Marching for Climate Change

The image of masses of people marching through Manhattan to protest climate change and urge diplomats from around the world to finally “do something” about it, calls to mind the counter image of masses of people fleeing from the destruction and wreckage wrought on the world by the financiers of Wall Street.  In New York, people marched last weekend along a pre-established course from Central Park to the Javitz Center: to the opposite side of the Island, that is, from the UN and easily miles north of Wall Street.  They marched under the watchful eyes of the media and the still more watchful eyes of the police.  In the rest of the world, and on a daily basis, masses of people march too under watchful eyes, but not in order to protest climate change or urge politicians to finally do something about it: they march simply in an attempt to flee for their lives.

There are more displaced people in the world today than at any point since the end of WWII: more than 50 million, according to recent estimates.  This number includes both refugees (that is to say, people who have had to flee from their country seeking asylum in another) and internally displaced peoples (or people who live as though they were refugees in their own land).

What is behind this violent displacement of millions of people in the world today?  According to one activist who was present at the march in New York last weekend, the culprit is Climate Change:

Speaking of Syria and the waves of people who are fleeing from ISIS, this activist said: "There was the worst drought in its modern history.  It caused a major upheaval when all the farmers came into the cities. There was a tyrant, who then oppressed his people, a civil war broke out, destabilizing the entire region, and a group like ISIS has come to the forefront. I mean that's the embodiment of what America is not about, and that's what collapse of civilization would look like."

 This kind-a-sort-a gets at the issue.  But it is remarkably naïve.  Climate change is not what causes civil wars such as the war that is currently raging in Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan, Mali, Nigeria, Ukraine, Colombia, Mexico, Guatemala, and Honduras.  Rather, climate change is caused by the same force that fuels these wars and keeps them burning indefinitely.  That force, for lack of a better term, is empire.  Imperial states have the world’s energy resources under military and industrial siege.  These festering, slow-burning wars are what account for the millions of displaced people in the world today, to say nothing of the millions of mortal victims of these imperial wars.

Where do refugees flee?  Mostly to concentration camps, otherwise known as urban slums, where they mingle with the millions of internally displaced.  Here, the misery of the fleeing, shocked and awed refugees combines with the misery of all those who have become superfluous in the labor market that is the global economy.  This misery generates violent opposition against this oppressive and destructive system.  This violent resistance in turn legitimizes the much more powerful strategies and lethal weapons of empire, in a circular rhythm that seems to know no end.

Marching on New York to protest Climate Change and impress upon world leaders the urgent need to do something about it is all well enough.  But the discussion of such a march should by no means be limited to celebrations of the sort that figured as headlines in major newspapers: “Largest ever protest against climate change”.  The largest ever crowd that we should really be talking about is the crowd of over 50 million displaced people.  This crowd and not the crowd of activists gathered in Manhattan last weekend is the true measure of the destructive force of an imperialism that is behind so much human suffering, so much destruction of human life.

INTELECTUALES E IDIOTAS

           La mejor manera de comprender los fracasos y límites del esclarecimiento es la comparación.  Por un lado tenemos el ideal universal de la emancipación humana; por otro, las grotescas realidades históricas que este ideal ha venido engendrando hasta el día de hoy: el calentamiento global y la devastación ecológica causados por la dominación tecnológica e industrial de la naturaleza; una guerra global contra el terrorismo que amenaza con imponer un estado de guerra civil permanente sobre toda la tierra; y por todos lados las señas y símbolos de la desintegración social, económica, y política asociados con el poder tiránico de un llamado “estado de excepción”.  Para nuestra gran consternación, vemos que por todas partes la libertad se ha convertido en un instrumento de dominación.  Las libertades que disfrutamos son, en el mejor de los casos, engañosas: la competición libre a base de precios administrados, una prensa libre que se autocensura, la libertad de discriminar entre marcas y artilugios.  No son las libertades que ejercen personas esclarecidas, sino quienes más bien deberíamos clasificar como idiotas.  Pero idiotas no en el sentido común de la palabra que usamos para referirnos a alguien que es estúpido, incapaz de aprender y, por lo tanto, condenado a un estado perpetuo de inmadurez, sino más bien en el sentido en que los griegos de la época clásica usaban esta palabra para señalar una persona ensimismada que, en vez de participar en la vida pública, prefería cuidar de sus propios intereses. El esclarecimiento nos había prometido una emancipación universal, en cambio, ha creado una hegemonía global que aspira a la dominación total.  En un sentido político esto implica la destrucción de la autonomía republicana y la gradual pero persistente convergencia de la democracia moderna con el totalitarismo.  El esclarecimiento ha devenido en un estado de tiranía e idiotez.  ¿Será posible invertir este proceso, y hacer que de alguna manera un nuevo esclarecimiento emerja de la idiotez tiránica y la tiranía idiota de nuestro tiempo?

       La dialéctica del esclarecimiento según la entendieron Horkheimer y Adorno, planteaba una crítica negativa de este proceso.  Su análisis de los fracasos del esclarecimiento giran en torno a dos temas centrales.  El primero contempla la pérdida o eliminación de la dimensión emancipadora de la ciencia moderna y su transformación en un instrumento de dominación.  El segundo considera el regreso de las sociedades esclarecidas hacia formas autoritarias de poder y maneras arcaicas de pensar: el regreso hacia un estado de tiranía que incita, estimula, y promueve la regresión humana a un estado de primitivismo e idiotez. El esclarecimiento, que en su momento había prometido sacar a la humanidad de sus penumbras, ha acabado por someterlo a una nueva servidumbre a través de los sistemas de manipulación mediática, la vigilancia electrónica, el consumo compulsivo y el terror de la una guerra global. 

       Para los griegos, la idiotez era un castigo.  Era una prohibición.  Una especie de destierro y exilio.  Idiotas eran hombres libres que habían sido desterrados de la vida pública de la polis porque, en vez de participar en la política, se habían preocupado de manera exclusiva por sus propios intereses.  Este destierro de la vida pública equivalía a la pérdida de la libertad y, por consiguiente, a la reducción de la vida a la búsqueda de una felicidad privada, doméstica y trivial.  “La característica principal del tirano – escribió Hannah Arendt – era privar a los ciudadanos de todo acceso al ámbito público, confinarlos a la privacidad de sus hogares y elevarse a sí mismo al único responsable de los asunto públicos.” 

       Alexis de Tocqueville entendía la relación entre tiranos e idiotas de otra manera.  Era más bien la idiotez la que instigaba la tiranía.  Pero la idiotez que él tenía en mente se diferenciaba de la idiotez griega en un sentido básico: no era individual, era la idiotez de las masas, la idiotez de la prosperidad, la idiotez del progreso.  En su profético tratado sobre la democracia en los Estados Unidos de América, Tocqueville retrataba esa idiotez como una especie de esclavitud a la prosperidad: el estímulo de una felicidad a expensas de las propias libertades políticas.  La democracia estaba llamada a generar una masa que sólo espera de su gobierno la seguridad suficiente para alcanzar una estúpida felicidad.  Desde el 11 de septiembre, la mayor megamáquina burocrática de la historia de los Estados Unidos de América impone este tipo de seguridad a través de un ministerio de “Homeland Security” y del establecimiento de un aparato policiaco mundial.

       ¿Pero por qué toleramos estas formas de tiranía cada vez más próximas de los modelos totalitarios del pasado?  ¿Tenía razón Tocqueville cuando señaló que los idiotas abandonan felices sus libertades porque se han convertido en esclavos de la prosperidad?  A lo largo de los siglos XIX y XX, este argumento ha dominado, de una manera u otra, los intentos de explicar la idiotez de las masas.  Desde Marx y su noción de la enajenación y la crítica de la clase ociosa de Veblen a la teoría de la sociedad opulenta de Galbraith o de la razón unidimensional de Marcuse, las teorías modernas de la idiotez asumen que las masas han sido engañadas al aceptar el soborno de la tiranía que Tocqueville ya identificó en su análisis de la democracia moderna.

       Tenemos aquí un problema: al asumir como punto de partida la estupidez de las masas esas teorías dan por sentado que los intelectuales que las formulan están por encima de ella.  Desde las alturas de semejante trascendencia el intelectual no percibe que él mismo forma parte de esta idiotez. Por eso críticos ejemplares como Julien Benda, C. Wright Mills o Russel Jacoby pusieron de manifiesto cómo los intelectuales públicos o académicos no sólo habían traicionado a la sociedad abandonando la crítica de la tiranía en nombre de la seguridad y la privaticidad, sino también asociándose activamente con ella.  Son los intelectuales idiotas quienes convidan a los tiranos a ejercer la tiranía en favor de la idiotez.

       Al ignorar los asuntos públicos y no intentar controlar las fuerzas tiránicas de nuestra época, corremos el riesgo de que nuestras vidas se condenen a un estado de insignificancia política.  El destino de los más de cincuenta millones de refugiados en el mundo hoy, el destino de hombres y mujeres desnacionalizadas por las guerras civiles y las diferentes formas de terrorismo estatal y no-estatal de nuestra época, el destino de seres humanos que por una razón u otra no pueden ser integrados en el sistema económico y político global, este destino bien podría llegar a ser el que nos espera a todos nosotros. Para evitarlo, debemos arrojar suficiente luz sobre el marasmo intelectual, moral, político y económico que caracteriza nuestra realidad histórica y esclarecer el camino que nos pueda liberar de este estado de rampante idiotez.  Eso significa romper las cadenas que vinculan epistemológica e institucionalmente la dialéctica del esclarecimiento con los poderes imperiales,  y reformular un esclarecimiento que no nos enaltezca como imaginarios dueños de la naturaleza ni como los supuestos libertadores de las naciones. Un esclarecimiento que nos permita desarrollar, en harmonía con la naturaleza y en cooperación con los humanos, una existencia libre de la estupidez y la tiranía.  

Intellectuals and Idiots

Perhaps the best way to account for the failure of the Enlightenment is to compare its ideal of universal human emancipation with the grotesque historical realities it has engendered: global warming and ecological devastation brought on by the technological and industrial domination of nature; a global war on terror that threatens to impose a state of permanent civil war on the entire globe; and everywhere the signs of social, economic, and political disintegration associated with the tyrannical powers of a so-called “state of emergency” that has become permanent. To our dismay, we see evidence everywhere of freedom being used as an instrument of domination. The liberties we enjoy are, at best, deceptive liberties: free competition at administered prices, a free press that censors itself, free choice between brands and gadgets. These are not the liberties enjoyed by an enlightened people, but by a people who would be more aptly described as idiots. Idiots: not so much in the modern sense of the word, which we use to designate someone who is stupid, incapable of learning, and has thus been condemned to a state of permanent immaturity; but more so in the sense that the ancient Greeks used the word to mean someone who selfishly neglects public affairs in order to attend to their private interests and concerns. The Enlightenment had promised universal emancipation, it has instead wound up creating a global hegemony that aspires to global domination. In a political sense, this has meant the destruction of republican self-rule and the gradual but persistent convergence of modern democracy with totalitarian forms of governance. Enlightenment has devolved into a state of tyranny and idiocy. Can this process be reversed, and a new age of enlightenment somehow made to emerge from out of the tyrannical idiocy and idiotic tyranny of our day?

The dialectic of enlightenment, as first set forth by Horkheimer and Adorno, provides a negative critique of this process. Their analysis of the failures of enlightenment revolves around two central themes. The first is the loss or elimination of the emancipatory dimension of modern science and its transformation into an instrument of domination. The second is the social regression of enlightened society toward primitive forms of authoritarian power and archaic forms of thought: that is, toward a state of tyranny that incites, stimulates, and promotes the regression of humanity toward a state of primitivism and idiocy. The Enlightenment, which once promised the progressive liberation of mankind from darkness, has instead wound up subjecting humanity to a new servitude imposed by systems of mass manipulation, electronic vigilance, compulsive consumerism, and the terror of global war.

For the ancient Greeks, idiocy was a punishment. It was a ban. Idiots were free men who had been banished from the political life of the republic because, out of preference for their own private interests, they had failed to participate actively in the public life of the polis. This banishment from public life was equivalent to the loss of liberty and, consequently, to the reduction of life to the pursuit of a private, domestic, and ultimately trivial happiness. “The principal characteristic of the tyrant,” writes Hannah Arendt, “was that he deprived the citizens of access to a public realm; he confined them to the privacy of their households, and demanded to be the only one in charge of public affairs.”

Alexis De Tocqueville saw the relationship between tyranny and idiocy otherwise. For him, it was rather idiocy that incited tyranny. But the idiocy he has in mind differs from that of the ancient Greeks in at least one basic characteristic: it wasn’t the idiocy of individuals but the idiocy of the masses, the idiocy of prosperity, the idiocy of progress. In his prescient treatise on democracy in America, de Tocqueville portrayed this idiocy as a kind of enslavement to prosperity: the stimulation of happiness at the expense of political liberties. Democracy was destined to generate masses who only seek from government that it provide them with enough security to attain a happiness that is stupid. Since 9/11, the largest bureaucratic megamachine in the history of the United States has imposed this security by means of the Department of Homeland Security and its global policing apparatus.

But why do we tolerate these increasingly totalitarian forms of tyranny? Could de Tocqueville have been right when he suggested that idiots willingly give up their own freedoms because they have become slaves to prosperity? Over the course of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, this argument, in one form or another, has dominated theoretical attempts at explaining mass idiocy. From Marx’s notion of alienation to Veblen’s assessment of the leisure class to Galbraith’s affluent society or Marcuse’s one-dimensional life, modern theories of mass idiocy underscore the selfish stupidity and corruptibility of the masses; they assume that the masses have been duped into accepting the bribe of tyranny that de Tocqueville had identified in his study of modern democracy.

We have a problem here: By assuming the stupidity of the masses, these theories of idiocy also assume that the intellectuals who put them forth have transcended the prevailing idiocy of our times and that they therefore stand above and beyond it. From the distant heights of this transcendence, intellectuals fail to perceive that they are implicated in the very same idiocy that they presume to criticize from afar. This is why exemplary critics, like Julien Benda, C. Wright Mills, and Russel Jacoby, have revealed how public and academic intellectuals have not only betrayed society because they have abandoned the critique of tyranny in exchange for security and privacy, but also because they have actively associated themselves with it. Intellectuals are idiots who invite tyrants to exercise tyranny in support of idiocy.

By failing to attend to public affairs and neglecting to exert power over the tyrannical forces of our time, we run the risk of having our lives condemned to a state of political insignificance. The fate of the more than fifty million refugees in the world today, the fate of people who have been made stateless by the on-going civil wars and the different forms of state-sponsored and non-state sponsored terrorism of our time, the fate of people who for one reason or another cannot be integrated into the global economic and political system, may well prove to be the fate that awaits us all. In order to avoid it, we must seek to disentangle ourselves from the intellectual, moral, and political morass of our time and trust that in the process we shall shed some much needed light on how the rampant idiocy of our day can be transformed into tomorrow’s enlightenment. This involves breaking the epistemological and institutional chains that tie the dialectic of enlightenment to imperialism and reformulating enlightenment such that it neither sets us up as the imagined technological masters of nature nor as the would-be liberators of nations. An enlightenment, in other words, that enables us to develop, in harmony with nature and in cooperation with the rest of humanity, an existence that is free from idiocy and tyranny.

MILITARISM APHORISM

Militarism is the prism that focuses this unsightly vision of our beloved republic languishing in its imperial prison. 

At the turn of the 19th and twentieth centuries, Mark Twain painted a picture of the militarist and corporatist prison in which our sovereignty languishes today when, in a futurist essay titled “Passage from ‘Outlines of History’”, he lamented with visionary precision and derision that (and here I quote that wise sage):

“it was impossible to save the Great Republic.  She was rotten to the heart.  Lust of conquest had long ago done its work; trampling upon the helpless abroad had taught her, by natural process, to endure with apathy the like at home; multitudes who had applauded the crushing of other people’s liberties, lived to suffer for their mistake in their own persons.”

This vision of conquest abroad combined with apathy at home underscores the extent to which Twain conceived of American imperial militarism as a force that would, if it went unchecked, eventually strip away all of America’s celebrated liberties and spread tyranny both across the globe and at home.

In the 1930s, in the aftermath of the “Business Plot”, which was a purported plan advanced by fascist-minded US oligarchs and military veterans, to overthrow the U.S. government of Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Major General Smedley Butler –who had been invited to conspire in this plot and lord over America as a dictator—not only denounced the conspirators but also dedicated himself to criticizing the imperial militarism of US corporations:

“I spent 33 years and four months in active military service and during that period I spent most of my time as a high class muscle man for Big Business, for Wall Street and the bankers. In short, I was a racketeer, a gangster for capitalism. I helped make Mexico and especially Tampico safe for American oil interests in 1914. I helped make Haiti and Cuba a decent place for the National City Bank boys to collect revenues in. I helped in the raping of half a dozen Central American republics for the benefit of Wall Street. I helped purify Nicaragua for the International Banking House of Brown Brothers in 1902–1912. I brought light to the Dominican Republic for the American sugar interests in 1916. I helped make Honduras right for the American fruit companies in 1903. In China in 1927 I helped see to it that Standard Oil went on its way unmolested. Looking back on it, I might have given Al Capone a few hints. The best he could do was to operate his racket in three districts. I operated on three continents.”

1962.  Governments everywhere throughout Latin America continue to be powerless against the militarism born of collusion between of US multinational corporations and the Pentagon.  Salvador de Madariaga, a Spanish liberal who has been living in exile ever since Franco rose to power in Spain, has this to say on the subject:

“Today the United States wields more sovereignty over a number of Latin American nations than it does over some of its own capitalist enterprises.  These multinationals are strong enough to usurp the national sovereignty of the United States and force the State to serve their own private or restricted interests, alleging all the while that these are the interests of the nation.”

Always the same story:  The material interests of a number of American citizens prosper, and the moral authority of the United States declines.  Who are, then, the real patriots?

An impossibly dastardly question to pose.  An equally impossible question to answer.  So I will quote Mark Eitzel, who in 2004, after the US invasion of Iraq, spun it out this way:

You can see him fade with the dawn and a pile of washingtons

His head in a spin, he's happy to pass out again
He would rather fade into the static than hear the violins
That whine like old lovers who whine that they love him
He would rather laugh alone in the dark with the soft hands of heaven
Because they'd leave him alone with his entertainment system
He does it for the money but he gives more than he's given
He does it for the money but he gives more than he's given
And it's only when he's naked that he feels his heart
In the whorehouse desert of the patriot's heart
We all want a patriot's heart
We all want a patriot's heart