June 2009

Human society is the medium through which human capacities are developed.

The late Canadian philosopher, C.B. Macpherson, provides one of my favourite passages:

Human society is the medium through which human capacities are developed. *

His proposition has several profound implications.

To begin with, it is a direct attack on the idea that the individual (as a psychological, moral and economic being) is disconnected from and opposed to society. According to Macpherson, a man or woman is not some atomistic entity whose existence is attributable to self-generated, autogenic powers. Individuals are social phenomena, and the most individualistic, independent people are those who come from societies that provide the "necessary conditions [for] the development of individual capacities" (ibid). In other words, autonomous human beings - the moral goal of liberalism - can only develop within the nurturing confines of those societies that promote and venerate autonomy. Individualism, it should be noted, is not a genetic condition; it is a social doctrine that is ironically found in many societies which believe "society" is subordinate to the "individual".

Macpherson's argument also underlines the ideological nature of the "free will vs. determinism" debate. This debate, a staple of philosophy classes throughout the western world, can only make sense if we accept a central liberal tenet: human beings are free and autonomous to the extent that they avoid the determinism of society and culture. Leaving aside the elements of inherited physical traits (which Macpherson would say are still just potentialities), the determinism of society is, in the liberal view, necessarily negative. It is a fetter to human existence, and any concerted communal enterprise, like government, is a "necessary evil" (in the words of Thomas Paine). But Macpherson responds that the debate is all wrong. Instead of asking how can humans be free from society, we should be asking which type of society makes a human truly free. Rather than rehashing a false dichotomy that, in its uncritical manner, reinforces ideological doctrine, we should examine the sorts of conditions in society that allow for individuals to be free of fear, ignorance and want.

From Macpherson's perspective, a liberal capitalist society is not the place to nurture an autonomous human being who aspires to be "self-governing and self-directed, in control of his (or her) own will and not subject to irresistable phobias, addictions, or passions". ** Liberalism is committed to economic freedom, where equality of opportunity must eventually give way to an inequality of fortune. In such a society, success can only be measured in a very limited way: the material accumulation of money and stuff. Liberalism is also an ideology without a sense of time. It faces severe logical difficulties between, on one hand, its appeal to equality of opportunity, and, on the other hand, the accumulation of unequal wealth over time. To the degree that such accumulated, asymmetrical wealth is opposed to a "level playing field", then liberal capitalism cannot offer the necessary conditions for the free development of all individuals and their particular potentialities. Freedom and equality are universal terms, meant to apply to the human condition, so when freedom is unequal, it's no freedom at all.

For Macpherson, it is socialism - ironically, to a liberal mind - that in fact provides the necessary pre-condition for autonomy. Only in a society committed to equality and extensive democracy can human beings, all human beings, reach their true potential. Such autonomy is not beholden to the lonely and alienating passions of material accumulation. It is the product of a free people working together and sharing their communal responsibilities, and developing themselves rather than selling themselves.

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* C.B. Macpherson, "Problems of a Non-market Theory of Democracy." in Democratic Theory: Essays in Retrieval, (Toronto: Oxford University Press, 1984) p. 57.

** Susan Mendes, Toleration and the Limits of Liberalism, (Highlands, NJ: Humanities Press, 1989) p. 53.

My Review of Is Multiculturalism Bad for Women?

Susan Moller Okin’s Is Multiculturalism Bad for Women? is a fascinating application of liberal feminist theory to a major issue in western politics. Okin starts with the proposition that many ethnic minorities in multicultural societies do not believe that women are equal to men. This poses a particular problem for those who fight for equality if one of these ethnic minorities seeks constitutional protections under the policies of multiculturalism. Okin maintains that any ethnic minority that demands protective rights must not be granted those rights if it means the subordination of women. It would mean a liberal majority endorsing illiberal practices. Okin asks us to make a choice: if there is direct conflict between women's and minority rights, the former should prevail.

The book is organized in a readable format. It starts with Okin’s original 1999 essay on the topic, a series of responses from fellow academics and writers, and Okin’s rejoinder to their arguments. All of the essays are relatively brief, and there is a good balance between those who support Okin and those who don’t. Most of the essays (though not all) are free of unnecessary academic jargon, and the book in general strikes a good balance between thoroughness and brevity.

Though I generally liked the book, there are some weaknesses. The most obvious to me is Okin’s refusal to say that, in the West at least, some values (especially gender equality) ought to be considered superior to others. She implies this several times, but she never seems to come out directly and say it. In addition, much of her evidence about gender discrimination comes from high profile court cases. I would feel more comfortable with more comprehensive statistical references. Nevertheless, I generally find Okin’s position (and rebuttals) to be very persuasive. Her emphasis on the fluidity and fractures within minority cultures is commendable, and she argues convincingly that young minority women – who are not yet assimilated into discriminatory values – ought to have their autonomy protected. Many of her detractors focus on the illiberality of western societies, and never seem to confront the even greater illiberality in many religions and non-western cultures. They seem to miss that Okin herself uses the promise of liberal universality against those who don’t practice what they preach. Others criticize her for not going far enough to include issues of race and economic inequality. Yet it seems that one essay cannot really be blamed for not discussing all forms of inequality, and Okin’s point of view certainly doesn’t exclude such considerations. Similarly, her argument is really about minority cultures in western societies, and is not a global condemnation of hierarchal cultures. Her critics sometimes go beyond the scope that Okin sets for herself. Finally, many of Okin’s most vehement critics are Muslim men, and the irony of their defensiveness never seems to dawn on them.

On the whole, I would recommend this book for those interested in multiculturalism, equality and the hierarchy of values within open societies.

My goodness! Canwest is suddenly interested in private energy production!

Though I avoid Canwest newspapers like the plague, I occasionally read The Province and The Sun when time permits. Today's issue of The Province is a travesty. After largely ignoring run-of-the-river hydro projects during the recent election (when I did follow the two Vancouver dailies), the newspaper has finally decided to run a series of articles on the subject. Now. After the election. Thanks for contributing to the public sphere, guys. As Rafe Mair opined in his electoral post mortem, "the news media of B.C. utterly failed in its duty to inform the voters about critical environmental issues." The rather belated interest in these issues from The Province, especially IPP's (independent power producers), can't help but make one cynical.

In typical fashion for The Province, it underdelivers on its reportage. In the main article, the serious issues of environmental damage are alluded to, but no specifics are given, and the high contract costs being shouldered by BC Hydro are only mentioned briefly at the end (where few readers venture). The second article, the one about "party lines" and IPP's, is very short and vague, and it only paraphrases the (apparent) NDP position. No quotes from NDP leaders are given. Things get more interesting in the third article, which lists many of the Liberal and BC Hydro insiders who have jumped to IPP corporate positions, though the denial of conflict of interest from BC minister of energy Blair Lekstrom goes unchallenged.

However, if there is any doubt about the IPP's in the minds of readers, Michael Smyth, The Province's main columnist, comes to the rescue. His column follows the two page spread, and it attempts to attack the NDP and their apparent "hypocrisy" over the issue.

Smyth's column is a laugher, one in a long line of snide, one-sided collections of bumper-sticker arguments.

He starts with a defence of the run-of-the-river project that will finally give clean energy to the In-SHUCK-ch First Nation on Harrison Lake. He contends the following: "But the critics won't care. Comfortably ensconced in their own air-conditioned condos, watching their power-sucking big-screen TVs, they will condemn the First Nation and the private company it has partnered with." Really? Will they? Exactly who has condemned this? When? Smyth provides no evidence for his prediction. Having lived near Harrison Lake for years, I have never heard such criticism of the In-SHUCK-ch project. [Ok... a week after I first published this I read some negative words from certain environmental groups... but nothing from the NDP.] Indeed, if there ever was an IPP project that the NDP would support, this would be the one. Moreover, the In-SHUCK-ch First Nation should have been hooked up to the power lines years ago - that is, to the power lines that are already there. The IPP that's being proposed is not primarily for the aboriginals; it's coming because power line infrastructure is easily accessed. It's interesting that Smyth totally ignores the very controversial Bute Inlet project proposed by Plutonic Power. That company is rife with BC Liberal insiders and faces serious opposition from locals and environmentalists alike.

Smyth also says the "New Democratic Party now wants to shut these same projects down." A typical exaggeration. A "moratorium" means that the whole IPP process will be temporarily halted and reviewed, and the stringent environmental processes that have hitherto been lacking (but which even Smyth acknowledges are important) will be put into place. Smyth surely knows what a moratorium means and what the NDP have said about the issue. To say that they will kill the whole thing is a blatant lie.

I suppose Smyth's role is to mitigate any negativity from the other stories (making Dennis Skulsky and Gordon Campbell very happy), even though the other articles are pretty mild.

With Canwest columnists like Smyth, no wonder I usually read the The Globe and Mail, The Tyee and The Georgia Straight for my BC news.

Is it the "Surge" that's worked?

While many conservative supporters of the Iraq War have quietly disappeared - Dick Cheney notwithstanding - many have taken comfort in the apparent success of George Bush's "troop surge" of 2007.

Nevertheless, a great number of commentators have pointed to other factors in the decline of Iraqi violence. The New York Review of Books has published a number of articles [here and here, for example] that point to the salutary effects of the cease-fire declared by the powerful Shia leader, Moqtada al-Sadr, and the revolt by dozens of Sunni tribes and community groups against the violence of al-Qaeda "foreigners".

Michaels Massing's recent review of Thomas Ricks' latest book on General Patraeus nicely summarizes these factors, even though Ricks himself prefers to focus on the tactical changes brought upon by the leadership of General Patraeus and his staff. Massing notes that Ricks barely mentions al-Sadr, but Ricks is at least

... more expansive on the Sunni Awakening, recounting in detail how the tribes in Anbar province, enraged by al-Qaeda's growing brutality, began in September 2006 to turn against the group, and how the Americans quickly took advantage. "Whenever a tribe flipped and joined the Awakening," says a colonel who helped oversee the initial turnaround, "all the attacks on coalition forces in that area would stop, and all the caches of ammunition would come up out of the ground."

What's really interesting is that a major player in the troop surge, David Kilcullen, doesn't believe that the surge is the major reason for the decline in Iraqi violence. Massing goes on to explain that

The regularity of this pattern has led some observers—including many US officers—to conclude that the Sunni revolt was the main cause of the improvement in Iraq. They include David Kilcullen, Petraeus's counterinsurgency adviser. In his new book, The Accidental Guerrilla, Kilcullen writes that "the tribal revolt was arguably the most significant change in the Iraqi operating environment in several years."* Its impact, he argues, ran counter to what had been anticipated under the surge: instead of security improving as a result of changes imposed from the top down by US commanders, it occurred from the bottom up, with the US scrambling to respond.

Language Reveals Power

I've always been a fan of George Carlin. He was one of the first mainstream comedians to use humour against power, and there aren't many comedians who have forced the US Supreme Court to consider laws on speech and obscenity. He was, in my mind, the great link from Lenny Bruce to present-day commentators like Jon Stewart. And Carlin was one of the few celebrities who never seemed to sell his soul... at least not explicitly. (I admit, Shining Time Station was not a highpoint of Carlin's career.) In any case, you have to respect the wisdom of a guy who says, “If God had intended us not to masturbate, he would've made our arms shorter”. A modern day sage, I say.

On the other hand, I recently came across a passage from Carlin where he argues that “by and large, language is a tool for concealing the truth”. I've heard this kind of argument before, and I'm not so sure I can agree.

Is it language that conceals truth? Or is it the forces - economic, political, demographic - that encourage certain speech/text to be produced and venerated, and other speech/text to be censored, ridiculed or ignored? I believe it's the latter. I'm not saying that language is neutral or inert, as if it's a simple mirror that perfectly represents a physical reality. I just believe that language finds it difficult to hide its speaker's or author's intentions. Language just can't help itself. If you know where and how you look, language will eventually reveal its relationship to power - be it domination or submission or defiance. Language is like that friend who just can't keep a secret.

Case in point: the unions versus the bondholders in the ongoing GM debacle.

Have you ever noticed that the corporate press and their followers always couch union activities in moral terms? Thus, if a union like the CAW moves to defend its members' pensions, the language of moral condemnation comes out with clarity and predictability. A good example (though a rather muted one, considering the source) comes from The National Post, Canada's newspaper equivalent to Fox News. In a typical puff piece, the NP recently let Garth Whyte, the executive vice-president of the Canadian Federation of Independent Business, write his own story. Read the article carefully. Whyte tries to be understated, but he just can't seem to help himself. The union's pension is ultimately a "luxury". Whyte, of course, is against any bailout, because it's "overly generous". He taps into the private sector envy of public-sector pensions, and a bailout package that appears to be equivalent, and seems to think that if his RRSP has gone down, so should everyone else's. [This seems to be the favoured sentiment amongst most of the union-haters who have posted on this topic in The National Post and The Globe and Mail.] In other words, union efforts are based on greed. Workers and their representatives are almost always cast as lazy, venal and undeserving. If they cause a company to collapse, it's considered a moral failure. Damn those unions!

The bondholders are another story. These are the investors, by the way, who until recently would not agree to a settlement with GM (unlike the supplicating unions). In many ways, it is the bondholders who are responsible for GM's current move into bankruptcy protection. But no matter. There is no greed here. At worst, their rational self-interest has been a matter of miscalculation. That is, it's not moral at all; it's a matter of business. Moreover, if their efforts are cast in moral terms, it's with a different set of values than the one used against the unions. Rather than a list of vices drawn from the seven deadly sins, the morality of the bondholders is a matter of "conviction" as they struggle against the grasping unions and their government henchmen. So the NP portrays the bondholders as the victims of this tragedy, and reports (without a challenge) the following:

"The latest GM 'offer' sends a chilling message to all individual bondholders, not just those, like us, holding GM bonds: Contracts in America are no longer worth the paper they are written on," said GM Bondholders Unite, a grass-roots group representing individual GM bondholders across the United States.

"The 'offer' to individual GM bond investors is ridiculously lopsided because it arbitrarily favors other groups, at the expense of the legal rights, under the U. S. Constitution, of hundreds of thousands of individual GM bond investors.... We aren't asking for a bailout or a handout, just a fair deal. So we have no plans to back down."