Documentary on Pierre Bourdieu - Sociology is a Martial Art

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Pierre's Bourdieu's forty books and countless articles represent probably some of the the most influential renovations and applications of social science in the twentieth century. The highly influential and controversial intellectual - a longtime Professor of Sociology at the College de France - passed away in January 2002.
A "committed" thinker in the vein of Foucault, his work is concerned with elucidating the processes of symbolic violence and cultural domination in various areas of social life. His most well known book, Distinction (1979), addressed these themes in an effort to overcome the opposition of objectivist (Marxist) and subjectivist (Weberian) theories of class. Click here for more books by Bourdieu.
In the late nineties he became something of a celebrity scholar, one of the world's most important academics actively associated with the anti-globalization movement. Bourdieu himself argued that scholars and writers could and should bring their specialized knowledge to bear on social and political issues. His powerful critiques of the neoliberal revolution were the natural outgrowth of a lifetime of research into economic, social and cultural class domination among peoples as disparate as Algerian peasants and French professors, and as expressed in everything from amateur photography to posture.
SOCIOLOGY IS A MARTIAL ART, a new documentary about Bourdieu's life, became an unexpected hit in France just prior to his death. Filmed over three years, director Pierre Carles' camera follows Bourdieu as he lectures, attends political rallies, travels, meets with his students, staff, and research team in Paris, and includes Bourdieu having a conversation with Günter Grass.
The film's very title stresses the degree of Bourdieu's political engagement. He took on the mantle of Emile Zola and Jean-Paul Sartre in French public life, slugging it out with politicians because he considered those lucky enough to have spent their lives studying the social world could not be indifferent to the struggle for justice.

Blackwater Mercenary Captain Erik Prince Charged with Murder?

There was a news item all over the Indymedia (2.0) landscape and on MSNBC the last days that is too good to miss. In sworn statements of his own employee at Blackwater (currently renamed as Xe), the sole owner of the high-end mercenary company Erik Prince has been accused of murdering, or assisting in the murder of US state officials involved in the pending investigations into Blackwater. Erik Prince now faces the possibility of criminal prosecution for murder. Jeremy Scahill writes in The Nation that "The former employee also alleges that Prince 'views himself as a Christian crusader tasked with eliminating Muslims and the Islamic faith from the globe', and that Prince's companies 'encouraged and rewarded the destruction of Iraqi life.'"
In his 2007 book 'Blackwater, The rise of the world's most powerful mercenary army', Scahill describes the vast amount of crimes committed by this new privatised form of military forces. As just a few examples, in the aftermath of Katrina, Prince sent out his private army forces into Louisiana 24 hours before getting an official contract from the US government, and before the imposition of martial law in the state of Louisiana. Blackwater forces in Iraq have long been above either US or Iraqi law, making the mercenaries effectively free from any kind of criminal prosecution. US contracts with Blackwater in Afghanistan have only increased since Obama's presidency. Hopefully, this story will serve to renew public interest into this terrifying phenomenon.

Honduran Coup and US Ambiguity

This Real News broadcast features an illuminating report from Forrest Hylton on the attitude of the US towards the coup in Honduras. "The silence from Washington over the past month of human rights abuses from the de facto Honduran government becomes deafening when one considers that the US government holds both the ability to bring that regime down as well as a recent history of criticizing similar abuses in Iran. Groups inside the US have taken up the call to pressure the government into taking the action required by US law in addressing a military coup. Forrest Hylton is the author of Evil Hour in Colombia (Verso, 2006), and with Sinclair Thomson, co-author of Revolutionary Horizons: Past and Present in Bolivian Politics (Verso, 2007). He is a regular contributor to New Left Review and NACLA Report on the Americas."

With the Hondoran coup reminiscent of the dark days of the 70's and 80's in Latin America now over five weeks old, tensions are high inside the country itself and finally rising in international politics. The legitimate president Zelaya is trying all avenues to restore democracy, from the International Criminal Court to mobilising his people. While most countries have officially denounced the coup, apparently including president Obama who said he would follow the lead of the Organisation of American States (OAS) in opposing the coup regime. However, US foreign secretary Hillary Clinton has no use for the word coup. Using this word carries legal implications under US law to stop all aid to Honduras and recall the US Ambassador. Since the coup regime hired Lanny Davis, who served as White House counsel for President Bill Clinton, and Bennet Ratcliff, a public relations specialist with ties to former President Bill Clinton, Hillary has started to denounce president Zelaya as 'reckless' for trying to return to his country. According to Clinton, Zelaya would do better to simply keep negotiating with the 'current government'.

As news on Honduras is somewhat harder to come by than on Iran, I thought I'd post some links to good starting points for further research into what is happening in Honduras right now. I found some overviews of news on Honduras from the Real News and Democracy Now, who did several exclusive interviews with Zelaya and his wife. The archives of The Nation Magazine and venezuelanalysis.com also proved interesting sources of information.

Leo Panitch: Still a Marxist after All

In this lecture, Leo Panitch explains his positive but critical relation to Marx and how to understand current events, like the crisis, in Marxist terms. He does this not by just labelling current events with Marxist language, but is interested in how different capitalisms came to pass and how to transcend them in today's world. This is what makes Panitch very stimulating to read and listen to.

He has been a Professor of Political Science at York University since 1984. He was the Chair of the Department of Political Science at York from 1988-1994. He was the General Co-editor of State and Economic Life series, U. of T. Press, from 1979 to 1995 and is the Co-founder and a Board Member of Studies in Political Economy. He is also the author of numerous articles and books dealing with political science including The End of Parliamentary Socialism (1997). He was a member of the Movement for an Independent and Socialist Canada, 1973-1975, the Ottawa Committee for Labour Action, 1975-1984, the Canadian Political Science Association, the Committee of Socialist Studies, the Marxist Institute and the Royal Society of Canada. He is currently a supporter of the Socialist Project.

He is a prominent exponent of Marxism who sees his own work as theoretically innovative within that tradition, because he maintains that the dominance of the United States in the early years of the twenty-first century can't be understood using theories of imperialism that are themselves a century old.

He has argued, for example, that the concept of imperialism developed for the Victorian era over-emphasized the matter of the export of capital. Yet if one uses that as a yardstick today (he reasons) Great Britain is more a victim of U.S. imperialism than Kenya -- since American investors have much more at stake in the former than in the latter. The advanced industrial nations, in other words, are interpenetrating -- exporting capital to one another, not to the 'South,' and this requires a great deal of revision in Marxist-Leninist models.

A vast amount of his publications can be found here.

Panitch has also argued that Marx was wrong to contend that the rise of trade unions would develop a socialistic class-consciousness in the working class. The association of workers for the purpose of collective bargaining has proven quite compatible with capitalism -- since such bargaining concerns the terms of wage labor, not the legitimacy of wage labor. He argues that Marxist political parties must abandon the assumption that there is anything inherently revolutionary about any class, so that they can get to work creating a self-conscious revolutionary class of wage earners, "articulating the articulation."

Timeline: Historical overview of Afghanistan

Stop the War officer John Rees provides a short history of imperialist intervention and local resistance in Afghanistan. Timeline is a series of programmes on political history presented by John Rees and produced by the Islam Channel [ http://www.islamchannel.tv ].

Stop the war coalition: http://www.stopwar.org.uk

http://www.counterfire.org

Tariq Ali at the Parkland Conference

Tariq Ali speaks at the Parkland Conference in Edmonton, Canada, on November 16, 2008. Amazing speech on The Dictatorship of Capital: Its Impact on Politics and Culture. With the fall of the Berlin Wall what happened to diversity and freedom of expression? How did market-realism establish its ascendancy in Western culture? He also quotes from and addresses the admirable culture of resistance that is an integral part of Arab poetry.

June 24th: Presentation on Peak Oil and Geopolitics in Amsterdam (Dutch)

Rembrandt Koppelaar, chairman of peakoil.nl (or the Dutch branch of ASPO) and I, Freek Blauwhof, will hold a joint presentation on peak oil and the effects of increasing resource scarcity on international politics coming wednesday evening. I invite everyone in the neighbourhood at least able of understanding Dutch with some Power Point visual support to come an join the discussion!

Election Fraud in Iran?

The Real News and Asia times reporter Pepe Escobar gave an in-depth analysis of the power structures in Iranian politics, and the events surrounding the recent elections. While most other media outlets are content with reporting the obvious fact of disagreement between the Ahmedinejad and Moussawi camps about the fairness of the elections, The Real News addresses the actual issues in great detail. Very informative.

Michael Parenti: US War on Yugoslavia

Simple and clear introduction into marxian critique of imperialism by Michael Parenti on "The U.S. War on Yugoslavia" given May 16, 1999 in Seattle. The rising confidence of the left in America at the time can be felt throughout this great talk, and much of the issues Parenti raises have a relevance now he could not have foreseen at the time.

The war on Yugoslavia and the subsequent war crime trials in the Hague have been universally distorted and quickly forgotten. During the war, Michael Parenti exposed the elaborate plan started in 1989 to split up Yugoslavia into right wing ethnically divided separate states; a country that was built on the pan-Slaves coming together into a viable socialist nation. This is not to say that politics in Yugoslavia was perfect, but the progress all the Slavic nations have lost is without a doubt astounding. The plan Parenti described seems to work out very well today. Funny how, unlike the plan for Iraq becoming a blossoming flower of democracy in the Middle East, this one worked out quite well.

Interestingly enough, the US still have large bases in Kosovo. One strategic reason is the competition with Russia over control of the energy infrastructure network in Europe and central Asia. Several thousands of US soldiers protect the pipelines through the Balkans that are necessary to link pipeline networks connecting the oil and gas from central Asia to the export ports and the European pipeline networks. Pipelines in the Balkans Pipelines in the Kaukasus

Michael Parenti is author of many books, including:

Contrary Notions, City Lights, 2007
The Culture Struggle, Seven Stories Press, 2006
Superpatriotism, City Lights, 2004
The Assassination of Julius Caesar, The New Press, 2003 (A great talk about Rome, Ceasar, history as a science and class bias of historians can be viewed here.)
To Kill a Nation: The Attack on Yugoslavia, Verso, 2000
History as Mystery, City Lights, 1999

Documentary: The Take

In suburban Buenos Aires, thirty unemployed auto-parts workers walk into their idle factory, roll out sleeping mats, and refuse to leave. All they want is to re-start the silent machines. With The Take, director Avi Lewis, one of Canada's most outspoken journalists, and writer Naomi Klein, author of the international bestsellers No Logo and The Shock Doctrine, champion a radical economic manifesto for the 21st century. But what shines through in the film is the simple drama of workers' lives and their struggle: the demand for dignity and the searing injustice of dignity denied.

Interestingly enough, it seems that the current depression is making more and more places take a path similar to Argentina. And indeed Avi Lewis and Naomi Klein are now at the forefront of a growing progressive movement to call for nationalisation and cooperatisation of the American auto industry for example, to put the industry to work for the public good. http://thetake.org/

Documentary: A Place Called Chiapas

'A Place Called Chiapas' is a breathtaking Canadian documentary of first-hand accounts of the EZLN, the Zapatista Army of National Liberation, and the lives of its soldiers and the people for whom they fight. Director Nettie Wild takes the viewer to rebel territory in the south west Mexican state of Chiapas, where the EZLN live and evade the Mexican Army.

Presentation: Ecological Critique of Market Society

I thought I'd post this presentation text I've written for a philosophy department course called 'Concerns of the Market'. It is aimed to be a short introduction into the ecological critique of, as the course called it, 'market societies'.

It refers to a power point presentation that can be downloaded here or viewed here.

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1 Introduction

In this presentation, my aim is to give a short summary of the critique of market society and neoliberalism from the perspective of environmentalists and ecologists like Dennis and Donella Meadows, the authors of ‘The Limits to Growth’. This presentation will require some scientific discussion that is instrumental for a philosophical perspective. I believe that any fruitful philosophical inquiry into the moral problems of sustainability will have to rely on recent scientific discourse in order to ask the right moral questions. For example, questions like future generations’ rights to oil resources are outdated when it seems unlikely that there will be much left for these future generations, even when there is a consistent political-economic move to sustainable consumption. Rights to energy resources more generally might be more appropriate in this case.

I will break down this critique in two parts; the first dealing with the use of ‘sources’, the other with disposal of waste and pollutants in ‘sinks’. [figure 1, 2, 3] By sources is meant all natural resources that are used in an economy, from fishing stock and arable land to water supply and fossil fuels. By sinks are meant the capacities of ecosystems to absorb pollution and waste, from bacteria in rivers that break down sewage to the adaptivity of atmosphere to greenhouse gas emissions.

Obviously central to this critique is the notion of sustainability. I use the word here as meaning natural-economic conditions of necessity for the realisation of any reasonable interpretation of human flourishing for most people over time. Sustainability is often mistaken as some kind of moral value by itself. But, as long as we can agree that human flourishing in the future should also be an aim of political morality, so I can skip a lengthy discussion of Derek Parfit, what other value should political action ultimately have in mind, if not sustained human flourishing for all? Sustainability, then, concerns the natural boundraries for the sustained possibility of this moral end.

The question is whether societies in which markets are the dominant mechanism of allocation of goods and services are, or can be made capable of dealing fairly and effectively with the problems of increasing scarcity of resources and pollution. In other words: is there a morally acceptable capitalist road to sustainability? As I am approaching this question through looking at natural resources and sinks, Herman Daly’s widely used criteria for sustainable use of resources and pollution I think hits the nail on the head [figure 4]. If there are no questions about this definition of sustainability, I would like to proceed with the overview of the ecological critique of market society.

2.1 Sources

In countries where the price of non-renewable resources and unsustainably used renewable resources are set by the market (or are even subsidised), there is a gap between the use value of that resource and its exchange value, the price. As any normal commodity, natural resources are traded in the market, where supply and demand determine price. According to a central justificatory thesis in neoclassical economics, which treats natural resources like any other commodity, the market mechanism ensures efficient allocation of goods; but, of course, in this case we are dealing with depleting natural resources. Once used, they are gone, and somewhere along the way of depletion, (where maximum supply exceeds demand) price is set no longer by supply, demand and marginal production cost, but by natural scarcity and shortage.

So in so far as there are good reasons to assume that the exchange value, as set by the market at times of relative abundance, is much lower than the real use value of the resource, the market mechanisms of supply and demand cannot be relied upon to allocate non-renewable resources and depleting renewable resources efficiently. It follows that a society that allocates non-renewable resources in this market-based way is, from this perspective, wasting the ‘bank account’ of elementary resources considerably.

But the critique can go more fundamental. Market-based societies are also ill-prepared to adapt to depletion and scarcity of vital resources like energy or food that its economy is reliant on. A political-economic tradition of leaving allocation of non-renewables to the market produces a dependent economic infrastructure with the high consumption patterns that result from market underpricing. These infrastructures are the aggregates of long term investment; it takes several decades to replenish without extra costs the stock of cars, ships, factory equipment, electricity plants and so on. A market-based society that finds one of its essential resources depleting can maybe change allocation systems quickly, but it is stuck with the economic infrastructure and capital stock that is accumulated over time. This kind of exposure to resource shocks combined with the highly discussed increase in worldwide inequality can have morally unacceptable consequences- think of stagflation after the oil shocks of the 70s, food or water shortages and even the collapse of civilisation like on the Easter Islands. These are results of what the authors of LtG call overshoot- when a (socio-economic) system passes its external limits.

My own literature research into the depletion of different non-renewable and depleting renewable resources has convinced me there is cause for concern in many cases; oil and natural gas production are in dangerous stages of decline considering the level of dependency of most societies on these resources. [figure 5 and 6] Potable water, fish stocks and soil fertility are, albeit in different ways, at more or less maximum sustainable levels of extraction or beyond these levels. Contrary to a still dominant academic consensus, I found that the models of the Club of Rome have been quite right so far.

The fundamental question for this course is whether sustainable use of these resources can be reached with ‘market based solutions’. My position here is a negative one. Sustainable use of resources seems to be contradictory to a central thesis in neoclassical economics and market-based politics: that supply and demand allocate resources through setting prices. This conclusion I see supported in historical economic and energy policy in capitalist countries. The countries that have made the most considerable steps towards resource sustainability, Sweden, Iceland and Cuba, have done this through direct government involvement and investment. But rather than expanding on my own political opinion now, I invite discussion on this topic after this presentation.

2.2 Sinks

The question of pollution and waste shares many characteristics with the one concerning (renewable and non-renewable) resource depletion. There are sustainable levels of pollution that can be absorbed by ecosystem sinks, but exceeding these levels for a longer time results in problems of overshoot.

The most global and well-known example of overshoot by polluting sinks is global warming. There are lower levels of greenhouse gas emissions that increase temperature, but will be corrected by the world ecosystems correction mechanisms. After a certain point, however, the ‘positive feedback loops’, or the ecosystem mechanisms that reinforce global warming, become stronger than the balancing correction mechanisms. The current scientific debate concerns when exactly this point is most likely reached. The debate ranges from 350 ppm, which was reached around 1985, to 450 ppm, which would be reached in 35 years at current rates of emission. [figure 7 and 8] This is a very serious issue: if greenhouse gas levels stay above this critical point for a longer time, the genie will be out of the bottle. Humans will have lost their grip on this potential global catastrophe.

Again, the question for this course is whether there is a credible market based road to sustainability on the pollution side of the ecology-economy system. There is one especially prominent market based scheme for reducing emissions, cap and trade. This is the system in place in the EU at the moment, and it is the one that is being proposed by the Obama administration as well. At first sight and with some generous reading of the institutional argument, it seems it could work. All that governments need to do is to set the amount of emission rights, and these can then be allocated by the market in these rights. That would mean that there is a limit for emission, while the market can efficiently decide how exactly these emission targets will be met.

But if one looks a little further into the range of institutions that are involved in these schemes, there are a lot of practical problems with such a solution that I would argue are not just accidental, but institutional and necessary. Emissions can be reduced by all kinds of administrative mechanisms (fe offsetting emissions in seperate projects abroad). Furthermore, markets in emissions rights create a secondary derivative market with its speculative bubbles, and corporations always have an interest in expanding the amount of rights that are actually issued. When the system was just introduced in the EU, for example, the market and lobbying power of big corporations like the German automobile industry was so strong it even accomplished to create rights for more emissions than are produced to begin with. In the ‘70s and ‘80s, emitting corporations universally denied global warming, in a fashion rather like the tobacco industry that denied smoking caused cancer. The history does make one suspect there is a logic in this so called 'partnership of the state and the private sector'. Most environmentalists, and myself included, would argue this is because corporations always have an interest in externalising costs and internalising profits, and will use their resources to obtain their end. This market power of corporations is an institutional fact that directly contradicts any credible move towards sustainability. As long as the market is at the centre stage of environmental policy, this policy will be the result of a tug of war between even the most well-meaning governments and international governmental bodies on the one side, and corporations that externalise the cost of battling against their pollution on the other.

3 Conclusion

If one tries to imagine a credible integrated road to sustainability on all the vital topics adressed and more there seems very little room for market dominance. The most market-based ideas that aim to address these issues in cohesion all emphasise a need for stable and unjeopardised move on the different fronts, requiring price stability for long term investment. A good introduction into these arguments is supplied by Richard Heinberg in 'The Oil Depletion Protocol'. This necessity implies a government setting prices and pushing the market in a sustainable direction. But such a scheme will have to fight the same battle with contradicting economic institutions and mechanisms, like corporate lobbying and externalising of costs. Therefore, considering the actual scientific debates and economic-political practice, I am led to the more philosophical conclusion that capitalism is inherently unsustainable. Real solutions for the problems of an overshooting ecologic-economic system necessarily lie outside market thinking and market practice. Whether this should be a reformist taming of the forces of the market or a radical overcoming of its logic I leave up for discussion. In any case, it seems only a fool could expect that forces from within capitalism itself will save it from its own overshoot.

Ralph Schoenman: The Deeper Politics of 9 11

In this lecture Ralph Schoenman gives I think one of the best possible arguments for why 9/11 is not just a distraction from the present and future, but, to the contrary, provides another overwhelming insight into the shadow sides of state and class.

Ralph Schoenman was a comrade of Betrand Russells in the '60s, and apparently even got tortured in Bolivia for trying to submit evidence to acquit french Marxist Regis Dubray from execution. Schoenman must have been quite a powerful character; in this memo, Bertrand Russell describes him as a quick minded and energetic young optimist who is convinced of "his unshakable belief in the penetration and breadth of his understanding". In 1969, Russell tragically distanced himself from Schoenman, since he had a tendency to exploit his proximity to Russell. As Sartre put it in a letter to Schoenman: "You can't both hide behind Russell and put him in your pocket." But much can be said for Schoenman, since he did not sell out like so many people of his generation. To the contrary, he now perplexes online biography writers by adhering to the language of marxists in the '60: "He reads a long, tedious tract, filled with phrases like 'the workers council were the proletarian power in embryo, but these were smashed by the Stalinist reaction.'"

This lecture makes me suspect however, that he is not just a relic from days when radical groups split over discussions on Trotsky and Stalin. It looks like his confidence and radicalism allows him a great amount of insight into the darkest political facts and structures.

His books include 'P.R.' (1967), 'Bertrand Russell: Philosopher of the Century' (1967), and 'The Hidden History of Zionism' (1988).

Peace, Propaganda and the Promised Land

From The Real News: "'Peace, Propaganda & the Promised Land' was broadcast on the French CBC on October 23, 2008, provoking a flood of complaints to the Canadian network. These complaints overwhelmingly took the network to task for running what they deemed to be a "pro-Palestinian" film, largely sidestepping the critically acclaimed 2004 documentary's explicit focus on how pro-Israeli pressure groups methodically influence American media coverage of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

CBC management asked the network's Ombudsman to launch a full-scale investigation into the substance of the complaints and the central charge that the film was unduly biased.

On December 8, 2008, the Ombudsman released her findings. She issued a report concluding that Peace, Propaganda & the Promised Land should not have been shown on French CBC at all."

The funny thing is that this film addresses the propaganda war in favour of the Israeli state, that uses strategies like creating an atmosphere of fear to keep journalists from stepping out of the official narrative that justifies the occupation. It is an analysis of the very practice this Ombudsman's report is an example of.

Peace, Propaganda & the Promised Land provides a striking comparison of U.S. and international media coverage of the crisis in the Middle East, zeroing in on how structural distortions in U.S. coverage have reinforced false perceptions of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. This pivotal documentary exposes how the foreign policy interests of American political elites--oil, and a need to have a secure military base in the region, among others--work in combination with Israeli public relations strategies to exercise a powerful influence over how news from the region is reported.

Meet Mumia Abu Jamal

Part 2 Part 3

Mumia Abu-Jamal is an American who was convicted and sentenced to death for the 1981 murder of police officer Daniel Faulkner. Before his arrest he was a Black Panther Party activist, cab driver, and journalist. Since his conviction, his case has received international attention and he has become a controversial cultural icon. During his imprisonment he has published several books and other commentaries, most notably 'Live from Death Row'. On April 6, 2009, the United States Supreme Court ruled that his original conviction of 28 years ago would stand.
Despite all the setbacks and defeats in the struggle for his own life, Mumia is still regularly broadcasting broadcasting his insightful and eloquent columns trough Prison Radio.

Slavoj Žižek in Roda Viva

In this excellent interview with Slavoj Žižek, the thinking of this fascinating philosopher is nicely introduced as Žižek is confronted with questions from different sides; he explains why he is a marxist in political economy and Freudian, Lacanian and Hegelian in matters of ideology.

Books by Slavoj Žižek

People Power Politics

Compared to the last American government of course, the Obama administration is quite responsive to public opinion. But, to be frank, it should be clear by now that Obama’s policies are miles away from taking measures to dismantle the empire, take care of the poor in your country, set up single payer health care, or implement a crucial emergency rescue plan for energy and climate, for instance. The crucial question therefore, I think, is not what the current administration is proposing and doing, but rather what American activists will be able to achieve in the present historic window of opportunity. As Christopher Hayes expressed a similar optimism: "history is pointing in our direction". So in this article I would like to address the strategy of the American left, the vital actors who put pressure on the only state that can on its own seriously change the course of world politics.

I am of course not alone in calling for the active citizens of the US to think about the most effective way to act in the longer term. For example, former UN weapons inspector and anti-war drill sergeant Scott Ritter stated that the anti-war movement needs to reinvent itself:

“It is high time for the anti-war movement to take a collective look in the mirror, and be honest about what they see. A poorly organized, chaotic, and indeed often anarchic conglomeration of egos, pet projects and idealism that barely constitutes a "movement," let alone a winning cause.” ('The Art of War for the Anti-War Movement')

Ritter is often a little harsh and rigid to my taste, and understandably suffered from some culture shock after siding with anti-authoritarian activists, he does have an important point. I think it can help all of us to be shouted at by people like him from time to time. Not because activist groups need to organize in a military manner per se, but to become better at strategic forward thinking; setting objectives, and consequently figuring out concrete ways to achieve them. There is, however, one crucial issue he does not address: the need to formulate an independent radical vision of and for society. Strategic action is always a means to an end, it by definition only makes sense if it is instrumental to a larger goal. The task for the left is to formulate this alternative vision for society.

So the left does not only need to reinvent itself organizationally, but also ideologically. Theory is a necessary first step to opening up political possibility. These times of proliferation of crises should be used first and foremost to return to the fundamental questions and critiques of capitalist social relations, the state and its relation to capital, democracy in the economic sphere, the relation between the economy and the natural environment, alienation and consumer society and so on. The ongoing search for forms of collective action that transcend the now all too apparent shortcomings of liberal democratic capitalism is what needs to give the left a lasting sense of direction.

But in the mean time, reforms are urgently necessary to open space for radical ideas. Electoral reform and environmental reform are two illustrations of this necessity. Electoral reform is needed to break open the two party system, to show that the Democrats or the Republicans are not the only political options. And whatever society one would like to see take form, it will have to live with natural constraints like climate change, depletion of natural resources; in short the limits to growth. Our current transgression of the limits to growth is one fundamental difference between the situation in the 1930s and today. As a consequence of these new concerns, I would argue, the American left will have to seriously press for reform while engaging in a fundamental debate of self-reinvention. The issue is therefore not whether you should take a step back and think or act immediately out of a sense of urgency, but rather how to combine the two activities.

To determine a way to start realizing those long-term visions, it is helpful to think in terms of social processes. Quite understandably, the last eight years of the Bush administration evoked a serious amount of popular disenfranchisement; resulting in passive apathy but also active resistance. The depression and the bailouts have also motivated people to protest in the streets of New York, London and Strasbourg. People power has been on the rise lately. If the process of disenfranchisement continues during the Obama administration, it could very well become the foundation for a commonplace independent activist citizenry on the longer term, in which citizens organize, self-educate and determine their own course rather than limiting themselves to passively endorsing the Democrats, the Republicans, or being apathetic. The two essential missing ingredients are active organization and critical theory.

For some time, the campaign and election of Barack Obama took away a lot of energy from the movements. Especially in the weeks following the election the Obamania was absolutely intolerable. But lately, popular discussion and pressure increased by mainstream media is forcing him into a dilemma. If I understand the significance of the torture memoranda debate correctly, there are two possible outcomes. In the most likely case, Obama will keep to his line of only 'looking forward' and stop short of prosecuting those responsible for the torture under Bush (and during his own presidency! Democracy Now reported that since the closing of Guantanamo was announced, the treatment of prisoners there worsened significantly), which means he will bend and twist to keep the torture conspirators above the law. Such preferential treatment would be another sign that real change can only be the result of pressure from below, as was shown by the conservative staff appointments, the intensification of the war in Afghanistan, the silence during the Gaza siege, the Geithner plan, etcetera. Pressure would have to increase for the Obama government to make the changes that are necessary, pressure that will only come from your actions and patience.

The other possibility is that Obama shows himself willing to give in to pressure from below on issues that can draw on widespread coverage and popular support, and really allow prosecution. Just imagine Dick Cheney, Condi Rice and Donald Rumsfeld as defendants in court! That would be an amazing victory, again not for the Obama government, but for the American people; earned especially by those who have made the case for justice and fought for years to get to the truth of the matter.

If anything, this debate shows there is a chance to realize successes. The Obama administration is predictably wriggling around and torturing logic in avoidance of making powerful enemies, so do not be fooled into passivity if he will not go through with prosecution of those who allowed and committed torture. But there will be new chances. Anyone who has read books by Chomsky will know that there is no short supply of issues on which the policy elite, Republican or Democrat, opposes the views of a wide majority of the American population. Herein lies possibility of reform not only for the sake of reform itself, but also to show that another world is possible.

So what I would like to convey to you is this: for your own countries’ sake and for people around the world, self-educate and become effective. While engaging in the necessary ideological debates on the bigger picture, join an activist group if you haven’t already. Get into touch with other groups on a national level, coordinate and pick a topic to campaign on, have patience and try to use the mainstream media as your own platform. I am not saying that this will be easy, but when the chance is there, you have to be able to take it and use it well. Because, as we see in the recent debate on torture, it actually is possible to get even Fox News hosts to unequivocally denounce torture and call for prosecution of those responsible. You may not agree with how Shephard Smith puts his argument -“If we are to be Reagan’s shining city on the hill..”- but he was able to suddenly disrupt the indoctrination of millions of your countrymen. His broadcast outrage was as politically valuable a service as countless hours’ worth of organizing, licking envelopes, sending emails, having meetings and staging rallies. The trouble so often is, you need to latter to have the former; the very fact that Obama released the memoranda or that Shephard Smith felt the need to denounce torture to such a degree, are the sweet fruits of effective activism. Never forget that you, the active citizens of the US, are the real superpower.

Freek Blauwhof is a philosophy student and member of the Dutch Green Party, as well as the International Socialists.

The Evilness of Power - A Documentary on Authority

Few, if any documentaries I have come across go as deep into what motivates people to commit acts that our conscience normally would never allow. Montageing commentary from a host of intellectuals and shards of history, recent politics and popular culture to back them up, this film makes a powerful case that the evil people do to each other is not inherent in human nature: it requires authority and hierarchy to come about.

On www.anarchy.net, the creator of the film had this to say about his montage documentary:
"My motivations for creating The Evilness of Power are varied. I wanted to clarify the ideas and channel the strong emotions I'd been internalizing since I became an activist in 2004 and which I had been sketchily trying to articulate in my youtube channel since late 2006. I also realized that there weren't that many documentaries dealing exclusively with the concept of hierarchy--perhaps none at all--. I noticed how relatively easy and effective it would be to weave together some of my youtube videos with parts of programs, films, documentaries etc to offer a more comprehensive examination of hierarchy and hopefully contribute to revolutionary change."

Will Obama Be Forced To Prosecute?

Good news, for a change! The pressure on Obama to prosecute those responsible for authorising torture seems to be mounting. This is happening not just in the marginal grass roots outlets, but in the mainstream media as well. Even Fox news commentator Shepherd Smith had to speak out against torture, saying "We are America, we do not Fucking torture!". I'm wondering, will Obama really be forced to either pardon the torture or prosecute Bush, Cheney, Rice and Rumsfeld? In any case, this debate just goes to show that real change comes from below.

Interview with Eva Golinger

I've found an excellent twenty-minute interview with Eva Golinger, the American-Venezuelan lawyer and journalist who obtained documents proving USAID and CIA's involvement in the 2002 coup attempt in Caracas. She tells about the coup, the direction and deepening of the Bolivarian revolution in Venezuela, and US policy towards the country.

Books by Eva Golinger