You may recognize this famous quote!

I've probably been asked about a dozen times now to voice my opinion regarding WFTV anchor Barbara West's 'crazy' question to Joe Biden...

West: "You may recognize this famous quote: 'from each according to his ability, to each according to his need.' That's from Karl Marx. How is Obama not being a Marxist if he intends to spread the wealth around?"

Biden: "are you joking? Is this a joke?"

-----

OK, should we assume from this exchange that Marx is the only guy out there who thinks that providing for those in need is a good idea and that we shouldn't demand more from people than they can reasonably give? Perhaps we should further assume that such 'convoluted' logics are the only positions that set Marx(ism) apart from other philosophical positions - say, Liberalism for instance. Where exactly is West's question supposed to leave us? With the all-or-nothing claim that Obama is either 1) a Marxist because he believes in some semblance of wealth redistribution, or 2) not a Marxist, and thus does not favor wealth redistribution? Well, I'm not exactly sure. The whole exchange seems a little crazy, and the implication by West that Marx = Evil is the same kind of closed-minded ideological bludgeoning that leads to totalitarian societies in the first place. But I digress...

Anyway, here's what I really think about the exchange: Biden was right in asking: 'is this a joke' but for the wrong reasons. The real question should have been posed back to West as follows:

Biden: "Miss West, you may recognize this famous quote: 'The path of the righteous man is beset on all sides by the inequities of the selfish and the tyranny of evil men. Blessed is he who, in the name of charity and good will, shepherds the weak through the valley of the darkness. For he is truly his brother's keeper and the finder of lost children. And I will strike down upon thee with great vengeance and furious anger those who attempt to poison and destroy my brothers. And you will know I am the Lord when I lay my vengeance upon you.' That's from the Bible. How is John McCain being a Christian when he wants to leave the fate of the poor up to the uncertainty of the market?"

BUT - and this is what's key - Biden should have delivered the passage just like Samuel L. Jackson said it in Pulp Fiction. You can watch it here (I think it's about 2:15 in):



Well, in all fairness, that Pulp Fiction quote isn't really from the bible (here's a fun journal article that discusses 'scripture on the silver screen' if you're interested http://www.unomaha.edu/jrf/scripture.htm); however, I'm pretty sure that the theme of charity still occurs somewhere in those rather dull and fictional pages, even if it's not presented as deftly as Samuel does it. Thus, the lesson is still the same: the very values Ms. West is criticizing Obama for are the very values that 1) are championed in most every religion, and 2) are the values that help to hold societies together. If we all went about ignoring those in need and making unreasonable demands of the needy, it would not be long before a society would be torn asunder. Alas, when noble values such as charity and compassion have been truncated and left to atrophy, I suppose it no surprise that what grows root in their place are such vices as avarice, litigiousness, covetousness, etc - all the trademarks of a great capitalist society.

So yeah Joe, given that your answer should have been something akin to what I've written here, I think both of you were joking.

And Ms. West - if by some chance you read this - you can shove your vulgar, reductionist Marxism up your stinky cooch, you cold-hearted retarded bitch. WTF is wrong with you? Jesus, how can you object to giving to those in accordance with their level of need?

Obama in Richmond

A little shout-out to my home town, where the Obaminator fed cool-aid to thousands on the 22nd of October.

But really, he has such a pretty mouth and he says such seductive things, how can one not vote for this guy? Now VA might turn completely blue... with two democratic senators, a democratic governor, and a democratic win for the presidency. Pretty exciting, I suppose

Though I still don't buy into Obama's rhetoric, here's the clip.

G(r)eek Love

WTF indeed!

I don't usually take the time (or waste the time) to write about personal (mis)fortune, but considering the emergence of patterns, I wonder if this particular behavioral trait warrants scrutiny:

I'm officially a Greek magnet, and moreover, obsessed with the Greeks. I didn't really intend for it to happen this way, but somehow my academic interests have consolidated in Greek thought; my favorite vacation spot is most definitely Greece; my favorite food stuffs are certainly Greek; my last two partners have been Greek (and moreover, Greek/Fraternity guys), and then last night I ended up having an impromptu marathon date with yet another Greek/GreekFrat guy. WTF? I'm not quite sure how this keeps happening (and surely I'm not complaining), but I certainly am starting to find it curious none the less. So I just thought I'd mention it as that it's a definite oddity. Sometimes it just seems like life pulls you in certain directions... intentionality aside, events simply unfold as if there were some sort of... plan/karma/fate/thing.

όλα γνώσης αρχίζει με τους Έλληνες (All knowledge begins with the Greeks)

So that's it: My dissertation is officially going to start with pre-Socratic 'physics of nature'; I'm cooking pastitsio for dinner, and I'm going island hopping in the Aegean for spring break if anyone wants to join me.

Good things come to those who wait... maybe

I find it interesting that I remain entrenched in the 'Marxist' camp, even all these years after my first 'adolescent' flirtings with the manifesto and the 1844 manuscripts. It seems that more often than not, most people decouple their cart from that particular red horse, and come to believe that Marxism is simply passe: the logical step is thus taken by which one 'moves on' to participate in the post-structural neo-Marxist Lacanian-psychoanalytic hegemony debate. Yet in theory seminars and when discoursing with my colleagues in the department, I find myself still returning to Marx's ideas with continued frequency - especially in these turbulent times. It seems that inadvertently I still carry the 'hammer and sickle flag' no matter how much I try and move on. I guess that guy just won my heart and mind (yeah, I used that stupid phrase); regardless of my deep appreciation for Gadamer, Heidegger, and Jonas, it's still Marx who grounds my epistemological and ontological arguments.

That being said, man does this postmodern neo-Marxist debate suck. I just finished reading 'Contingency, Hegemony, Universality' by Butler, Laclau, and Zizek, which, though at times was admittedly rich and stimulating, is certainly nothing like Marx in terms of either form or content. Which makes me wonder: have we become too caught up in this new conceptual baggage? Is hegemony really all that (and a bag of universal chips), or is it more likely that this trendy line of theoretical investigation 'underdetermines' socialist strategy? A hundred years from now (or at whatever future point you choose), will social theorists still be discussing the possibilities of suturing together the surplus remainder from interpolation... affixing those temporary and contingent quasi-universalities into new chains of equivalence... etc etc. I'm not so sure. But what is interesting is how relevant (and prescient) Marx's writings still are today. For example:

“Modern bourgeois society, with its relations of production, of exchange and of property, a society that has conjured up such gigantic means of production and of exchange, is like the sorcerer who is no longer able to control the powers of the nether world whom he has called up by his spells. For many a decade past the history of industry and commerce is but the history of the revolt of modern productive forces against modern conditions of production, against the property relations that are the conditions for the existence of the bourgeois and of its rule. It is enough to mention the commercial crises that by their periodical return put the existence of the entire bourgeois society on its trial, each time more threateningly. In these crises, a great part not only of the existing products, but also of the previously created productive forces, are periodically destroyed. In these crises, there breaks out an epidemic that, in all earlier epochs, would have seemed an absurdity — the epidemic of over-production. Society suddenly finds itself put back into a state of momentary barbarism; it appears as if a famine, a universal war of devastation, had cut off the supply of every means of subsistence; industry and commerce seem to be destroyed; and why? Because there is too much civilisation, too much means of subsistence, too much industry, too much commerce. The productive forces at the disposal of society no longer tend to further the development of the conditions of bourgeois property; on the contrary, they have become too powerful for these conditions, by which they are fettered, and so soon as they overcome these fetters, they bring disorder into the whole of bourgeois society, endanger the existence of bourgeois property. The conditions of bourgeois society are too narrow to comprise the wealth created by them. And how does the bourgeoisie get over these crises? On the one hand by enforced destruction of a mass of productive forces; on the other, by the conquest of new markets, and by the more thorough exploitation of the old ones. That is to say, by paving the way for more extensive and more destructive crises, and by diminishing the means whereby crises are prevented.”

So here's a thought: did Marx let the cat out of the bag a bit prematurely? Was he, inadvertently, the undoing of Communism... or at least instrumental in delaying its arrival? I mean by this that if you assess Capitalism through the lens of the welfare state, it's obvious that Bismark's welfare state was not altruistic, but in fact was constructed to appease German workers (http://www.dw-world.de/dw/article/0,2144,1297218,00.html). Hence, insights into the contradictions of capital markets and the need to curb such contradictions were probably gained from the rising popularity of communist literature, such as that written by Marx himself.

But on the flip side, and quite ironically, this current global financial crisis could only be delayed, not postponed indefinitely. If Marx was right (which is looking ever more probable), the contradictions inherent to Capital don't simply 'go away'; at best, they can only be temporarily circumvented. And where would such contradictions first manifest themselves/re-emerge: the industrialized country with the least developed welfare state: the US. Certainly this is purely speculative, but with the complete lack of institutions in the US to assist newly needy population segments, and with an overburdened economy taxed by war, entitlements, and debt, it would seem that the conditions are ripe for real social change. Unless of course someone were to pull a Bismark (or in this case, an Obama) and put a big bandage on the problematic situation in which case no substantial change will really occur. (But that leads back to the argument that I made here: http://ericstotles-agora.blogspot.com/2008/10/marxists-for-mccain-obama-sucks.html)

Well, I guess we're all just going to have to sit back and enjoy the ride. But currently it appears that no matter how much money world governments throw at this problem, it's not going away any time soon. And perhaps it's time for us to revisit the writings of Marx for a little guidance rather than cave into the inevitability of capital and the somewhat underwhelming socialist strategy of hegemony. Certainly this latter strategy has some interesting merits; however, the lack of transcendental universalities leaves me somewhat unimpressed. Isn't there some 'common denominator' by which to link divergent populations... a new metanarrative (as Zizek seems to call for) - perhaps grounded in the bios itself? I could imagine a structuring environmental principle based in metabolic dynamism as such a foundational base uniquely identifiable to Dasein (note the previous posts on Eros as Ethics).

Anyway, my breakfast companion calls, so I'll try and follow up on this thought experiment later.

The Origin of Love (deny me and be doomed)

Ah, a non-political posting... er... at least 'non-political' in the sense that it's not about the upcoming election o' change.

So last semester I wrote a paper on Eros as Ethics (post-metaphyscial bio-transcendentalism as originary foundations). And in working on my dissertation prospectus this semester - which was tentatively on proto-existentialism in Marx and the influence of this line of thought on Heideggerian Marixism as articulated by Herbert Marcuse and Hans Jonas - I'm now thinking of returning to the Greeks and Platonic thought as the keystone which will connect what would otherwise be somewhat discordant ideas. At any rate, the myth of the origin of love as recounted by Aristophanes in Symposium holds a special interest for me as that it indicates the potential for harmony (wholeness) in a time when political theory is so concerned with difference. Hence, I'm beginning to realize that 'agreement' may be the chief referent which unites Heideggerian Dasein, Marx's Species Being, Jonas' metabolism, and Marcuse's Great Refusal (along with Gadamerian Play, Aristotelian Virtue, amongst others). Though the connections obviously require elucidation, I suspect there is an inherent human dynamism which seeks 'closure' through overcoming. This dialectic thus leads to the new. The Real is always one step ahead of us, because we create it.

Anyway, for those of you unfamiliar with Symposium, I encourage you to take the time and explore one of Plato's most rich and rewarding dialogues. In the meantime, here's a nice little clip from the movie Hedwig and the Angry Inch, where they sing a catchy song about the myth I mention here. Please enjoy, and as always, feel free to comment (though no one ever does... you bunch of slackers!)

more silly political humor

christ, I don't know how people have time to keep their blogs current - especially those of us who have more to do than work meaningless 40 hour per week jobs. But in order to keep something fresh and new on the agora, here's a little silly political humor:

http://palinaspresident.com/

Pipe Dreams

Nicolas Sarkozy plays coochie coochie with Angela Merkel!

Or, are they talking about something else?

Insert your favorite caption.

I'm afraid of Conservatives (I'm afraid of the world)

Time is short this morning, so I have to keep this brief. But I want to respond to a recent accusation from a friend of mine, which went a little something like this: I'm now a conservative who backs the McCain/Palin ticket but won't admit it openly so hides his true inclinations behind the Marxist veil. (I think that's the accusation. If I'm mistaken, please correct me.)

I assure you blog readers, I am not a conservative. In fact, I fear conservatives as that they are for the most part mentally challenged reductionists who are incapable of understanding the complexity inherent to our rich and dynamic world.

Moreover, if one decides that 1) since I do not back Obama I must be a conservative; or 2) because I have given reasons for why McCain would perpetuate the structural contradictions of capitalism and therefore should be given the opportunity to perpetuate said contradictions and hence, I am a conservative, then perhaps I have either 1) failed to clearly articulate my positions or 2) you have failed to understand what I've been arguing. In either case, the following crystal-clear pronouncement should set the record straight:

Know this: republicans, and conservatives in general, have become a disgusting breed of creature. Recent behavior by the McCain/Palin camp - especially regarding this race-baiting rhetoric and the refusal to disown hate-speech at their rallies - is clear evidence of the lack of moral integrity on the part of the republican brand. However, that does not mean that I must like Obama. I can still maintain my structuralist arguments for McCain, and perhaps even extend them to include these recent events (but I won't, because I'm getting rather tired of the whole topic).

But anyway, I thought the Frank Rich column in today's NYT was really groovy, so here is the link along with a nice little excerpt:

"No less disconcerting was a still-unexplained passage of Palin’s convention speech: Her use of an unattributed quote praising small-town America (as opposed to, say, Chicago and its community organizers) from Westbrook Pegler, the mid-century Hearst columnist famous for his anti-Semitism, racism and violent rhetorical excess. After an assassin tried to kill F.D.R. at a Florida rally and murdered Chicago’s mayor instead in 1933, Pegler wrote that it was “regrettable that Giuseppe Zangara shot the wrong man.” In the ’60s, Pegler had a wish for Bobby Kennedy: “Some white patriot of the Southern tier will spatter his spoonful of brains in public premises before the snow falls.”

This is the writer who found his way into a speech by a potential vice president at a national political convention. It’s astonishing there’s been no demand for a public accounting from the McCain campaign. Imagine if Obama had quoted a Black Panther or Louis Farrakhan — or William Ayers — in Denver."

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/12/opinion/12rich.html?hp

enjoy

We never knew his fantastic head where eyes like apples ripened

Well, actually we did. But not personally or temporally, so we can't ask him for specific advice - especially regarding who to vote for in the upcoming US presidential election.

But from some of the comments I've received (both in person and here at the Agora), regarding my 'marxists for mccain' entry, there are people who think that Marxist's should NOT vote Republican. This interests me.

So I'm going to create my first ever poll: who would Marx vote for?

So please, channel Marx and Engels, vote in my poll, and if you would like to explain the theoretical reasoning behind your vote, do so here in the comments section.

Thanks

From Egypt with Love (the Dead)

I just recently picked up 2 'new' live dead shows from when the band played the sound and light theatre outside Cairo in 1978. Billed as 'rocking the cradle', I've got to say that these discs are off the chart... some of the best jams from one of the greatest bands ever. But the real treat is the companion set: road trips volume 1 #4, their first show back in san francisco after the trip abroad. Here's a description from dead.net:

"Here’s the deal: The group was feeling totally jazzed when they got back from Egypt, and Bill Graham, who had been on the trip abroad as a spectator, rather than as promoter, wanted to give the band’s hometown fans a taste of the Egypt experience by hosting a series of five shows at Winterland that would include a slide show depicting the group’s amazing adventures in Cairo and beyond. As it turned out, the Dead Heads got more than that, too: At two of the concerts, their good friend Hamza El Din (a Nubian musician living in the Bay Area) reprised the Egyptian song he’d sung at the Sound & Light Theater in Gizah—called “Ollin Arageed”—which had been a jumping–off point for some fascinating cross-cultural explorations between the Dead and a host of native singers and percussionists. It proved to be magical at Winterland, too, as the crowd joined in clapping the song’s unusual and hypnotic beat. War’s exceptional harmonica player, Lee Oskar, dropped by the last two nights of the run, and the final concert brought a surprise appearance by ex-Quicksilver guitarist John Cipollina.

This new Road Trips was culled from the the last two concerts of the series, October 21 and 22, 1978. There’s plenty to dig here, including a really dynamic extended take on the aforementioned “Ollin Arageed” which eventually lands at “Deal” (of all songs!); a stunning sequence featuring "Got My Mojo Working">"The Other One">"Stella Blue"; a generous and free-flowing “Scarlet Begonias” > “Fire on the Mountain”; and a “Not Fade Away” > “Goin’ Down the Road” combo that’s sparked by the presence of Mr. Cipollina and his vampire bat Gibson SG, and which goes into some very interesting jamming spaces between songs."

Anyway, the link to the discs is here: http://www.dead.net/features/release-info/rocking-cradle-grateful-dead-egypt-1978

If you like the dead, you should definitely grab these discs. If you're not into the dead, you should use this opportunity to initiate yourself into some of the greatest music ever made

The Agora

Dudes and Dudettes

Unfortunately, no one seems to enjoy commenting on any of my posts. Now sure, my posts are not always comment worthy. But sometimes I think that they should incite some sort of debate... or at least general opinion-sharing. So this is a brief shout-out to my friend (I would say 'comrade', but apparently he's a market-loving capitalist pig now) parallelliott, who has thankfully challenged my marxists for mccain position.

So don't be shy, fellow readers: debate me, debate each other. The spice must flow!

Financial Fun, Twice Removed

Morning coffee and paper reading time yielded the following reward:

"This money was entrusted to a few thousand traders who sloshed it around the world in search of the highest returns. These traders live in a high-tech version of Plato’s cave. They do not see reality directly. Instead they see the shadow of reality as it dances around in numbers on their computer screens. They form perceptions about other people’s perceptions of where the smart money is going next, so they’re three or four psychological levels removed from normal economic activity."

[This excerpt is from David Brooks NYT op/ed. Link: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/07/opinion/07brooks.html?_r=1&hp&oref=slogin]

Of course, as a fan of ancient philosophy (and as a bigger fan of Plato specifically) references to the Cave analogy always provide a warm fuzzy. And I think Mr. Brooks has got it right on this one. I've always been somewhat curious as to how this whole economic system works, especially considering that so little of it is tangible (especially since the collapse of the Bretton Woods system in '71). All these financiers deal in abstractions of abstractions, which at the end of the day are backed up by currencies which are backed up by... nothing (except military force, maybe?). I guess in the Weberian sense we have the tradition of law and the iron cage of bureaucracy to provide some sort of rationalization for our behavior and belief, but that hardly seems like justification for faith in a global financial system. So we can keep digging for grounds, until we find that the foundation for our faith in markets is pegged to the continuation of a reified state(s) system - yet another conglomerate of intangible entities that persevere simply because we will it.

And now that some people have become skeptical of a system that lacks material substance, the great nebulous mass of diaphanous dinero has suddenly disintegrated. The irony: the real, material things of this world are somehow now intangible! People lose their cars and homes, jobs and businesses, etc. People cannot get (imaginary/abstract) credit to secure the real things that they need to exist. But those things (X) are at point (Y) at time (T1) now. The only thing stopping exchange is the abstraction that we created: currency, which isn't really real anyway. As in the Cave, it's just a semblance... airy stuff that removes us from the real.

Step out into the Sun, bitches! There's all sorts of goodness out there ready to be put to the service of human potential-actualization. We simply need a better way to make exchange possible.

Marxists for McCain (Obama's still a chump)

First: I've been hearing a lot of ridiculous chatter of late concerning the silly claim that Bush and McCain are Marxists because of the 'nationalization' of AIG, Freddie Mac, etc. (Here's a link to such nonsense if one is interested: (http://www.democrats.com/mccain-is-a-marxist). But I for one will need someone to connect the dots: how is it that 'trickle up' economics - whereby taxpayers bail out the wealthy as is happening with this recent financial rescue plan - helps the working class? Well, in short, it doesn't. There's nothing remotely socialist about this rescue. Indeed, the Marxist position would be to let the banks fail, allow investment portfolios to collapse and property values to plumet, which in turn would help to increase class consciousness and further revolutionary tendencies. However, this 'rescue plan' is just another example of the ruling class wielding the state as a tool by which to secure and maintain its dominant position. So all of you twits that think 'state intervention = socialism': you best be thankful that the state has once again come to rescue your greedy asses so you can continue to exploit the poor. But on to the main point of this entry...

Second: Back on September 2nd I made the mistake of 'endorsing' Obama. Now I realize that at this point in my ascension to supreme overlord my endorsement for president might not count for much, but I still think it necessary to admit my error and offer this correction:

Attention rational adults: we must work together to stop Obama from winning the presidency, and thus, we must elect John McCain.

I realize this pronouncement might come as a shock to most, so I'll try and address some likely critiques.

1) 'Palin will be too close to the presidency, so vote for Obama.'

right, I know Palin's nuts. But I also know that I'm voting for the top of the ticket, not the bottom. The contest is really Obama vs McCain, not Biden vs Palin or Obama vs Palin. There's no guarantee that McCain is going to die in office, and provided he lives, Palin really isn't too much of a problem (actually, she's a bit of a booby prize for us to laugh at for the next 4 years). And for the sake of argument lets assume that McCain does crap out sometime during his term - well, Palin will still have to deal with a democratic congress which will likely pick up an overwhelming majority. Further, she will appoint a VP who will a) likely be selected by republican party elites, and b) control her like a (maverick) puppet. So really, who gives a shit. Forget Palin... too many variables to even worry about her being 'a heartbeat away from the presidency'.

2) 'Obama's the democratic nominee, and if you're not a republican you have to vote for the democrat.'

Obama sucks: the reality is, Obama should never have gotten the democratic nomination in the first place. Aside from his eloquent speeches, his policies aren't all that exciting, his health care plan is too centrist, he lacks experience, he's power hungry, and he's done little to unite the democratic party. Considering the state of the union, he should be destroying McCain in the polls. But instead he can barely eek out a 5 point lead over a 72 year old mentally unstable cancer ridden ex fighter jock. Obama is totally lame, and Biden was a uber-shitty VP choice. The democratic ticket is pathetic and doesn't deserve my vote or yours. This is our chance to punish the democratic party for moving towards the center and turning its back on the working class. Say 'No!' to Obama.

3) 'McCain will screw the country up more, so vote for Obama.'

The country is in shambles and the republicans put us there, so I think it's only fair to let a republican try and fix this mess. But this problem needs to be assessed on two fronts: a) domestically, I'm not sure that anyone can do a whole lot short term: the crisis is global, and it's going to continue to spread. (Also, the invisible hand of the economy will probably lead to green technologies no matter who gets elected, and Obama's pandering to the center has diluted his former vanguard-position on that front.) Regarding b) foreign policy: I'm not so sure that either of these guys should be regarded as 'experts'. McCain's still trying to win the Vietnam war, and Obama... well, who knows what Obama will do since he's never really done anything. It's a crap shoot with either of these guys, so the foreign policy card really shouldn't sway anyone's decision.

At the end of the day, I think things will play out as follows:

If Obama gets elected: in four more years, the state of the union will still be bleak. However, the democratic congress will have made significant inroads which will position the US for an impending turn around. But since voting public is half retarded, they'll be disappointed in the lack of immediate progress and thus vote in a republican executive (maybe Palin herself!) and perhaps even a republican congress. The democratic brand will be horribly tarnished, and the republicans will be reinstalled as heroes. The historic opportunity for the left will have been squandered.

If McCain gets elected: in four more years, the state of the union will still be bleak. However, the democratic congress will have made significant inroads which will position the US for an impending turn around. Further, democrats will have acted as a check on the McCain/Palin administration, acting as a lens by which to focus attention on republican partisanship and corruption. Though congressional popularity will still be low, this will be linked to general disdain for the republican administration. The 2012 elections will therefore be a slaughter. The republican brand becomes more toxic than Courtney Love's panties, allowing for the democrats to not only claim lasting hegemony, but also move significantly towards the left. Hillary runs again in 2012 and wins, and being the shrewder politician who values party unity over personal power, she selects Obama to be her VP. After 8 years of being educated and gaining experience, he finally succeeds her in 2020.

So now doesn't it all make sense?

McCain 2008!