|
Post by dodger on Oct 20, 2013 15:35:01 GMT
Brilliant study of fascism's hatred of reason and science, 8 Jun 2010
ThisWill Podmre review is from: The Destruction of Reason ([International library of social and political thought]) (Hardcover)
In this brilliant book, Lukacs shows how Nazism attacked reason and science. Irrationalism mirrors reaction's contempt for science and its indulgence in superstition and myth.
He writes, "the subject-matter which now presents itself to us is Germany's path to Hitler in the sphere of philosophy. That is to say, we mean to show how this concrete path is reflected in philosophy, and how philosophical formulations, as an intellectual mirroring of Germany's concrete development towards Hitler, helped to speed up the process."
Lukacs shows how irrationalism was born in German feudal absolutism's reaction to the French revolution of 1789. He studies the idealist irrationalism of Friedrich Schelling, Soren Kierkegaard, Arthur Schopenhauer and, in particular, Friedrich Nietzsche.
Nietzsche said, "The need is for a new reign of terror." He called for `a daring master race', for `the great man' and for great wars. "There will be wars the like of which have never been seen on earth before." He praised `the beast of prey, the magnificent blond beast in greedy search of spoils and conquest'.
Lukacs examines and criticises German sociology in the imperialist period (Max Weber, Karl Mannheim and Carl Schmitt), social Darwinism and racial theory from Joseph Gobineau to Houston Chamberlain, and vitalism in imperial Germany (Wilhelm Dilthey, Georg Simmel, Oswald Spengler, Martin Heidegger and Karl Jaspers). He shows how their ideas were either no barrier to Nazism (Weber, Mannheim, Dilthey, Simmel and Jaspers) or actually paved the way for fascism (Schmitt, Gobineau, Chamberlain, Spengler and Heidegger).
Lukacs shows how Nazism took over the whole legacy of irrationalism. Irrationalism is always an ideology of militant reaction; it is all about combating Marxism, dialectical and historical materialism.
|
|
|
Post by dodger on Oct 22, 2013 22:05:27 GMT
Fine survey of the popular struggle for liberty, 22 Sep 2009
This William Podmore review is from: What Price Liberty?: How Freedom Was Won and Is Being Lost (Paperback)
Historian Ben Wilson has written a magnificent defence of freedom. He argues that we need to recover the practice of public liberty, that a constitution is not enough and that we need an active, participatory, democratic culture of liberty. He asserts that we have a duty to know our history, to care about the state of society, and to think beyond the personal.
Our freedoms were never received from the masters; we have won and kept them through struggle. He writes, "Liberty has come from calculated provocation and opportunism. It has also been thanks to large mobs of people who have scared the government away from exerting its powers. Liberties were not given up with much pleasure; they were wrested bit by bit. ... The evolutionary account has emphasised the peaceable development of liberty, and therefore tranquillised the public by extolling the wisdom of gradualism. It has masked the true account ..."
As Tom Paine wrote, liberty was "wholly owing to the constitution of the people and not to the constitution of the government." Blair said that our liberties were `invented for another age', evidence that Paine was right.
Wilson examines the government policy of imposing detentions, curfews, surveillance and bans on sentiments and words. The government has spent £500 million on 4.5 million cameras, yet a Home Office study concluded, "the CCTV schemes that have been assessed had little overall effect on crime levels."
Wilson argues against group rights, and asserts that to promote faith schools is to promote separatism. "It was another move away from the broad principles of liberty."
He argues that, "Religious hatred laws ... replace peaceful coexistence with perpetual dispute in the police station and the court house." He points out that "people assumed they could censor opinions offensive to them while retaining their right to be offensive." But, "no law could have protected Islam while allowing Muslims a claim to have their own potentially offensive opinions protected on the grounds of religion."
Milton said that to silence another is to stop your own ears. Wilson quotes John Stuart Mill: "All silencing of discussion is an assumption of infallibility."
|
|
|
Post by dodger on Oct 23, 2013 4:28:11 GMT
The best book yet on inequality's harmful effects on societies, 2 Jun 2009
This William Podmore review is from: The Spirit Level: Why More Equal Societies Almost Always Do Better (Hardcover)
This is the most important book yet on inequality's effects on society. The authors, Richard Wilkinson (Professor Emeritus at the University of Nottingham Medical School) and Kate Pickett (Senior Lecturer at York University) show how inequality affects the vast majority of the people in every country.
They show that the way to deal with society's problems is not to preach at individuals, or to blame young people, parents or teachers. As they write, "The evidence shows that reducing inequality is the best way of improving the quality of the social environment, and so the real quality of life, for all of us."
They point out that more equal societies have lower levels of mistrust, illness, status insecurity, violence and other stressors. "Social structures which create relationships based on inequality, inferiority and social exclusion ... inflict a great deal of social pain", worsening all society's problems. Over and again, the USA does worst, and Britain next worst.
As they prove, health and social problems are more common in countries with bigger income inequalities. Sweden has lower death rates than England and Wales for working age men and for infants, across all occupational groups. The death rate in its poorest 20 per cent is lower than in our richest 20 per cent! Obesity rates are lower in more equal societies.
Women's status and child wellbeing are better in more equal societies, which provide more paid maternity leave. In more equal societies, children experience less bullying, fights and conflict. More equal societies like Finland and Belgium have better educational levels across all social groups than Britain or the USA.
Drug use and mental illness are less common in more equal societies; so are teenage births and divorce. More equal countries have shorter working hours.
More equal societies also have more social mobility: of eight developed countries, the USA had least social mobility. US bankruptcy rates rose most in those states where inequality had risen most.
Less equal societies are more punitive. California has 360 people serving life sentences for shoplifting. In Britain, every day 40 people are sentenced to jail for shoplifting. Countries that spend less on education spend more on prisons. Since 1980, US spending on prisons has risen six times faster than spending on schools. The authors note, "More unequal countries also seem to be more belligerent internationally."
If Britain were as equal as Japan, Norway, Sweden or Finland, we would all live a year longer, we would have seven more weeks of holiday every year, mental illness, teenage births, obesity, imprisonment rates and murders would all be halved.
The authors conclude, "If you want to know why one country does better or worse than another, the first thing to look at is the extent of inequality. There is not one policy for reducing inequality in health or the educational performance of school children, and another for raising national standards of performance. Reducing inequality is the best way of doing both."
How do we achieve this more just society? To their credit, the authors don't suggest by just voting for it, or waiting for the government to do it for us. They write that we must "stand up to the tiny minority of the rich." We need to recruit to our trade unions, because the more trade union members there are, the more equal the society. If we want a better society, we will have to work for it.
|
|
|
Post by dodger on Oct 23, 2013 18:48:16 GMT
Brilliant account of the present state of physics, 16 Dec 2008
This William Podmore review is from: The Trouble with Physics: The Rise of String Theory, The Fall of a Science and What Comes Next (Paperback)
Theoretical physicist Lee Smolin notes, "One question that has bedeviled the [quantum] theory from the beginning is the question of the relationship between reality and the formalism", that is, between the real material world and our ideas about it. Smolin backs materialism against idealism, writing, "It cannot be that reality depends on our existence."
He attacks the idea that it is 'as though the universe had been designed to accommodate us'. The universe has evolved in a way that has produced the conditions that make our lives possible. This does not mean that it was designed, still less that it was designed for us.
Smolin tells the story of how the American physicist Freeman Dyson in 1947 read Einstein's efforts to construct a unified-field theory and decided that they were junk. Unfortunately he didn't have the nerve to tell Einstein this - but he should have done, because it might have helped Einstein to do better.
Currently, string theory is the leading paradigm in physics. But its research programme has found no grounding in experimental results or mathematical formulation. As one of its pioneers, Daniel Friedan, later wrote, "String theory cannot give any definite explanations of existing knowledge of the real world and cannot make any definite predictions. The reliability of string theory cannot be evaluated, much less established. String theory has no credibility as a candidate theory of physics." Smolin writes, "the existence of a population of other universes is a hypothesis that cannot be confirmed by direct observation; hence, it cannot be used in an explanatory fashion."
Fortunately, there are approaches other than string theory, new theoretical and experimental developments, like doubly special relativity, which claims that in the early universe the speed of light was faster.
Smolin argues that there was continual progress in physics between 1780 and 1980, but none since. University physics departments have become dominated by conventional research programmes, threatening both academic freedom and progress. Original minds are dismissed as 'too intellectually independent'.
He argues that physics needs a revolution questioning the basic assumptions of relativity, quantum theory and the foundations of space and time. He ends by urging young people never to let others do their thinking for them.
|
|
|
Post by dodger on Oct 28, 2013 2:23:45 GMT
www.workers.org.uk/opinion/opinion_1012/statue.htmlNo statue - thank goodness
WORKERS, OCT 2012 ISSUE The BBC has declined to erect a statue to the author George Orwell in its reception lobby on the basis that Orwell was “far too left wing”. It’s a strange definition. His political career embraced working with the Spanish Trotskyist POUM during the Spanish Civil War, whose activities have been clearly documented as sabotaging the Republican government and acting as agent provocateurs linked to Spanish fascism. In whose interests did he work?
After the Second World War he wrote virulently anti-Communist fiction and invented the term Cold War. In the 1990s MI5 security service documents released under the 30-year civil service rule identified Orwell as an MI5 agent spying during the 1940s and up to his death on any journalist, author or writer deemed to be pro-Soviet or Communist.
No wonder the BBC felt compromised about having a statue to Orwell in its reception lobby. How would those who lambast the BBC for bias have squared that circle?
|
|
|
Post by dodger on Nov 16, 2013 9:58:26 GMT
Useful study of a clash of idealisms, 15 Nov 2013
This Will Podmore review is from: Continental Divide (Hardcover)
Peter Gordon is the Amabel B. James Professor of History at Harvard University. In this fascinating book, he explores the famous debate between the philosophers Martin Heidegger and Ernst Cassirer at Davos in 1929.
These two men were the most eminent representatives of the then leading schools of idealism in philosophy - Heidegger for existentialism and Cassirer for neo-Kantianism. Heidegger notoriously became a Nazi; Cassirer, a Jew, had to flee Germany.
Some may find it surprising that two apparently such different thinkers shared the same basic philosophy. The proof is here.
In Heidegger's magnum opus Being and Time (1927), he acknowledged idealism as the only acceptable point of departure for his philosophical work, writing, "idealism affords the only correct possibility for a philosophical problematic."
Gordon writes of neo-Kantianism that Kant's "dualism between concepts and intuitions had struck a great many critics as an unfortunate and perhaps indefensible compromise with empiricism, because it presupposed an unverifiably metaphysical object-independence. It was [Hermann] Cohen's major achievement to do away with this dogmatic reading of the thing-in-itself by suggesting that it was merely a thought-object, an object which had its origin in thought alone. ... The thing-in-itself was accordingly abandoned in favor of a purely conceptual coherentism that replaced the empiricist model of truth as correspondence to an independent object, with a purely intellectualistic model of truth as the systematic coherence among concepts. And it was this argument perhaps most of all that both proponents and critics saw as the defining feature of Marburg neo-Kantianism: its rejection of metaphysics."
The materialist view, the scientific view, is that space-time is not human-dependent. But Cassirer opposed the idea that there is `a metaphysical substrate of independent reality', calling it `realistic-dogmatic ontology'. Cassirer, like all idealists, miscalled the physical reality existing outside of us and outside of our thoughts as its opposite, as metaphysical. They reverse the meaning of the word meta - beyond - and physis - nature.
Saint Augustine wrote that time was `an extension of the mind itself'. Cassirer agreed that time is `created by thought itself a priori'. The notion of a priori judgements is itself idealist, since "their truth was ascertained independent of empirical experience."
Idealism as a philosophy rejects materialism and all the sciences that develop our understanding of the real world. These idealists all hated Darwin. As Gordon writes, "For the philosophical anthropologists the threat of reductionistic disenchantment that accompanied the mechanistic and random-selection doctrines of modern evolutionary biology could only be disarmed through a newly holistic understanding of the human being."
The rejection of materialism opens the door to endless, pointless, irresolvable dialogues, for example between `spirit' and `life', and between Heidegger and Cassirer at Davos.
|
|
|
Post by dodger on Nov 18, 2013 5:19:42 GMT
imarxman.wordpress.com/2011/10/26/occupy-the-city-or-occupying-themselves/Occupy the City or Occupying Themselves?
Posted on October 26, 2011 by imarxman After large youthful demonstrations in Spain came Occupy Wallstreet to be followed by the rather more modest Occupy the City in London. Rather than the stock exchange though, protesters set up a tented zone of outrage occupying the forecourt of St Paul’s Cathedral.
A week and a bit passed and it seemed there really was a determination to maintain this protest camp as a focus for the media to highlight the fiscal iniquities of the international money changers. A suitable location after all, perhaps.
Then came the news story headlining bulletins: thermal-imaging cameras used to sweep the camp at night revealed 9 out of 10 tents were unoccupied. The militants had opted for home comforts rather than falling temperatures and sleeping bags on hard paving stones.
Whether such reports are accurate or mere fabrications is really irrelevant. The participants in this direct action are often styled anti-capitalist, when in fact they’re nothing of the sort.
Indeed, one occupier interviewed on the radio claimed they all accepted the need for the market, if only it were fairer all would be well. This is similar to UK Uncut’s occupation of “posh shops” to shame the rich into paying their taxes.
Unemployment, exploitation and economic crises are component parts of capitalism. It can’t choose to be fair anymore than it decides to be unfair: for society to be different it must move forwards beyond capitalism. The politics of parliament or protest cannot bring this about.
Social Democracy, gradual change and piecemeal reforms being the way society advances, is the dominant political trend in Britain. It is appealing as it requires most people to do nothing other than vote occasionally.
Protest and single-issue activism may appear challenging, but they operate within the parameters of acceptable politics. They are an extra-parliamentary form of Social Democracy, essentially petitioning the ruling class for concessions.
Difference in parliamentary politics is typically the Labour Party emphasising Social democracy, the Tories, social Democracy, with the LibDems vacillating between them. Protest groups aim to influence this broad consensus, not dispense with it.
Social Democracy developed to serve the interests of one class, the capitalist class. Its purpose is to preserve social peace by convincing the working class its best interests lie with capitalism.
In the early days of industrial capitalism, around 1800, the working class had to act on its own behalf to wrest what it could for its own survival from the capitalists. It created its own vehicle for this purpose, the trade unions.
However, as the 19th century progressed there developed the notion the working class would be best served through acquiring the vote. Its representatives could tackle social inequalities in parliament. Chartism was the first major expression of this idea.
Drawing up and signing of petitions became the sin qua non of radical politics. Not withstanding a physical force wing to the movement, Chartism was essentially peaceful, reliant on moral force to achieve its ends.
From the suffrage movement Social Democracy developed. Essentially quietist and compliant to convince the ruling class no real harm would come from giving the vote to the working class. It would be used responsibly and social peace maintained.
Parliament developed as capitalism’s shock absorber, neutralizing discontent. A recent example of this is the much vaunted revolt by near on four score Tory backbenchers demanding a referendum on the EU.
Responding to over a hundred thousand e-mails to Westminster in an on-line petition (there it is again) MPs defied party whips to vote for a referendum. With the disaffected from other parties they managed just over a hundred votes, whereas the status quo was heftily maintained by over four hundred.
The issue of British sovereignty was, therefore, decided not by a democratic means, that is popular discussion and decision-making, but a one off vote of a few hundred MPs. The hundred thousand e-mails counted for nothing in the end.
Tellingly, the Foreign Secretary, William Hague, argued strongly against the proposed referendum, despite being a noted Euro-sceptic. This demonstrates how the state’s executive, the government, must act in the prevailing interests of capitalism whatever the personal opinions of ministers.
A vote for a referendum at this time of economic crisis in the Euro zone could have been destabilising to finance capitalism and its money markets. The wishes of the electorate and even leading politicians are, therefore trumped by forces that are most definitely not elected.
So, Hague and Prime Minister Cameron, who make political capital out of championing democracy around the world, using British bombs and missiles to achieve forms they approve of, blithely deny democracy, i.e. the EU referendum, to their own electorate.
Economic crisis has galvanised young people who see their futures being frittered away. But, their reaction is being contained within acceptable confines by Social Democracy. The “Occupy” movement gives vent to outraged feelings without being a threat to capitalism.
A similar expression of this phenomenon is 38 Degrees, organising on-line petitions (once again) on elements of government policy. No need to set up a tent, and certainly not to sleep in one, a click of a mouse is the only political involvement required.
This is not the working class engaging on its own behalf in formulating what best serves its own interests. That would be true democracy, the voice of the people seeking effective forms of expression and developing collective ways of realising its demands.
Workers acting as a class for itself, the difference being that would be a threat to capitalism. The likes of Cameron, Hague and all of the political caste in the parliamentary parties would then not be so keen to invoke democracy, social or otherwise.
Whether in tents or at home in their beds these members of the working class have grievances that cannot be settled by doing little more than upsetting the Dean of St. Paul’s. Capitalism cannot be petitioned or protested away.
For workers the imperative is, identify the political ground and occupy that.
About these ads
|
|
|
Post by dodger on Nov 30, 2013 9:02:11 GMT
Post factoNo one thought of securing this power barge enough before the supertyphoon hit. It smashed against a house at the height of the storm’s fury, killed a young boy, and spilled bunker fuel along the coast of the country’s most productive fishing port. One may be compelled to ask, “Isn’t it too late for this warning?” (Estancia, Iloilo Province)
By RAYMUND B. VILLANUEVA - See more at: bulatlat.com/main/2013/11/29/post-facto/#sthash.tTOUpVvd.dpufnnnn
|
|
|
Post by dodger on Dec 3, 2013 13:04:27 GMT
Superb, 4 April 2008
This Will Podmore review is from: The Oxford Handbook of Criminology (Paperback)
This is the leading modern text in criminology, comprehensive and authoritative, written by 35 distinguished British contributors. The editors are Mike Maguire, Professor of Criminology at Cardiff University, Rod Morgan, Chairman of the Youth Justice Board of England and Wales and Professor Emeritus at Bristol University, and Robert Reiner, Professor of Criminology at the London School of Economics.
It has five parts: the history and theory of criminology, the social construction of crime and crime control, the dimensions of crime, the forms of crime, and reactions to crime. It covers research and policy developments and their relationship to race, gender, youth culture and political economy.
The evidence is that the serious violent crime rate is much higher in Thatcherite political economies than in welfarist ones. As Reiner writes, “there is a plethora of material confirming that crime of all kinds is linked to inequality, relative deprivation, and unemployment.” So, for example, the rise in crime in Britain in the 1980s was due to what happened in the 1980s: naturally Thatcher blamed it on what had happened 20 years before. And it was the 1980s, not the 1960s, that saw the dramatic rise in opiate use here.
The evidence shows that states with higher welfare spending have less crime and lower imprisonment rates. For every dollar spent, Michigan’s Head Start welfare programme brought $17 of benefit by cutting crime, thereby cutting the numbers imprisoned and thus the costs of imprisonment.
Of course, recognising that crime has root causes does not stop us exploring all possible avenues of crime reduction, victim support and penal reform. Nor does it mean ignoring offenders’ moral responsibility. Understanding does not cancel the need for judgment.
Thatcherite political economies also have more punitive penal policies. Yet welfarist Sweden has had a smaller rise in crime than Britain, while having a less punitive penal policy. Similarly, Finland has dramatically cut its prison numbers, without increasing crime.
Growing economic inequality and social polarisation increase crime and therefore insecurity and fear. We cannot afford to leave the economy, or society or security to the market. We need to take responsibility for all aspects of our society.
|
|
|
Post by dodger on Dec 3, 2013 15:52:30 GMT
|
|
|
Post by dodger on Dec 8, 2013 11:20:19 GMT
imarxman.wordpress.com/2011/10/04/is-the-left-right/Is the Left Right? Posted on October 4, 2011 marxmanThe conclave of Conservatives in Manchester draws the party conference season to a close. Debates for all three major parties have been focused on debt, austerity and cuts, with barely detectable differences between them.
For the Labour Party, one year into opposition, the question seems to be whether it is trying to hold the centre or drifting to the Left. Some Tories are concerned they are not being Right wing enough. The LibDems have adopted radical compliance: they’ll roll over and agree to anything as long as someone, anyone, picks them for the team.
On the first day of the Conservative conference thousands gathered to protest against their policies. Most on that demonstration would advocate Left policies, many belonging to the Hard Left, as opposed to the Soft Left clinging on inside Labour.
But, does any of this Left wing v Right wing polarisation really have much meaning today? After all, they are designations dating back to the early days of the French Revolution at the backend of the eighteenth century.
The scrabble for political power in Britain apparently takes place on the Centre ground; whoever holds that is king of the midden. Is it Labour’s failure to occupy this mythical ground that stops them racing ahead of the Tories in the polls?
The Right wing always accuse Labour, especially in opposition, of being too Left, while the Left wing would have it that the Party is too Right..
However, the Left v Right contention is a phoney war, the real one being the class war being waged by capitalism as it seeks to secure its own interests. The real worry is the weapons it is using threaten total destruction of economies everywhere.
While the three parties were meeting to squabble over the best ways of making the working class pay for the catastrophic failure of finance capitalism, the money markets continued to speculate. How they do this being beyond the control of governments, democratic accountability and perhaps the speculators themselves.
Hedge fund managers and other custodians of finance capitalism now prefer hiring maths or physics PhDs rather than economists. Dealing rooms are increasingly staffed with quantitative analysts or quants.
Quants have the task of analysing the money markets with mathematical and statistical precision. On such analysis share price movements are predicted and investment risks assessed.
Actual trading of shares is carried out by computers using programmes written by the quants. There is increasing use of high frequency strategies by which shares are held only for milliseconds before being traded on. Share price differences during those milliseconds being the source of profit.
This is fly-by-wire trading in which there is human intervention, by quants who act mainly as observers, only if a problem arises, that is there is loss rather than profit. It appears that these computer programmes function most efficiently when the money markets are in turmoil. It seems people react more predictably when they panic.
Standard and Poor 500 Volatility Index uses a quant designed formula to measure the degree of panic known as “The Fear Index”. However, statistical analysis leads to massive financial miscalculations. Statistics demonstrated accurately that property prices had never fallen on the US market.
This led to international, including British, financial institutions to investing heavily in the US housing market. Subsequently, the sub-prime loan crash precipitated the world into a financial meltdown.
6th May, 2010, a couple of hours or so before the polls closed for Britain’s general election, there was a flash-crash. Around nineteen and a half billion shares were recorded as traded. But hundreds of millions of them were not really sold. Instead they were held for thousandths of a second by high frequency traders using computers to test the markets.
In the event those shares were never sold although they were registered as having been by the computers. The result was online trading at the New York Stock Exchange froze.
The Dow Jones Industrial Index responded by dropping 700 points in twenty minutes, reducing share values by $1 trillion. This is the source of international financial instability. The markets have become the fiefdom of a fantastically rich financial elite who are way beyond any democratic accountability or control. The outcome of the British general election two hours later was insignificant, even irrelevant.
A crucial point in all this is that for all their clever programme designing the quants and their financial masters create not a penny in value. A manufacturing company might be profitable with a good order book yet its worth on the market could be virtually wiped out during one of the high frequency trading episodes.
Left wing government? Right wing government? It actually doesn’t matter as all either can do is try to mitigate the worst effects of international finance capitalism that operates beyond its control.
The working class of Britain must act on its own behalf to develop the democratic structures and policies that will best serve its own interests. Left or Right wing is not the issue, but what will work best to promote those interests.
The rebuilding of manufacture rather than the reliance of financial markets has to be the way forwards. The cultivation of skills and strategies whereby Britain can develop a self reliance and strength to lead by example
The alternative is rule by financial oligarchs and their obedient quants, and surely those who have such finely honed abilities could be put too much better use.
|
|
|
Post by dodger on Dec 9, 2013 8:05:04 GMT
www.workers.org.uk/opinion/opinion_1213/sharks.htmlSharks will be sharks
WORKERS, DEC 2013 IS EVERYONE knows the big six energy companies are profiting at the expense of their customers. But that is what they are supposed to do. Indeed, it is what they are legally obliged to do.
The higher the CEOs of the big six raise energy prices, the higher the companies’ profits. The higher their profits, the higher the CEOs’ performance-related bonuses. So running an energy company is basically a licence to print your own bonuses.
But what can we expect? When we allow the privatised energy companies to serve their CEOs’ greed first, at our expense, then we shouldn’t be surprised that we are being ripped off.
We don’t want energy companies to profit at the expense of their customers. We don’t want a profit system. We want a different, planned economic system, which doesn’t put profit first.
|
|
|
Post by dodger on Dec 14, 2013 15:32:31 GMT
Uruguay's president José Mujica: no palace, no motorcade, no frills
In the week that Uruguay legalises cannabis, the 78-year-old explains why he rejects the 'world's poorest president' label
How does your leader compare to José Mujica? Have your say www.theguardian.com/world/2013/dec/13/uruguay-president-jose-mujicaThe Guardian, Friday 13 December 2013 13.37 GMT Jump to comments (515) If anyone could claim to be leading by example in an age of austerity, it is José Mujica, Uruguay's president, who has forsworn a state palace in favour of a farmhouse, donates the vast bulk of his salary to social projects, flies economy class and drives an old Volkswagen Beetle.
But the former guerrilla fighter is clearly disgruntled by those who tag him "the world's poorest president" and – much as he would like others to adopt a more sober lifestyle – the 78-year-old has been in politics long enough to recognise the folly of claiming to be a model for anyone.
"If I asked people to live as I live, they would kill me," Mujica said during an interview in his small but cosy one-bedroom home set amid chrysanthemum fields outside Montevideo.
The president is a former member of the Tupamaros guerrilla group, which was notorious in the early 1970s for bank robberies, kidnappings and distributing stolen food and money among the poor. He was shot by police six times and spent 14 years in a military prison, much of it in dungeon-like conditions.
Since becoming leader of Uruguay in 2010, however, he has won plaudits worldwide for living within his means, decrying excessive consumption and pushing ahead with policies on same-sex marriage, abortion and cannabis legalisation that have reaffirmed Uruguay as the most socially liberal country in Latin America.
Praise has rolled in from all sides of the political spectrum. Mujica may be the only leftwing leader on the planet to win the favour of the Daily Mail, which lauded him as a trustworthy and charismatic figurehead in an article headlined: "Finally, A politician who DOESN'T fiddle his expenses."
But the man who is best known as Pepe says those who consider him poor fail to understand the meaning of wealth. "I'm not the poorest president. The poorest is the one who needs a lot to live," he said. "My lifestyle is a consequence of my wounds. I'm the son of my history. There have been years when I would have been happy just to have a mattress."
He shares the home with his wife, Lucía Topolansky, a leading member of Congress who has also served as acting president.
As I near the home of Uruguay's first couple, the only security detail is two guards parked on the approach road, and Mujica's three-legged dog, Manuela.
Mujica cuts an impressively unpolished figure. Wearing lived-in clothes and well-used footwear, the bushy-browed farmer who strolls out from the porch resembles an elderly Bilbo Baggins emerging from his Hobbit hole to scold an intrusive neighbour.
In conversation, he exudes a mix of warmth and cantankerousness, idealism about humanity's potential and a weariness with the modern world – at least outside the eminently sensible shire in which he lives.
He is proud of his homeland – one of the safest and least corrupt in the region – and describes Uruguay as "an island of refugees in a world of crazy people".
The country is proud of its social traditions. The government sets prices for essential commodities such as milk and provides free computers and education for every child.
Key energy and telecommunications industries are nationalised. Under Mujica's predecessor, Uruguay led the world in moves to restrict tobacco consumption. Earlier this week, it passed the world's most sweeping marijuana regulation law, which will give the state a major role in the legal production, distribution and sale of the drug.
Such actions have won praise and – along with progressive policies on abortion and gay marriage – strengthened Uruguay's reputation as a liberal country. But Mujica is almost as reluctant to accept this tag as he is to agree with the "poorest president" label.
"My country is not particularly open. These measures are logical," he said. "With marijuana, this is not about being more liberal. We want to take users away from clandestine dealers. But we will also restrict their right to smoke if they exceed sensible amounts of consumption. It is like alcohol. If you drink a bottle of whisky a day, then you should be treated as a sick person."
Uruguay's options to improve society are limited, he believes, by the power of global capital.
"I'm just sick of the way things are. We're in an age in which we can't live without accepting the logic of the market," he said. "Contemporary politics is all about short-term pragmatism. We have abandoned religion and philosophy … What we have left is the automatisation of doing what the market tells us."
The president lives within his means and promotes the use of renewable energy and recycling in his government's policies. At the United Nations' Rio+20 conference on sustainable development last year, he railed against the "blind obsession" to achieve growth through greater consumption. But, with Uruguay's economy ticking along at a growth rate of more than 3%, Mujica – somewhat grudgingly, it seems – accepts he must deliver material expansion. "I'm president. I'm fighting for more work and more investment because people ask for more and more," he said. "I am trying to expand consumption but to diminish unnecessary consumption … I'm opposed to waste – of energy, or resources, or time. We need to build things that last. That's an ideal, but it may not be realistic because we live in an age of accumulation."
Asked for a solution to this contradiction, the president admits he doesn't have the answers, but the former Marxist said the search for a solution must be political. "We can almost recycle everything now. If we lived within our means – by being prudent – the 7 billion people in the world could have everything they needed. Global politics should be moving in that direction," he said. "But we think as people and countries, not as a species."
Mujica and his wife chat fondly about meetings with Che Guevara, and the president guesses he is probably the last leader in power to have met Mao Zedong, but he has mixed feelings about the recent revolts and protests in Brazil, Turkey, Egypt and elsewhere. "The world will always need revolution. That doesn't mean shooting and violence. A revolution is when you change your thinking. Confucianism and Christianity were both revolutionary," he said.
But he is cynical about demonstrations organised by social networks that quickly dissolve before they have a capacity to build anything lasting. "The protesters will probably finish up working for multinationals and dying of modern diseases. I hope that I am wrong about that."
Life history
Shot, arrested, jailed and elected
1969 Active in the Tupamaros revolutionary group, which earned a reputation as the "Robin Hood guerrillas" by robbing delivery trucks and banks and distributing the food and money among the poor.
1970 Arrested for the first of four times. Mujica escapes Punta Carretas prison in a daring jailbreak. Shot and wounded numerous times in conflicts with security forces.
1972 Imprisoned again. Remains in jail for more than a decade, including two years' solitary confinement at the bottom of a well, where he speaks to frogs and insects to maintain his sanity.
1985 Constitutional democracy is restored in Uruguay and Mujica is released under an amnesty law.
1994 Elected deputy and arrives at the parliament building on a Vespa scooter. A surprised parking attendant asks: "Are you going to be here long?" Mujica replies: "I certainly hope so."
2009 Wins presidential election. Only words to the media that day: "Despite all this lip service, the world is not going to change." Adopts a ruling style closer to centre-left administrations of Lula in Brazil and Bachelet in Chile, rather than harder-left leaders such as Hugo Chávez.
2012 Lauded for a speech at the UN's Rio+20 global sustainability conference in which he calls for a fight against the hyper-consumption that is destroying the environment. "The cause is the model of civilization that we have created. And the thing we have to re-examine is our way of life."
2012 Announces that the presidential palace would be included among the state shelters for the homeless. Meanwhile, Mujica continues to live in his small farmhouse outside Montevideo.
2013 Mujica's government pushes the world's most progressive cannabis legalisation bill through Congress. "This is not about being free and open. It's a logical step. We want to take users away from clandestine business," he says. Additional reporting by Mauricio Rabuffetti >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Never heard of him, just thought he sounds interesting. Plenty of comments, if you care to follow the link at the top.
|
|
|
Post by dodger on Dec 18, 2013 17:21:00 GMT
|
|
|
Post by dodger on Dec 21, 2013 14:00:53 GMT
Splendid introduction to the debate on free speech, 21 Nov 2011
This Will Podmore review is from: Free Speech: A Very Short Introduction (Very Short Introductions) (Paperback)
Warburton writes, "John Stuart Mill was explicit that incitement to violence was the point at which intervention to curb free speech was appropriate. Mere offensiveness wasn't sufficient grounds for intervention and should not be prevented by law, by threats, or by social pressure." "A spirit of toleration should not include a prohibition on causing offence." Times columnist Oliver Kamm agreed, "Free speech does indeed cause hurt - but there is nothing wrong in this."
As US Justice Brennan said in Texas v. Johnson, which upheld the right of dissenters to burn the US flag as a protest, "If there is a bedrock principle underlying the First Amendment, it is that the Government may not prohibit the expression of an idea simply because society finds the idea itself offensive or disagreeable."
Virtually anything can be seen as offensive, and something that is both true and important is bound to offend somebody.
But in Britain today, it seems that we have the right to have free speech, as long as we don't use it. So members of the English Defence League are arrested and the group Muslims against Crusades is disbanded for saying things that some find offensive. But it is legitimate, if unjust and idiotic, to call for Sharia law here, and it is also legitimate, and just, to oppose Sharia law.
This government is trying to suppress dissent. It is expanding its police powers to control and limit expression, narrowing our rights of democratic participation.
The meanings of symbols like the poppy are in the realm of opinion and argument, so the state must not impose a politically correct interpretation on us. The state abused Remembrance Day, when poppy-sellers demanded that we stand `shoulder to shoulder' with the armed forces serving in the war against Afghanistan.
War demands consensus and recruitment of the media. We must resist the warmongering drive for conformity. Some may find it offensive to be told that that their country's armed forces are used not for national self-defence, not for any national interest, but for illegal aggression. But if the truth hurts us, then we must ask why.
|
|