraged (even forced) the candidates into the kind of absurd futility of character attacks that the media thrives upon. I can say, from the perspective of someone who fights tooth and nail against the policies that Republican candidates generally advance, that I honestly felt bad for all of them tonight.

But beyond the format questions, the main point that stuck out to me was really the disjuncture about what the Republican party is really all about. Listening to the diverse narratives of all the candidates and the back and forth name-calling of being out of synch with the party, I was left wondering: what does the Republican party really stand for? I heard Huckabee talk about the fundamental equality of all life, no matter what or where it was, alongside Romney criticize any claim of potential legitimacy for non-"Americans" to a right to live a life they choose. I heard McCain talk about a military class that needs to be upheld above all else, alongside Ron Paul talk about an ideal of freedom, rooted in the "everyman", that is the core of the country's pride and success. These different - and often contradictory - political and moral values leave one wondering what the cohesive glue of the party really is now. Why, for one, continue to link the party to Ronald Reagan? Should he really be the main referent for the party?

This, more than anything, signalled to me the demise of Republican leadership in the next election - and I have consistently predicted a McCain victory in both the primary and the presidential contest since 2006. If the Republican party hopes to have any shot at winning a general election, they need to have a consistent strategy that either solidifies their base, or transcends it. As times change and the Reagan personality fades into black, and he is remembered for the policies that he really stood for, the party will need to rethink just who they stand for. My hopes are that they fail to do this, so that Americans will at least get a good decade of marginal economic benefits (living wage anyone?), and an entrenchment of a much more egalitarian political culture.

But I defer to you - how did you view the California debate? What about this Reagan legacy? Is the party as fractured as people claim?

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!