The good and bad of Bill Clinton was on show at his appearance with John McCain from which leaked his disagreement with Obama on Syria. Clinton understood foreign policy needs but his decisions were made with a finger measuring the political breeze and therefore cautious to the point of insufficiency as far as actually achieving long-term goals. His political calculation on the Rwandan genocide was Clinton's low point, but my chief criticism is that he set up policies and precedents for the terrorism and Saddam problems but neglected to move decisively (and controversially) to resolve the problems on his watch, rather leaving the controversy for his successor to deal with when the problems reached a head. In contrast to Clinton, his successor, Bush, made rational choices to match means with ends and dealt with the controversy that Clinton avoided.
Given the prominent role of Sunni terrorists among the Syrian rebels, the destruction the terrorists caused in neighboring Iraq, and current day terrorist attacks in Iraq likely bleeding over from Syria, I wonder how Obama's decision to give military aid to the Syrian rebels plays in Iraq? It may be the death of any lingering alliance between the US and post-Saddam Iraq. Obama's feckless Middle East policy increasingly vindicates Bush's Middle East policy.
I responded to Professor Nacos about Libya and Iraq here.
John Yoo's take on the Snowden leaks about the NSA surveillance. In short, the program is Constitutional, legal, and fulfills a compelling state interest.
Damn, Nature, you scary! The Cordyceps parasitic fungus take over the mind and body of zombie ants. The ants' cuticle (hardened skin) offers no protection. Not only ants are affected. Different species of Cordyceps attack different insects. There is a variety of parasitic mind control in nature. The complexity of behavior under mind control is striking, such as parasitoid voodoo wasp larvae that control their caterpillar hosts. Who's to say that human beings aren't changed in mind and body by parasites?
Interesting take on the social-political implosive collapse of American society. The life-cycles of parasites that exploit and eventually kill their hosts seems analogous.
Confessions of a Sociopath. Yikes. It seems scary to be around one yet liberating to be one, but also alienating. Hm. Is Amanda Bynes a sociopath?
More sour cream's "I put that beep on everything." Mozzarella cheese, at least the factory version sold in supermarket dairy sections, is more about texture and has subtle flavor to begin with. It loses its flavor in storage. Adding sour cream to bannock pizza made with flavorless mozzarella adds flavor and a creamy texture. I've also used sour cream as a cheese replacement but cooking with the sour cream diminishes its effect. I may substitute a different, more flavorful cheese on my bannock pizza. Sour cream + hot sauce make a creamy, tasty dipping sauce for meat, especially chicken, which needs the flavor boost.
Egg and scallion fried rice and broiled pork with sour cream + hot sauce dipping sauce on the side is decadent.
Approximate broiling guide: 15 total minutes for beef, 25 total minutes for pork, 35 total minutes for chicken. Beef, as I've noted before, has the least room for error in cooking time.
Once again, wet heat (steam) does not cook the same way as dry heat (bake).
3 boxes of 11 oz double chocolate Krave cereal and 1 gallon whole milk for 9 dollars is a pretty good deal, but not a healthy one. I finished the gallon of milk and 1.5 boxes of the Krave in 1 day. That stuff puts on pounds and my body feels off, whether from the chemicals or sugar, afterwards.
I failed to kill an exceptionally quick mosquito last night and today I have a bite on my index finger. It's likely resting in my apartment somewhere digesting my blood. Update: I killed it plus 3 more mosquitoes. What hole(s) are they using to enter my apartment?
Nietzsche excites an MGTOW like Marx excites an activist. The temptation is to be belligerent and defiant of everyone else's conventions and repressions. To expurgate the internalized subjugation and throw off in a zealous burst all the chains of society in every personal interaction as a matter of principle and newly appreciated ego. However, when I am weak, needy, and disenfranchised, an adolescent acting out without a rational purpose is an unnecessary risky behavior. To subjectify myself and solve my alienation must be a thoughtful, long-term - even lifetime - mastery project. Real life is not literally like the movie The Matrix, with a Zion, or even a Nebuchadnezzar, to which to escape the entirety of reality in one move. I can't physically sever my connections to the world and be reborn as a new, greater self in a fantasy world. I must navigate my way out of the trap in this world. The better compromise with Nietzsche's provocation is to critically diagnose the conditions of my objectification, control the internalized repressions within my mind, and learn to know the world for what it is, like Feuerbach's sensual observation. Be situationally aware and self-aware, and respect the power that the world and other people have over me. Then intelligently apply praxis along Marx's original thesis of sensual activity in order to change the circumstances of my objectification. Weigh the risks and rewards. Interact with the world as a rational self-interested free agent. Renegotiate my Hobbesian social contract. Even if I choose to be altruistic again, I must do so from a reified conscious state.
Richard Swanson was an alienated man who died on his praxis quest to actualize his reified consciousness. I don't know that he was red pill, but he was definitely going his own way. By Swanson's and the author's example, the life metamorphasis must be created with dedicated whole mind-body physical activity.
I had a dream about the Stuy bowling team. It wasn't about my truncated time as a bowler, but more my leadership experience recasting the culture of the team that extended beyond my HS career. It wasn't a replay of the actual experience but rather its pattern with different faces, ie, the more things change, the more they stay the same. All of my leadership experiences have been praxis with the Marxist premise that truth is subjective, creative, and deduced rather than objective and induced. The status quo is just an option. However, I eventually reach a point where my internalized subjugation stops me and fills me with doubt with thoughts that Truth is in fact objective, everyone else is in on it, and I am alone, out of tune with a quixotic fantasy. Yet I have made a difference. I have brought my subjective truth to life, just not completely to life at 1st attempt. But that's only a failure from a performance test perspective, not a mastery perspective. Even when change is a smooth run, Daniel Patrick Moynihan said that civil reform requires a 30 year commitment. I certainly have not followed through on any 30 year commitments to completion. So perhaps the obstacles I've run up against are not Truth dispelling my quixotic fantasy, but rather simply breaching the comfort zone of the status quo, aka the blue pill Matrix, Nietzsche's bad air of lies, and Freud's internalized repression. At that point, it's the dominant subjective Truth vs my insurgent subjective Truth, and it requires competition to break through. And that means competing with my teammates who are still shackled by the blue pill status quo and winning over the fencesitters, which I can do, but the uncertainty strikes at my anxieties and insecurities. To compete, I need to trust my capability and my vision and have the iron will - the Nietzschean classical will to excellence - to fight against social pressures to rise alone. The evidence says I can do it in terms of capability, but I must build up my inner game to match my outer game. I must be in control. I also need to figure out what I want to be and the world to be; bigger than morality, the right thing, or selflessly making the world a better place in a Judeo-Christian sense, but what is my truth I want to define my life and with which to change the world.
This NY Times opinion discusses the compounding impact of moral decay and fraying of the social compact in our society. My aspirations for SU4A seem quaint. As an idealist, where could I begin to patch the tearing holes? It's sticking fingers in a dike that's crumbling under a flood.
From the Grantland article on the Spurs' Tracy McGrady: "Most coaches who don't understand young players view 'selfish' as something bad," Carter said. "My thing as a coach is, I can't get a player to be at the level he needs to be at unless he is selfish. He's got to be selfish to invest in himself."
Eric
Monday, 10 June 2013
Saturday, 8 June 2013
Notes on foundations of modern social theory
After watching Professor Szelényi's lectures on Hobbes and Locke, I'm disturbed that Hobbes's state of nature (scarce, rational self-interest, competitive) is logically sound while Locke's state of nature (abundance, anti-harm, cooperative) is a leap of faith. Locke's constitutional theory tracks very closely to Hobbes's, but Locke's deviation from Hobbes in order to elevate individual liberty seems based on an unfounded premise. Reconciling Hobbes's logic with Locke's wishful thinking as an American progressive liberal requires adopting a tiered belief system, like Maslow's hierarchy. Hobbes is correct about the state of nature, but one hopes his social contract will construct a foundation of security and stability upon which we can build a civilization that is sufficiently safe and abundant to grow a Lockean state. However, the Lockean state is artificial. The Lockean state of nature cannot be presumed. Hobbes's social contract, the Leviathan, must be strictly maintained as our social foundation in order to keep us above the Hobbesian state of nature. Note that Hobbes, while he does not elevate individual liberty, is a methodological individualist. Hobbes is a rationalist and materialist whose first principle is that we are intrinsically equal in that we each naturally have a right to all things and can kill each other. From there, we socialize as a matter of cost/benefit in a rational contractual manner rather than moral manner.
JS Mill is a reformed utilitarian who became a Moulin-Rouge bohemian upholding "freedom, beauty, truth, and love" (Moulin Rouge's bohemian motto).
The French enlightment and Rousseau's general will are beloved by Marxists and Communists everywhere. For Locke and the English enlightment, individuals are intrinsically equal, therefore, the social contract is between individual, or sum of individuals, and sovereign. For Rousseau, the social contract is between general will and sovereign because, whereas Locke believed individuals are equal, Rousseau believed individuals are intrinsically unequal. Individual inequality means that neither individual interests nor even a sum of individual interests can define the common interest. Since individuals are unequal yet the common interest equally applies to all, then the common interest, ie, the general will, must be of a separate character than individual interests. The general will is supreme and citizens are obligated to submit to the general will even where it conflicts with individual interests. Practically, he who defines and controls the general will has a free hand to take freedom, property, even life from any individual who is in conflict with the general will. Thus, while general will underpins selfless civic duty and the ties that bind a diverse national people, it also opens the door for tyranny. In America, we have been progressively departing from our English political heritage of individual rights and aligning with the Continental political tradition of the collective.
Mill's individual who can and should best determine his own happiness and utility stands in diametric opposition to Rousseau's general will and amour propre. Mill is Rousseau's denigrated bourgeoise. Mill and Nietzsche have a lot in common although Mill visualized a society that protects and supports individual happiness while Nietzsche is only suspicious of society's conventions for the individual.
Rousseau: Man is born as a noble savage, morally perfect when leaving the hand of God, and socialization spoils him, and education removes social corruption - taught to think rather than to follow conventions. Opposite of Hobbes, who says man is appetites and aversions in state of nature and only learns morals contractually during socialization. For Locke, man is rational and adheres to golden rule in state of nature (for Hobbes, nature = war; for Locke, war is some disconnected thing that just happens). For Marx, man is social in the state of nature - born into a social unit. For Nieztsche (Judeo-Christian lies to that reversed classical (Greek/Roman ideals of excellence) and Freud (man is wolf and aggressive in state of nature, repression is necessary for society), alienation is a social phenomenon.
The Theses on Feuerbach, published by Karl Marx in 1845 and described here by Professor Szelenyi, incisively describes my mindset as an activist in college. Marx's theory of self-estrangement (the illusion of freedom) or alienation in modern conditions speaks to me. The notion of unifying subject (my self) and object (my sensuous life - my world; my physical life - my do) fits MGTOW. MGTOW is about overcoming alienation. Does that make me a Marxist? I can at least say I newly appreciate the pre-Communist Manifesto Marx, Marx 1.0. Marx 2.0 started with the Communist Manifesto published in 1848. It appears Marx took a leap of faith by assigning revolutionary universal class status to the proletariat in order to create a jumping off point for the practical application of universal emancipation, similar to Locke building his constitutional arguments on a leap of faith with his anti-Hobbesian state of nature.
As an activist, I understand what Marx was attempting with the Communist Manifesto. I identify with Marx 2.0 in his struggle to resolve the gulf between the abstract goal of solving alienation through universal emancipation, along with the realization this change must be made by practical social activity, and the practical application for revolution. Marx settled on subjectifying the objectified proletariat as his vehicle; I settled on civil-military reform in our society's cognitive centers (Ivy League universities).
Based on Szelenyi's lectures, I'm disappointed with Marx's reductionist conclusion in Marx 2.0.
Marx's point of departure to create his political vehicle for social change was Adam Smith's (and Richardo's - who's Ricardo?) economic typology. However, Adam Smith did not formulate his typology as a causal mechanism of human nature. Rather Smith's work organized his observations. Smith's mechanism of human nature was individual rational self-interest whose interactive sum amounted to the socially balanced 'invisible hand'. Smith wasn't an alienationist nor did he separate and reduce economic activity as Marx did. Marx's quest to formulate a unified alienation-based theory of historic social change reminds me of Taleb's thesis in Bed of Procrustes, warning against attempts to force truth, reality, nature, etc, to fit into over-simplified, artificial, rigidly sized models.
Marx was a good philosopher who articulated the activist ethos. He set a worthwhile and compelling end-state of solving the problem of Hegelian subject-object alienation in the modern industrial age. He was on solid footing when he claimed sensuous activity and experience were necessary to solve alienation and re-align subject and object. That the solution would require social activity was a good general theoretical point of departure. But he struggled after that point to make a particularized political case to connect his 'theory of the case' to his social evolutionary goal. He did well in applying the scientific method to make observations about historical materialism and capitalist exploitation (cv-s, or investment capital-variable capital-surplus value; CMC vs MCM, where C=commodity, M=money). But Marx failed to build a practical vehicle from his economic-based components to activate his original goal of solving alienation. In his attempt to induce a causal theory, he made the mistake of limiting his activist vehicle to class-based economic relations while de-valuing individual agency and other sensuous activity and experience, such as values-based culture (Weber), sex (Freud), and everything else (Nietzsche). Within economics, Marx also underestimated the social system of free men following rational self-interest to sell their labor in a co-dependent union-type relationship rather than a class struggle, because in order to sell their labor, they need capitalists to buy it. Where Smith described a market as the sum of individual interactions, like water finding its level, Marx formulated a rigidly linear social progression with the leap assumption that dominance by the most alienated class would mean solving alienation for everyone. Marx made the classic scientific research mistake of trying to force the data to conform to his hypothesis. His historical findings simply did not support his causal theory of social-economic evolution, the class competition of the Communist Manifesto or linear social evolution by modes of production. Yet he tried hard to force his theory.
Marx's half-truth merely accomplished laying the foundation for modern tribal zero-sum competitions where dogmatic activists of various stripes make totalitarian end-state claims on evolutionary peak social justice. Radical Islam is a Marxist revolutionary hybrid. They cite Marx as their authority yet don't fit and cannot fulfill the end-state vision of Marx's actual fundamentally flawed theory. Adam Smith's individualist utilitarian premises, based in Hobbesian insight into human nature and the basic equality of human beings, from which society arose fluidly and organically from the sum of individual experiences, ie, the invisible hand, is a better (though still incomplete) explanation for social evolution than Marx's rigidly linear, reductionist, economic class-based progression.
Szelenyi closed his 3rd Marx lecture by disagreeing with Marx by first pointing out that Marx got the worker vs capitalist struggle part wrong, which I agree with. However, I don't agree with Szelenyi's 2nd disagreement with Marx. He said Marx didn't anticipate white color workers in his cv-s formula for exploitation, where only blue collar physical labor was quantifiable. He used academia as an example of unquantifiable in the exploitation formula. But I believe white collar or mental-dominant labor can be quantified, too. The correct categorization shouldn't be physical vs mental labor but rather skilled vs unskilled labor. Academia and credentialing enters into the c (capital) and v (variable wages), just in a different way than 19th century factory workers. Modern white collar workers can be exploited, too. Marx also tried to separate capitalist mode (alienating and exploitative) from the commodity mode (not alienating) and Szelenyi disagreed with Marx's notion that the middle class (artisans, self-employed, small business) would disappear, some into the capitalist beourgoise, the rest into the worker proletariat as the industrial age absorbed them. Szelenyi thinks the industrial age has peaked and the middle class has stabilized, but I don't think so. I think the working class is just redefined (white collar workers are also proletariat) and progressive advancement in human-replacing technology with increasing efficiency can still shrink the middle class, if not kill it altogether.
The next lecture begins by contrasting Nietzsche, Freud, and Weber's departure from Marx's narrow solution to alienation that was overly economic reductionist.
Marx and Freud have in common that they apply Hegel's critical theory to sensuousness and activity, beyond Hegel's radicalized introverted consciousness. But Marx reduces sensuousness to economic activity so that class-based economic relationships and modes of production, with property as an included element, is the only causal mechanism of historical change. Individual identity and culture are lesser included elements of class identity. For Marx, the dominant ideas and values of society are determined by the dominant, self-serving economic class. That informs Marx's theory that making the most alienated class the dominant class, with reified consciousness, will fix all of society. The other alienationists disagreed with Marx's economic reductionism and looked for other influences and motivations for the individual experience. For Freud, the sensuousness that molds individual identity is sexual experience. Marx's basic unit of reified consciousness is class. For Nietzsche and Freud, the basic unit of reified consciousness is the individual.
Alienationists Nietzsche and Freud are Hobbesian in their belief that the individual interest conflicts with the social interest and the trade-off is a rational choice. They seek to solve alienation through rational self-interest rather than a class struggle. For Nietzsche, the mode is the power of society, including class, dominating the individual so that the individual internalizes society's rules as his subjugation. Freud's theory is that man is a wolf in the state of nature; he essentially restates Hobbes's theory of state nature of unlimited appetites and aversions that preceded the transition from man's state of nature to rationally cooperative society via social contract. For Freud, man extends power over the world, which includes other men, to form society. Repression of the individual, while alienating, is necessary for cooperative growth as a society, with all the benefits that come with it. According to Freud, repression of sexual impulses leads to sublimination of the energies, and those energies drive the progressive milestones of human civilization. Freud, like Marx, notes the economic theory that capitalism and modernity alienate individuals but also have created a great deal of social progress and technological innovation. Where Freud wants to balance the individual and society, Nietzsche focuses exclusively on the alienating costs to the individual and sets aside the social benefits to the individual from a repressive society.
Modernity as society against man (the alienationists). Or is society the organic outgrowth of men organizing together (the contractarians) where individuals interact and progress with society as setting and infrastructure, rather than conflicting forces.
Nietzsche is the MGTOW red pill philosopher. Applies Marx's theories of solving alienation, except not on social activity, but to individual development instead, ie, self-fulfillment of the individual, reified consciousness (own mind made real to rule own life and not ruled by external world), which is obstructed by the modern external world. He opposes the workshop of ideals - the Matrix - that binds us with 'pretty lies' and the blue pill. He applies critical theory to morals, instead of assuming universal or divine premises like pre-critical philosophers. Good/bad is turned into good/evil, which is a social construct for self benefit. Marx assumes a set of conditions, with morals as a lesser included element, for subject (self) and object (world), then focuses on the force field of interaction between the two. Nietzsche applies critical theory to the self and drills down and unpacks the individual's morals and beliefs. Nietzsche is introspective and introverted where Marxist is activist. Nietzsche seeks to ascend by freeing oneself from the shackles of imposed values, especially values that elevate the lesser/weaker/sinner as good while imposing ressentiment-based abasing sacrifice upon the better/stronger. One should free oneself from self-restricting morality, find the Truth, and rise and conquer one's own world with the light of that Truth. Adopt the Greek/Roman classical ideal of excellence rather than the Judeo-Christian ideal of abnegation and humility. In Freudian terms, fight off the rules of the outside world that have formed the controlling ego, and reconnect with the repressed id, and free and grow from the id. Let the blonde beast bird of pray loose.
Nietzsche is thrilling stuff. Be careful, though. Nietzsche excites the individual like Marx excites the activist, and the temptation is to belligerently and defiantly fight the enslaving chains of everyone else's conventions as a matter of principle. That is an impractical and risky proposition when I am weak and disenfranchised. I am not a god. I have weaknesses and flaws. I am needy and dependent, not independent of the social contract. Society is functional and based on need, it's not merely a bully seeking to dominate me, though that may be the practical effect. The best equipped people to pursue Nietzschean ideal are sociopaths who have extraordinary abilities. I don't believe I'm sociopathic. The better compromise point with Nietzsche is vomiting up the blue pill, so removing my internal subjugation, and then studying the world critically. Know what I want. Be aware and self-aware, respect and understand the power that the world has over me and what I need from the world, know the risks, and then interact with the world awake as a self-interested rational free agent.
Szelenyi nutshells Marx, Nietzsche, and Freud here while introducing Weber.
For Marx's typology of society, economic conditions drive history. For Nietzsche and Weber, the struggle for power and domination drives history. The nature of power and how power is constructed and how power is sublimated into domination (Freudian) is how societies operate. Nietzsche focused on the Judeo-Christians (meek shall inherit the earth) replacing the classical Greco-Romans (striving to the ideal), while Weber focused on the types of domination and authority to explain history, as opposed to Marx's types of economy.
Weber is known for his precise categorization of types of social actions (instrumentally rational, value rational, affectual orientation, traditional orientation), his definitions of rationality (substitute unthinking with deliberate adaptation, ie, consciousness), power (probablity to act despite resistance), domination (probability a command will be obeyed), and legitimacy (the voluntary association of leader and the led), and types of domination/authority (legal-rational authority uses instrumental rationality, traditional authority uses traditional orientation, charismatic authority uses affectual orientation and value rational). Eg, legal-rational authority or rule by bureaucratic law rather than personality is the hallmark of a liberal system. Weber's notion of legitimacy is interesting in that he connects it not with popular choice by mechanical election but rather a self-interested obedience or voluntary compliance to the system, which is based on a myth of the dominant's superiority (much like Nietzsche's concept of internalized submission).
Weber adds an interesting dimension to Marx's praxis base of activism. Marx has solid footing until he jumps off from sensuous social activity to his economic reductionism and 1-dimensional theory of change where ideas don't matter, only one's economic status is determinative. On one hand, Marx motivates activism by visualizing a controllable circumstance. On the other hand, what if your ideals don't match the materialist (economic) reality? That incongruence has discouraged me, that ideals seem powerless in the face of economic interests. Weber disagrees with Marx. For Weber, culture and values matter, too. He visualizes change as an "elective affinity" or a combining of the right ideal structure and material structure, like X and Y chromosomes combining, ie, modern capitalism was born from Calvinism combining with economic changes, while capitalism didn't take root in 12th century China despite the right material conditions because Confucianism and Taoism didn't provide the correct ideal basis like Calvinism did. So, changing the world requires the correct mix of ideas (culture) and material conditions (economy), rather than Marx's one-way causal relationship. That means as an idealist, I can still tell myself that my favored side of the equation is a necessary component to prepare to seize a material opportunity, ie, when the economic conditions are right for the ideas to make change. I partially induced the Weberian notion of elective affinity in my military and socialism post. I observed as a soldier that socialism can work in the military because the military has both the material conditions and culture that allow it. Translated to the individual level of change, Weber's position reminds that Nietzsche expresses the correct principle of internal change while Marx and Freud focus on specific aspects (economy, sex), but the individual change must work within the framework of real-world conditions. But one can learn to master and manipulate conditions, not just cargo-cult them.
Hobbes lecture (first of the contractarians, man's nature is appetites and aversions, but man is driver): "Well, he had a close association with a person whom you may have heard of, Francis Bacon. And who was Francis Bacon, and what is his influence? Francis Bacon was a philosopher who rejected the Aristotelian logic and system, which basically was a speculative system--started out from some major assumptions and through deductions developed his philosophical system. As I said, occasionally I've taught this course by starting with Francis Bacon because Bacon, in some ways, is the Founding Father of modern sciences. Because he said every scientific investigation should start with induction, from sensual observation, and what you cannot observe, you should not assume it does exist. Right? Therefore he advocated a methodology which was exactly the opposite of the Aristotelian methodology, which was deductive. He advocated induction. ... He went to Paris, and he began to investigate natural sciences, Galileo and Descartes, in particular. Descartes was a great deal of importance for Hobbes. From Galileo he learned an alternative to Bacon's inductive method. Galileo offered a methodology that, by and large, social scientists today who believe in normal social science subscribe to. Namely that was the methodology, what Galileo called the resolutive-compositive method. It basically meant that you start with deduction. Right? You have some initial hypotheses. Then you move to observation, sensual observation, and from the sensual observation you make inductions. And you make that and you test your hypotheses. That's how it we would say it today. And this is what Bacon learned from Galileo and adapted his methodology. Now this is René Descartes, one of the greatest philosophers of his times and of all times. Descartes ascribed to something what I call dualism. Right? Dualism really meant that he separated the soul and body from each other, and Hobbes rejected this idea of dualism because he suggested that--in fact, they were engaged in a big debate on optics, what we do see. And he, Hobbes, was advocating that there must be a real object whose movement we see, what we actually can see. So he rejected the dualism. ... And, in fact, Hobbes translated, I also mentioned, Thucydides, basically because Thucydides expressed some skepticism about the democracy in Athens. And he was greatly skeptical about democracy and believed the need for a strong central authority. ... The idea is that we are driven by appetite, by desires. We will talk in this course later on about Sigmund Freud who was talking about drives. Right? There are drives which makes us move. These are what Hobbes called appetite, a few centuries before Sigmund Freud. But then he said we also have aversions, we have fears. There are things what we want, but we have fears that we won't be able to achieve what we want, and therefore we have to somehow negotiate out between our desires, appetites, and our fears or aversions. And what comes out is voluntary action. We have a choice. We have to measure up what the price of our action will be, and then we decide whether it is worth to pay this price or it is not worth to pay this price. ... And then the second point is we will seek power. The essence of human nature is that we are striving for power. Again an issue, a very good issue to discuss at the discussion section. Again, I think half of the class will probably agree with Hobbes, that people are actually trying to dominate others. ... It just describes what I have said, that we all have appetites, we have desires, we have needs. And in order to satisfy our needs, it always has costs, and therefore we have to figure out whether it's worth the cost for us to satisfy that need. Right? And therefore we have a certain degree of freedom. We can't do whatever we want to do, because we may not have the resources to afford it. Or we want to have many things, and then we will have to prioritize what we want to have more and spend more on it. As you can hear, Hobbes is very close to what later on becomes the utilitarians. Right? Very close to what Adam Smith will argue in his economic theory, or what John Stuart Mills will represent in his utilitarianism. Or, for that sake, what most economists today believe, who call themselves neoclassical economists, or who identify themselves as "rat" choice, or rational choice; economists or political scientists or sociologists, for that sake; there are some sociologists who also subscribe to rational choice. ... Well about power. The power is unending. Right? He said there is a general inclination for us to seek power, our influence on other people. And he said there is nothing evil about it. It is necessary because if we want to survive we will have to try to exercise influence on others. We have to seek power as such. ... He is one of the very first philosophers who claims that we are all born equal. ... Namely, he said what comes from this equality is this unending fight; that because we desire the same thing-- and he operates with the scarcity assumption, that what is desirable is actually scarce--that we'll fight each other. ... Well there are really two basic laws of nature. One law of nature is that you are forbidden what is harmful to you. Right? You have to pursue self-interest. Here again you see the rational choice theory speaking. Right? People are self-interested, and this is the law of nature that we should be self-interested. Right? We have to do everything in order to preserve our life. But there is a second law of nature, he argues, and this requires that we--what you would not do--yeah, not to do others what you would not want them to do to you. ... Well in the state of nature if there are no restraints, there is no civilization."
Locke lecture: "So we are all born free and equal. ... Men are all made by God, the omnipotent, right? And we are his property; a kind of theological argument. And we are not--have not been created for the pleasures of one another. So there should not be any man who is a superior, by principle. Because we are free, right? ... And in the state of nature, he said, we were all governed by reason. And that actually sort of--because we are all reasonable, we are born reasonable; we are born to be able to be rational. Right? And we should be able to understand that we are not supposed to harm each other.
... Hobbes said that we are actually learning morality out by interacting with others who are desiring the same stuff what we do. We are learning it from struggle, right? It does not assume that this comes out of our rationality, that we are reasonable and by nature good. He does assume that we are reasonable. ... So there is a scarcity assumption in Hobbes, and there is an abundance hypothesis in Locke, and you have to make up your mind who is appealing to you more. Do you think that the scarcity assumption is a better one, or the abundance argument is an empirically more appealing one?"
Montesquieu lecture: "But he said, but there is also a general spirit, a spirit which is above the individuals. And this is a very French theme, right? You cannot explain it from the individual; there is some general idea. Durkheim will call it collective conscience; Rousseau will call it the general will. Right? The very French idea that there is some consciousness above the individual consciousnesses--this has formulated so powerfully the first time by Montesquieu. And he actually said as civilization is progressing, the influence of the natural conditions declines, and the importance of general spirits increases. Or to put it with Durkheim, the collective conscience becomes more and more important. ... Okay, as I said, he's a methodological collectivist. Right? And I just explained this to you a little, right? A methodological individualist who begins--in order to develop a conception of society, you have to start with the individual; the only reality, what you can observe in individual action and individual consciousness. Everything else, what you suggest, is speculative. Right? This is British individualism and empiricism. Right? The French emphasizes there are stuff, like law. This is why the legal system, the law, is so important for Montesquieu. That's why the major book is called The Spirit of Law because the law is not simply a sum total of individual consciousness. It stands over us, and we get into a society and the law, the legal system already does exist."
Rousseau lecture: "Then in 1755, he writes a very interesting book--if you have spare time, read it--Discourse on the Origins of Inequality--Again, a very provocative book. In some ways there is some sort of Hobbesian idea behind that. He said, well it starts with love, but if you are really in love, well you tend to be jealous. Right? If you are deeply in love, passionately in love, then you don't like that the person who is the object of your love may have a love in somebody else; then you are jealous. And the idea is--this is the origins of inequality; we are jealous, right? There is one precious good--to put it with Hobbes--we all desire, and if somebody else desires it as well, and has a shot at it, to get it, then we become jealous, right? We want to grab it, we want to monopolize it. So this is a source of inequality, right? ... Now Rousseau, as we will see, adds a new, interesting element. He said, well, it's not quite the individuals, and he introduces the notion of general will. There is a general will which is well above the individuals--extremely important idea, has a degree of insights and realism. It's also a very dangerous idea. Totalitarian regimes very often advocate it. General will that you--and I will quote Jean Jacques for you when he said, "the individuals will have to be forced to be free"; that follows from the idea of general will. Well he's a complex thinker-- liberal on one hand, a contractarian on the other hand, and paves the road to totalitarianism."
Rousseau lecture 2: "All right, so nature good, society corrupts. Well people in nature are good; society corrupts. Well this is the opposite argument to Hobbes. Or, in fact, Durkheim's idea that you need more control over society is also opposed to Rousseau's fundamental idea. And he said, well a child does not know vice and doesn't know error. It is introduced to the child by society. And then he gives--though he was not much of a believer--he gives a bit of theological argument: "Everything is good as it leaves the hands of the author of things [God] and everything degenerates in the hands of man." "Man turns everything upside down. He wants nothing as nature made it." We are being told to get rid of our natural instincts. And this is again lovely, right? "Man must be trained like a school horse." So it's lovely. ... The task of education, not training, is not to tell you what the truth is. The task of education is to help your brain operate sufficiently to tell what is an error and to figure out when you are making an error. That's why there is no easy solutions. There is no right answer to the question. There are competing answers to every important question. And the task of education is to consider the pros and cons, to consider what speaks for and against the evidence, and then to make a judgment what is the proposition you will accept to try to eliminate error. That's what education is all about. ... Now this is turning savages into social beings, moving from amour de soi to amour propre. The love of oneself, amour de soi, is always good. There is nothing wrong about it--what Adam Smith will call self-interest. Well the child is born with amour de soi. Takes the toy away, "It's mine." Right? The other child will say, "No, this is mine." Right? This is amour de soi. I want it. Right? Amour de soi, as we will know from Freud. I want the breast of my mother. I want to monopolize it; this is mine. Right? That's amour de soi. Well but on the other hand we have to extend our relationships; we have to interact with other people. And amour propre will be when we realize there is another people who are also led by amour de soi, and we figure out the way how to live with them, by interacting with them. ... And there are--the first maxim is, "It is not the human heart to put ourselves in the place of people who are happier than we, but only of those who are more pitiable." So it is actually our weakness what makes us social, not our strengths. "It is our common miseries which turns our hearts to humanity."
Adam Smith lecture (various invisible hands, self-interest, rational markets, but also need for sympathy): "This is the central question: Where does our conception of good and evil come from? But Adam Smith already here asked this question, and he said, well "what's the solution?" That inside you there is an inner person. You are two people. You act, and there is somebody inside you who is watching you, and that inside you will tell you, "You did something wrong; that was not the right thing to do." ... Then he says--this is something which is kind of inspired by Hobbes--we are led by passion. But now he is not emphasizing fear. He said, "also by sympathy." ... We try to please people. We want to impress people. We want to have a reputation; we want to have a good reputation. We want to act honorably. So we are seeking sympathy. We have a sympathy--we have an understanding of other people's human conditions--but we are also expecting others to understand us and value us. ... Because indeed, if self-interest implies that I also want others to respect and evaluate [correction: value] me, the self-interest also implies that I want to do good to others. This is in your self-interest, that you can say at the end of the day, "I am a good person." Then, in fact, pursuing these self-interests may not be all that different from the common good because it is inside you.... And the arguments are if you are interacting with each other, do not expect benevolence. It is appealing to the self-interest of the person for whom I expect something, and not is benevolence. Well he said well we address ourselves not to the humanity of the people, not to their self-love, but we want people to take advantage of this. ... "Individuals are the better judge of their own interests than anybody else.""
Mill lecture (re Bentham, utilitarian): He said, "Well we are created to seek pleasure and to avoid pain, and therefore if we can minimize the pain and maximize the pleasure, that's when we achieve the greatest happiness." That's what will be called utility. Right? So action is right if it is leading to happiness. Right? We all want to be happy. Okay, well and this can be actually quantified. The action is right, morally right, if the sum of pleasures minus the sum of pains, multiplied by the number of persons affected by action is positive. Right? Sounds reasonable, right? If more people are happy in society than unhappy, then the society does as well as it can. Right? That's really the argument. ... So, he said, "The two big masters are pain and pleasure"; somewhat a kind of similar argument to Hobbes. And he said, "An action may be said to be conformable with the principle of utility when the tendency is to augment happiness, and that is greater than to diminish it." And what is utility? "Utility is that principle which approves or disapproves a reaction to augment or diminish the happiness of the party whose interest is in question.""
Mill lecture (higher levels of happiness which are individuated, legality not the same as justice, justice is higher, therefore personal liberty should not be infringed for expediency): "he also becomes very sort of unhappy with the expediency emphasis on utilitarianism--instrumentalism, the coldness of the argument. ... So he says, well there is higher happiness. Right? There is a lower level of happiness and there is a higher level of happiness. To have a good steak, well it is pleasurable. But to listen to the Ninth Symphony of Beethoven, it's greater happiness. Right? It's a higher level of happiness when you hear the concluding chorale of the Ninth Symphony. You are through the roof of pleasure; you have a higher level of happiness than eating a nice rare steak. Right? That's a higher level of happiness. ... --"Individual liberty is the ultimate value, and expediency"--and you know what he means by expediency, that you get there by using the least means and you maximize the return--"expediency cannot justify intervention against individual liberty." ... The main themes in the work Utilitarianism is the concept of higher happiness; human beings have faculties for more elevated appetites than animals have. Then he talks about justice and legality. It's a very complex issue, but where he thinks that the law is a more restrictive notion than justice, and he stands for the idea of justice, and shows some contradiction between law and justice as such. And then he talks about justice and expediency--why justice cannot be simply explained by expediency. ... And I hope it got you up in speed--utilitarianism and John Stuart Mill, and Adam Smith, and you see how actually John Stuart Mill and utilitarianism radicalizes one stream of thought which is in Adam Smith, but Adam Smith is not quite ready to go as far as Bentham went, and even not as far as John Stuart Mill went."
Mill lecture 2: "These are the main themes of his book on utilitarianism, the way how he departs from Bentham--a very important change that he's beginning to emphasize there are higher happinesses we can seek. It is not simply quantity but quality of happiness is what we seek. A very important contribution, I think, and this is an idea which is only touched upon by Adam Smith but really not properly developed, and certainly completely missing in Bentham. It is really Mill's contribution which is very important for contemporary economic theory, neoclassical economics. They call this preferences, that we have preferences, and therefore individuals will attach different values to different utilities. And this really comes from the work of John Stuart Mill, when he makes this distinction between legality and justice, and what is legal is not necessarily just, and what is just is necessarily approved by laws. And then justice and expediency: what is expedient is not necessarily just, and well just may have its cost and may not be the fastest way to get there. Right? ... And therefore, he emphasizes there is a qualitative difference between human and simply animal appetites. So therefore you simply cannot do what Bentham did, simply add up appetites and to say if more appetites are satisfied, better off the society is. The chief good, so he argues, is virtue. Be virtuous and then you will feel good; you will be happier if you are virtuous, as such. ... "It is unjust to deprive anyone of his personal liberty and property." ... Well while Bentham only emphasized that we are seeking pleasure, Mill emphasized self-development. He said we have to--in our lifetime, we have to develop our capacities. Right? And what follows from this, individualism and liberty; these are the major values, rather than just satisfying our needs. ... This follows very logically from his argument of these higher happinesses, preferences, arrived at by individual judgments--not superimposed by government but individuals decide what is the higher value they attach to a utility. And therefore it can be minorities which do have different preferences, and we have to respect those preferences. That's very crucially important ideas. ... And individual liberty should always take precedence over short-term utilitarian consideration. Right? The main value is that individually that--believe me, this is not a contradiction, it follows very logically from the idea of preferences and from the idea that there are qualitative differences between utilities, and you are the only one who can decide what is worse for you. Nobody else can make a decision, a judgment for you. This is consistent with Adam Smith, by the way. ... And he said this is absolutely necessary to have total freedom of speech because an opinion, which suppressed right, then we lose the opportunity to exchange truths for error. ... government cannot limit individual liberties, only if that causes injury. ... And well interference. The only justification is self-protection. Right? This is very much in line of Hobbes' argument."
Nietzsche lecture: "the big project in Nietzsche is to offer a critical scrutiny of human mind, but not to have any critical vantage point. Right? To criticize the very principles of good society and good, to critical scrutiny. Where does it come from when we have the conception of good and good society? That is his project. ... he was a great admirer of the Greek civilization. And here he--his idea is that the whole human history is driven by the struggle between a Dionysian and Apollonian principle. Dionysian means--right?--your sentiments, right? You act out of your instincts. And Apollonian means the reason, as such. And the book contrasts Enlightenment. Enlightenment is reason. It's a victory of Apollonian principle over the Dionysian principle. And he kind of rejected--this is also why he's also kind of post-Modern, right?--he rejects Enlightenment and Enlightenment excessive rationalism. ... Well Nietzsche has a philosophy called Notion of the Übermensch. The Übermensch is the person who achieves self-mastery, who--basically the alienated person--right?--who is in control of his own life--right?--and can express himself authentically, without oppressive civilization. Right? That's the Übermensch. ... In a way this is a Buddha. It is an idea of a Buddha, but not a passive Buddha. He disliked Buddhism as much as he disliked the Judeo-Christian tradition. The problem with Buddhism was that it is too passive. He wanted to have an active Buddhism. Right? Somebody who becomes a master of its life, through action, acting out his feelings and his even sensual essence in life. And therefore he can overcome what he calls "the eternal return." Right? He can overcome the iron law of these--you know, this is again comes from almost Marx. Right? Reified consciousness. The reified word can be broken. There are no rules. Right? You can realize yourself in the world, and you are not ruled by the external world. ... But I hope you get sort of the bottom line. Right? The bottom line is have a radical critical theory, which does not need ultimate value to be critical of false ideas and lies. Get truth; and the ideal is the person who can fulfill itself in the world, and conquer the world as such."
Marx lectures, comparisons to Smith: "So the first point is there is in--you know, we are talking about commodity producing commercial societies, to put it with Adam Smith. ... We treat each other as an instrument to reach an end. Right? We call the others only when we need that person for something. Right? We act out of simply self-interest in interacting with the others. We lack compassion. Right? We lack love. Right? We lack sympathy. Right? You know, he probably did not read his Adam Smith carefully enough. Right? He has not been reading much Smith until '44. This is where he's beginning to read Smith very carefully, around this time, in '44. Anyway, you see the point what he is making. And I think what Marx describes in alienation, particularly alienation from fellow human beings, is something what probably some people in this room can respond to, and to say, "Well yes, I did experience that. I have been treated as an object. When I go to the admission office, occasionally an administrator treats me like a piece of paper. ... And then we get, starting with the second Marx, the first step towards the second Marx is the "Theses on Feuerbach," what I want to talk about today. And I'll try to economize with my time, right? Right? I have to learn from Adam Smith--right?--to be more utilitarian and to make sure that means and ends do match with each other. Okay, let's come back to Hegel and Hegel's theory of alienation. ... He now enters the road of radicalization, moves away from Hegel, and tries to carve out his own intellectual and political project. And he writes the paper "On the Jewish Question" in which he says, "Well Hegel is right. We need something universal. We should not allow society just to be the struggle of particularistic interests." Right? This is in a way against Adam Smith's utilitarianism. It's not enough that individuals fight each others' interests out, and that will end up to a universal good. We need some universal good to be achieved, and it will not simply achieved by particularistic interests followed. That is Marx's point. But then he writes an introduction to the Critique-- Contributions to the Critique of Hegel's Philosophy of Right. And in this introduction he said, "Well, we need something; universal emancipation. But who will bring universal emancipation to humankind?" Right? He's looking for an agent who can carry this out. And in the introduction, he said, "This will be the proletariat." Well you may say now he's entering the wrong road--right?--and he's entering a very--he's basically painting himself in the corner, where he will be for the rest of his life, trying to show that indeed the proletariat will emancipate us all, and will create a good society as such. ... But many thinks that Jürgen Habermas was the greatest philosopher of the twentieth century. He said, "Well yes, Marx in "The Theses on Feuerbach" is right" at one point. I mean, Habermas had his 'culture' turn, moved away from materialism. But in most of his life he said, "I am a materialist because I also believe that the ultimate reality has to come through sensuous experiences, through the senses." Right? But he said, "Marx later on, the mature Marx became reductionist, because the sensuous activity he identified with the economy, with production, with economic activities." And he said, "In "The Theses on Feuerbach" he got it right. All sensuous activity are material." "So therefore," he says, "let's not simply limit our analysis to production, but let's look at human interaction." When we interact with each other, this is also a sensuous activity. Right? So he creates peace between Sigmund Freud and Karl Marx. Many people try to do that. Right? That this is not an opposition, that it is either production or your sexual drives. You know, your sexual drives--your sexual interaction with others--is very much sensuous. Right? It's actually more sensuous than doing a job--right?-- than, you know, being in McDonald's and serving hamburgers. That's sensuous activity. But all right, you know, sexual interaction is very much sensuous. That's Habermas's point. And Marx, in "The Theses on Feuerbach", opens this possibility up. It's a very open argument. Okay? This is actually one of the reasons why he does not publish it. It's too vague. He wanted to be more precise, and then he wanted to go--he was reading Adam Smith and Ricardo, and spent all of his time in the British Library reading these economists, and he wanted to bring it back down to earth, to the economy and economic interest. ... Okay, what are the major themes in The German Ideology? First, he offers a materialist view of history. Then he offers a theory of modes of production. Then he's beginning to develop forces of production and initially division of labor; and this is a problem. This is very much Adam Smith. He's still very strongly under Adam Smith and understands the evolution of society as the evolution of division of labor. And then he describes-- tries to describe the forces of production and division of labor--modes of production and describes a subsection and modes of production and give a very about human history. And then he develops what I would call--he's the first who creates a sociology of knowledge--how to study sociologically, socially how you can understand conscience, human consciousness. ... Well he said, "Well, we can distinguish therefore differences between nature, how the productive forces"--he means by technology--"is developing and how"--he uses initially the term the inter--"the intercourse, internal intercourse is changing." And by this he refers to division of labor. A very Smithsian idea, Adam Smith's idea. Right? That history evolves a greater division of labor--we will see in Emile Durkheim also this central idea--you can see the evolution of society by increasing division of labor. ... There is actually not a single theorist I can recall who, like Karl Marx, not only has a very specific set of ideas in what stages human evolution, from the very elementary societies to the most complex one evolved. There are many who offer typologies like this. We have seen in Montesquieu, we have seen in Adam Smith; there were many who did that. But what is unique about Marx, that he has a genuine theory of history. He has a very powerful argument what is the exact causal mechanism which leads the transition from one form of society to another one; what drives historical evolution. Marx is genuinely the Darwin of social scientists, in this respect. What Darwin could do with The Evolution of Species, Marx was capable to do in the theory of history. It's a genuine theory. Right? A theory, when you have an idea what are really the causal mechanisms, what links cause to an effect. And Marx has such a theory. ... Well there are some very important key differences, as we proceed from The German Ideology to the Grundrisse. Well in The German Ideology there's one important difference. History is driven by increasing division of labor. And I pointed to this in the earlier lecture. Here he draws directly on Adam Smith. He basically takes it over from Adam Smith. That's what Adam Smith did. In the Grundrisse, on the other hand, he sees a movement, a gradual movement over history, towards private ownership; that's what drives the story. "A gradual separation of the laboring subject and the objective conditions of the worker." That's how he describes now human history. And doing so--separation of laboring subject and the objective conditions of labor--enables him in the Grundrisse to bring back the notion of alienation. He already seemed to have forgotten and put it on the shelf. Then he will forget it again. But for this piece of work, the idea of alienation re-interpreted as the making of private ownership and the separation of worker and the objective conditions of work is very crucial, very important. ... As I said, in the initial formulation, he really thinks this is the division of labor, rather than property relationships. And I think we have seen it, he will--this comes straight out of Adam Smith, what you have read. Right? The relations of different nations among themselves depends to which each has developed these productive forces, the division of labor and its internal intercourse. So that's exactly--right?--what Adam Smith said. Hunting/gathering societies, grazing societies, agricultural societies, commercial societies, they all correspond to different levels of division of labor. And that's what Marx initially tries to do in The German Ideology. And he deals with the question of the property relations, but he said, "Look, property relations also change, but these changing property relations are simply the outcomes of the increased division of labor." So it's basically determined by the division of labor. "If I understand the level of division of labor, I will understand property relationships as well." That sounds actually quite reasonable. And these sections of The German Ideology, by the way, were rediscovered by Marxists in the 1950s, especially Marxists who were living in the Soviet Empire. ... He turns into a historical materialist in The German Ideology, but does not quite get it yet. Right? Too much under the influence of Adam Smith. The division of labor is still important and private property does not get the centrality of the analysis, what it's supposed to have for the theory. Then you read the Grundrisse, in which he kind of--now private property is in the central place, but he tries to bring back the idea of alienation. And he also considers that in The German Ideology he became too deterministic; history is more open than he may have believed. And then finally he finishes the book--at least the first volume of the book he always wanted to write--Das Kapital. ... So let's move to the question of theory of exploitation. And I will have to start this with the labor theory of value, and to go back to Adam Smith and to see how Marx is proceeding. Then I want to make a step further, Marx's distinction between commodity production and the capitalist mode of production. This is again taking his point of departure as Adam Smith's, Adam Smith's idea of commercial society. And what Marx does, well there are different types of commercial societies. One he calls the petty commodity production, and the other one capitalist mode of production. As we all know, he never used the term capitalism. He comes the closest to this concept by using the term capitalist mode of production. Neither Smith nor Marx had the concept of capitalism, as such. Then in order to understand what is unique about the capitalist mode of production, we have to understand Marx's theory of labor power as a commodity. ... And now the labor theory of value. The point of departure is John Locke and Adam Smith. Right? As you recall, already John Locke suggested that all value is created by labor; or, I mean, he's a little more cautious, at least 90% of all value is created by labor. ... And, as you recall, Adam Smith claims at one point, "All value is created by labor." Well but of course Adam Smith, when he comes to explaining the distribution of wealth, takes a step back from this proposition. And we discussed that when we discussed Adam Smith. Let me just remind you what the step backward. Right? The tension--right?--in Adam Smith was that on one hand he claims all value is created by labor, and then when it comes to the question but how is wealth or income distributed. He said, "Well it ought to be distributed between the three factors of production--right?--labor, capital and land; wages, profit and rent. And they have to be equally distributed in a just way, between these three factors of production." Right? And I think you remember we clarified that this is not a contradiction in Adam Smith. Somehow when he's claiming that all value is created by labor, he almost has a theory of human nature. Right? That in the state of nature, when there is no private property of land, and there is no accumulation of capital, then all value is created by labor. But this is just in this imagined--right?--natural conditions of existence. In all complex societies private ownership exists and private--and capital is being accumulated. And then, you know, in order to get production going, the capitalist has to rent--give capital, advance capital, to the worker. Without the advancement of capital, the laborer would not work. And therefore the owner of capital has due claim for part of the value which is created in the process of production. Because it took risks--right?--by offering its capital, and it had to supervise the labor process, and wants to have compensated for its risk taking and its supervision. And you could not operate without land, without a site. All activities need a site, and if somebody owns that site, they'll have to be compensated that you are on the site; and that is rent. Well this is a little more problematic in Adam Smith. You know, for capital he makes a pretty strong case, you know, why it is fair for the capitalist to collect profit. For the owner of the land, he--they are collecting rent. That's a little more problematic, whether rent is also something, a just income. And we all have a little unease--right?--when we are talking about rent, or when we are talking about, for instance, rent-seeking behavior. Right? That sounds a bad behavior, if somebody's seeking rent. Right? The reason is simple; because we associate in our mind rent-seeking behavior with monopoly. Right? Rent-seeking behavior comes from monopolistic ownership, and we don't particularly like monopolies. Right? We want competition, free competition--right? Free markets, and not monopolies. Right? Monopoly's a bad word. Anyway, this is a little of a problem. But nevertheless I think his fundamental point, in Adam Smith, that there is some fair distribution of income between the three factors of production, because they are all necessary for the production for the production process. ... Okay, then let's move further and let's try to figure out how--what Marx does to Adam Smith, and how he radicalizes Adam Smith. Marx does not want to go the Adam Smithsian way, to say there is a fair distribution of wealth between the three factors of production. ... And here there is an agreement--right?--with Adam Smith. Right? You have--right?--factors of production. But Marx wants to be consistent--consistent in saying that all value is being created by labor. ... So Marx starts to shy away from the idea that there is a kind of fair distribution between capital, land and labor. He said, "No, I mean, all value is being created by labor." So this is his kind of reconstruction of the labor theory of value, and leads us into the idea of exploitation. ... Okay, let's move a little further and makes--and let's have this important contribution what Marx makes between petty commodity production and capitalist mode of production, right? It's trying to sort of break up Adam Smith's idea of commercial society or market economy or capitalism. Marx seemed to have a more complex notion. Well he said this is petty commodity production, and he again offers us a little equation here. He said petty commodity production begins with a commodity, and then you go to the marketplace, sell this commodity for money, in order to purchase a commodity. This itself is commercial society. This is commodity production. But it is not capitalism. Right? ... Now but then he said well capitalism is a different ballgame. We are talking about a capitalist economy when the cycle starts with money. ... "Well, we have an economic system in which we have--right?--people who accumulated capital, and they are entering the marketplace. And what do they do? They produce commodities. And why do they do so? Because they want to have more money; that's it."
Nietzsche lecture - intro: "I think it's also very easy to see the point of departure from Marx--some continuity, but the basic point of department from Marx in the work of Nietzsche, Freud, and Weber. If I can put it very simply, the major departure is that they all depart from Marx's economic reductionism--right?--the emphasis on economic interest, which is actually not only Marx. Right? It was common in Adam Smith, and Marx as well. They depart from this and they emphasize that the problem in modernity is not so much in the economic system; it is much more in terms of power and consciousness. The problem of modernity is repression, in one way or another. The problem of modern life is that we internalize the reasons for our own subjugation, as such, and somehow we have to figure out how to liberate ourselves from this internalized subjugation. Why do we obey orders? Why do we actually accept that we are subjugated? This is the central question, I think, Nietzsche, Freud, and Weber are posing. It's again a question which has not been really asked by the other theorists we discussed so far. They just had civil society as a point of reference for the good society. Now the problem for Nietzsche, Freud, and Weber is in us, internally--in us, how we solve the problem within ourselves. So this is a kind of introducing the three authors. In some ways one can say Nietzsche, Freud, and Weber not only foreshadows twentieth century social theory, but in some ways they are the first of post-modern theorists--right?--the theorists which are beginning to come to terms with the oppressive nature of modernity, and try to figure out how to transcend that."
Weber lecture (summary of Marx, Freud, Nietzsche, Weber): "But there are fundamental differences between the four authors. And in some ways there is a similarity between Marx and Freud. Marx and Freud all take their point of departure in their project to be critical of consciousness for sensuous human experience. Right? Material reality. In one way or another they are both materialists. Right? Of course, for Marx it is reductionist, because this sensuous human experience is reduced to the economy. "You tell me what your position in the economic system are, then I understand what your economic interests are. You are behaving and you are thinking according to your economic interests, and then I will understand what is on your mind." Well, by the way, it's not all that different--right?--from Adam Smith and rationally acting individuals. Marx has some similarities. Only he offers it critically, while Adam Smith offered it affirmatively. But that is Marx's reductionism; that what is sensuous experience is reduced to the economy."
Eric
JS Mill is a reformed utilitarian who became a Moulin-Rouge bohemian upholding "freedom, beauty, truth, and love" (Moulin Rouge's bohemian motto).
The French enlightment and Rousseau's general will are beloved by Marxists and Communists everywhere. For Locke and the English enlightment, individuals are intrinsically equal, therefore, the social contract is between individual, or sum of individuals, and sovereign. For Rousseau, the social contract is between general will and sovereign because, whereas Locke believed individuals are equal, Rousseau believed individuals are intrinsically unequal. Individual inequality means that neither individual interests nor even a sum of individual interests can define the common interest. Since individuals are unequal yet the common interest equally applies to all, then the common interest, ie, the general will, must be of a separate character than individual interests. The general will is supreme and citizens are obligated to submit to the general will even where it conflicts with individual interests. Practically, he who defines and controls the general will has a free hand to take freedom, property, even life from any individual who is in conflict with the general will. Thus, while general will underpins selfless civic duty and the ties that bind a diverse national people, it also opens the door for tyranny. In America, we have been progressively departing from our English political heritage of individual rights and aligning with the Continental political tradition of the collective.
Mill's individual who can and should best determine his own happiness and utility stands in diametric opposition to Rousseau's general will and amour propre. Mill is Rousseau's denigrated bourgeoise. Mill and Nietzsche have a lot in common although Mill visualized a society that protects and supports individual happiness while Nietzsche is only suspicious of society's conventions for the individual.
Rousseau: Man is born as a noble savage, morally perfect when leaving the hand of God, and socialization spoils him, and education removes social corruption - taught to think rather than to follow conventions. Opposite of Hobbes, who says man is appetites and aversions in state of nature and only learns morals contractually during socialization. For Locke, man is rational and adheres to golden rule in state of nature (for Hobbes, nature = war; for Locke, war is some disconnected thing that just happens). For Marx, man is social in the state of nature - born into a social unit. For Nieztsche (Judeo-Christian lies to that reversed classical (Greek/Roman ideals of excellence) and Freud (man is wolf and aggressive in state of nature, repression is necessary for society), alienation is a social phenomenon.
The Theses on Feuerbach, published by Karl Marx in 1845 and described here by Professor Szelenyi, incisively describes my mindset as an activist in college. Marx's theory of self-estrangement (the illusion of freedom) or alienation in modern conditions speaks to me. The notion of unifying subject (my self) and object (my sensuous life - my world; my physical life - my do) fits MGTOW. MGTOW is about overcoming alienation. Does that make me a Marxist? I can at least say I newly appreciate the pre-Communist Manifesto Marx, Marx 1.0. Marx 2.0 started with the Communist Manifesto published in 1848. It appears Marx took a leap of faith by assigning revolutionary universal class status to the proletariat in order to create a jumping off point for the practical application of universal emancipation, similar to Locke building his constitutional arguments on a leap of faith with his anti-Hobbesian state of nature.
As an activist, I understand what Marx was attempting with the Communist Manifesto. I identify with Marx 2.0 in his struggle to resolve the gulf between the abstract goal of solving alienation through universal emancipation, along with the realization this change must be made by practical social activity, and the practical application for revolution. Marx settled on subjectifying the objectified proletariat as his vehicle; I settled on civil-military reform in our society's cognitive centers (Ivy League universities).
Based on Szelenyi's lectures, I'm disappointed with Marx's reductionist conclusion in Marx 2.0.
Marx's point of departure to create his political vehicle for social change was Adam Smith's (and Richardo's - who's Ricardo?) economic typology. However, Adam Smith did not formulate his typology as a causal mechanism of human nature. Rather Smith's work organized his observations. Smith's mechanism of human nature was individual rational self-interest whose interactive sum amounted to the socially balanced 'invisible hand'. Smith wasn't an alienationist nor did he separate and reduce economic activity as Marx did. Marx's quest to formulate a unified alienation-based theory of historic social change reminds me of Taleb's thesis in Bed of Procrustes, warning against attempts to force truth, reality, nature, etc, to fit into over-simplified, artificial, rigidly sized models.
Marx was a good philosopher who articulated the activist ethos. He set a worthwhile and compelling end-state of solving the problem of Hegelian subject-object alienation in the modern industrial age. He was on solid footing when he claimed sensuous activity and experience were necessary to solve alienation and re-align subject and object. That the solution would require social activity was a good general theoretical point of departure. But he struggled after that point to make a particularized political case to connect his 'theory of the case' to his social evolutionary goal. He did well in applying the scientific method to make observations about historical materialism and capitalist exploitation (cv-s, or investment capital-variable capital-surplus value; CMC vs MCM, where C=commodity, M=money). But Marx failed to build a practical vehicle from his economic-based components to activate his original goal of solving alienation. In his attempt to induce a causal theory, he made the mistake of limiting his activist vehicle to class-based economic relations while de-valuing individual agency and other sensuous activity and experience, such as values-based culture (Weber), sex (Freud), and everything else (Nietzsche). Within economics, Marx also underestimated the social system of free men following rational self-interest to sell their labor in a co-dependent union-type relationship rather than a class struggle, because in order to sell their labor, they need capitalists to buy it. Where Smith described a market as the sum of individual interactions, like water finding its level, Marx formulated a rigidly linear social progression with the leap assumption that dominance by the most alienated class would mean solving alienation for everyone. Marx made the classic scientific research mistake of trying to force the data to conform to his hypothesis. His historical findings simply did not support his causal theory of social-economic evolution, the class competition of the Communist Manifesto or linear social evolution by modes of production. Yet he tried hard to force his theory.
Marx's half-truth merely accomplished laying the foundation for modern tribal zero-sum competitions where dogmatic activists of various stripes make totalitarian end-state claims on evolutionary peak social justice. Radical Islam is a Marxist revolutionary hybrid. They cite Marx as their authority yet don't fit and cannot fulfill the end-state vision of Marx's actual fundamentally flawed theory. Adam Smith's individualist utilitarian premises, based in Hobbesian insight into human nature and the basic equality of human beings, from which society arose fluidly and organically from the sum of individual experiences, ie, the invisible hand, is a better (though still incomplete) explanation for social evolution than Marx's rigidly linear, reductionist, economic class-based progression.
Szelenyi closed his 3rd Marx lecture by disagreeing with Marx by first pointing out that Marx got the worker vs capitalist struggle part wrong, which I agree with. However, I don't agree with Szelenyi's 2nd disagreement with Marx. He said Marx didn't anticipate white color workers in his cv-s formula for exploitation, where only blue collar physical labor was quantifiable. He used academia as an example of unquantifiable in the exploitation formula. But I believe white collar or mental-dominant labor can be quantified, too. The correct categorization shouldn't be physical vs mental labor but rather skilled vs unskilled labor. Academia and credentialing enters into the c (capital) and v (variable wages), just in a different way than 19th century factory workers. Modern white collar workers can be exploited, too. Marx also tried to separate capitalist mode (alienating and exploitative) from the commodity mode (not alienating) and Szelenyi disagreed with Marx's notion that the middle class (artisans, self-employed, small business) would disappear, some into the capitalist beourgoise, the rest into the worker proletariat as the industrial age absorbed them. Szelenyi thinks the industrial age has peaked and the middle class has stabilized, but I don't think so. I think the working class is just redefined (white collar workers are also proletariat) and progressive advancement in human-replacing technology with increasing efficiency can still shrink the middle class, if not kill it altogether.
The next lecture begins by contrasting Nietzsche, Freud, and Weber's departure from Marx's narrow solution to alienation that was overly economic reductionist.
Marx and Freud have in common that they apply Hegel's critical theory to sensuousness and activity, beyond Hegel's radicalized introverted consciousness. But Marx reduces sensuousness to economic activity so that class-based economic relationships and modes of production, with property as an included element, is the only causal mechanism of historical change. Individual identity and culture are lesser included elements of class identity. For Marx, the dominant ideas and values of society are determined by the dominant, self-serving economic class. That informs Marx's theory that making the most alienated class the dominant class, with reified consciousness, will fix all of society. The other alienationists disagreed with Marx's economic reductionism and looked for other influences and motivations for the individual experience. For Freud, the sensuousness that molds individual identity is sexual experience. Marx's basic unit of reified consciousness is class. For Nietzsche and Freud, the basic unit of reified consciousness is the individual.
Alienationists Nietzsche and Freud are Hobbesian in their belief that the individual interest conflicts with the social interest and the trade-off is a rational choice. They seek to solve alienation through rational self-interest rather than a class struggle. For Nietzsche, the mode is the power of society, including class, dominating the individual so that the individual internalizes society's rules as his subjugation. Freud's theory is that man is a wolf in the state of nature; he essentially restates Hobbes's theory of state nature of unlimited appetites and aversions that preceded the transition from man's state of nature to rationally cooperative society via social contract. For Freud, man extends power over the world, which includes other men, to form society. Repression of the individual, while alienating, is necessary for cooperative growth as a society, with all the benefits that come with it. According to Freud, repression of sexual impulses leads to sublimination of the energies, and those energies drive the progressive milestones of human civilization. Freud, like Marx, notes the economic theory that capitalism and modernity alienate individuals but also have created a great deal of social progress and technological innovation. Where Freud wants to balance the individual and society, Nietzsche focuses exclusively on the alienating costs to the individual and sets aside the social benefits to the individual from a repressive society.
Modernity as society against man (the alienationists). Or is society the organic outgrowth of men organizing together (the contractarians) where individuals interact and progress with society as setting and infrastructure, rather than conflicting forces.
Nietzsche is the MGTOW red pill philosopher. Applies Marx's theories of solving alienation, except not on social activity, but to individual development instead, ie, self-fulfillment of the individual, reified consciousness (own mind made real to rule own life and not ruled by external world), which is obstructed by the modern external world. He opposes the workshop of ideals - the Matrix - that binds us with 'pretty lies' and the blue pill. He applies critical theory to morals, instead of assuming universal or divine premises like pre-critical philosophers. Good/bad is turned into good/evil, which is a social construct for self benefit. Marx assumes a set of conditions, with morals as a lesser included element, for subject (self) and object (world), then focuses on the force field of interaction between the two. Nietzsche applies critical theory to the self and drills down and unpacks the individual's morals and beliefs. Nietzsche is introspective and introverted where Marxist is activist. Nietzsche seeks to ascend by freeing oneself from the shackles of imposed values, especially values that elevate the lesser/weaker/sinner as good while imposing ressentiment-based abasing sacrifice upon the better/stronger. One should free oneself from self-restricting morality, find the Truth, and rise and conquer one's own world with the light of that Truth. Adopt the Greek/Roman classical ideal of excellence rather than the Judeo-Christian ideal of abnegation and humility. In Freudian terms, fight off the rules of the outside world that have formed the controlling ego, and reconnect with the repressed id, and free and grow from the id. Let the blonde beast bird of pray loose.
Nietzsche is thrilling stuff. Be careful, though. Nietzsche excites the individual like Marx excites the activist, and the temptation is to belligerently and defiantly fight the enslaving chains of everyone else's conventions as a matter of principle. That is an impractical and risky proposition when I am weak and disenfranchised. I am not a god. I have weaknesses and flaws. I am needy and dependent, not independent of the social contract. Society is functional and based on need, it's not merely a bully seeking to dominate me, though that may be the practical effect. The best equipped people to pursue Nietzschean ideal are sociopaths who have extraordinary abilities. I don't believe I'm sociopathic. The better compromise point with Nietzsche is vomiting up the blue pill, so removing my internal subjugation, and then studying the world critically. Know what I want. Be aware and self-aware, respect and understand the power that the world has over me and what I need from the world, know the risks, and then interact with the world awake as a self-interested rational free agent.
Szelenyi nutshells Marx, Nietzsche, and Freud here while introducing Weber.
For Marx's typology of society, economic conditions drive history. For Nietzsche and Weber, the struggle for power and domination drives history. The nature of power and how power is constructed and how power is sublimated into domination (Freudian) is how societies operate. Nietzsche focused on the Judeo-Christians (meek shall inherit the earth) replacing the classical Greco-Romans (striving to the ideal), while Weber focused on the types of domination and authority to explain history, as opposed to Marx's types of economy.
Weber is known for his precise categorization of types of social actions (instrumentally rational, value rational, affectual orientation, traditional orientation), his definitions of rationality (substitute unthinking with deliberate adaptation, ie, consciousness), power (probablity to act despite resistance), domination (probability a command will be obeyed), and legitimacy (the voluntary association of leader and the led), and types of domination/authority (legal-rational authority uses instrumental rationality, traditional authority uses traditional orientation, charismatic authority uses affectual orientation and value rational). Eg, legal-rational authority or rule by bureaucratic law rather than personality is the hallmark of a liberal system. Weber's notion of legitimacy is interesting in that he connects it not with popular choice by mechanical election but rather a self-interested obedience or voluntary compliance to the system, which is based on a myth of the dominant's superiority (much like Nietzsche's concept of internalized submission).
Weber adds an interesting dimension to Marx's praxis base of activism. Marx has solid footing until he jumps off from sensuous social activity to his economic reductionism and 1-dimensional theory of change where ideas don't matter, only one's economic status is determinative. On one hand, Marx motivates activism by visualizing a controllable circumstance. On the other hand, what if your ideals don't match the materialist (economic) reality? That incongruence has discouraged me, that ideals seem powerless in the face of economic interests. Weber disagrees with Marx. For Weber, culture and values matter, too. He visualizes change as an "elective affinity" or a combining of the right ideal structure and material structure, like X and Y chromosomes combining, ie, modern capitalism was born from Calvinism combining with economic changes, while capitalism didn't take root in 12th century China despite the right material conditions because Confucianism and Taoism didn't provide the correct ideal basis like Calvinism did. So, changing the world requires the correct mix of ideas (culture) and material conditions (economy), rather than Marx's one-way causal relationship. That means as an idealist, I can still tell myself that my favored side of the equation is a necessary component to prepare to seize a material opportunity, ie, when the economic conditions are right for the ideas to make change. I partially induced the Weberian notion of elective affinity in my military and socialism post. I observed as a soldier that socialism can work in the military because the military has both the material conditions and culture that allow it. Translated to the individual level of change, Weber's position reminds that Nietzsche expresses the correct principle of internal change while Marx and Freud focus on specific aspects (economy, sex), but the individual change must work within the framework of real-world conditions. But one can learn to master and manipulate conditions, not just cargo-cult them.
Hobbes lecture (first of the contractarians, man's nature is appetites and aversions, but man is driver): "Well, he had a close association with a person whom you may have heard of, Francis Bacon. And who was Francis Bacon, and what is his influence? Francis Bacon was a philosopher who rejected the Aristotelian logic and system, which basically was a speculative system--started out from some major assumptions and through deductions developed his philosophical system. As I said, occasionally I've taught this course by starting with Francis Bacon because Bacon, in some ways, is the Founding Father of modern sciences. Because he said every scientific investigation should start with induction, from sensual observation, and what you cannot observe, you should not assume it does exist. Right? Therefore he advocated a methodology which was exactly the opposite of the Aristotelian methodology, which was deductive. He advocated induction. ... He went to Paris, and he began to investigate natural sciences, Galileo and Descartes, in particular. Descartes was a great deal of importance for Hobbes. From Galileo he learned an alternative to Bacon's inductive method. Galileo offered a methodology that, by and large, social scientists today who believe in normal social science subscribe to. Namely that was the methodology, what Galileo called the resolutive-compositive method. It basically meant that you start with deduction. Right? You have some initial hypotheses. Then you move to observation, sensual observation, and from the sensual observation you make inductions. And you make that and you test your hypotheses. That's how it we would say it today. And this is what Bacon learned from Galileo and adapted his methodology. Now this is René Descartes, one of the greatest philosophers of his times and of all times. Descartes ascribed to something what I call dualism. Right? Dualism really meant that he separated the soul and body from each other, and Hobbes rejected this idea of dualism because he suggested that--in fact, they were engaged in a big debate on optics, what we do see. And he, Hobbes, was advocating that there must be a real object whose movement we see, what we actually can see. So he rejected the dualism. ... And, in fact, Hobbes translated, I also mentioned, Thucydides, basically because Thucydides expressed some skepticism about the democracy in Athens. And he was greatly skeptical about democracy and believed the need for a strong central authority. ... The idea is that we are driven by appetite, by desires. We will talk in this course later on about Sigmund Freud who was talking about drives. Right? There are drives which makes us move. These are what Hobbes called appetite, a few centuries before Sigmund Freud. But then he said we also have aversions, we have fears. There are things what we want, but we have fears that we won't be able to achieve what we want, and therefore we have to somehow negotiate out between our desires, appetites, and our fears or aversions. And what comes out is voluntary action. We have a choice. We have to measure up what the price of our action will be, and then we decide whether it is worth to pay this price or it is not worth to pay this price. ... And then the second point is we will seek power. The essence of human nature is that we are striving for power. Again an issue, a very good issue to discuss at the discussion section. Again, I think half of the class will probably agree with Hobbes, that people are actually trying to dominate others. ... It just describes what I have said, that we all have appetites, we have desires, we have needs. And in order to satisfy our needs, it always has costs, and therefore we have to figure out whether it's worth the cost for us to satisfy that need. Right? And therefore we have a certain degree of freedom. We can't do whatever we want to do, because we may not have the resources to afford it. Or we want to have many things, and then we will have to prioritize what we want to have more and spend more on it. As you can hear, Hobbes is very close to what later on becomes the utilitarians. Right? Very close to what Adam Smith will argue in his economic theory, or what John Stuart Mills will represent in his utilitarianism. Or, for that sake, what most economists today believe, who call themselves neoclassical economists, or who identify themselves as "rat" choice, or rational choice; economists or political scientists or sociologists, for that sake; there are some sociologists who also subscribe to rational choice. ... Well about power. The power is unending. Right? He said there is a general inclination for us to seek power, our influence on other people. And he said there is nothing evil about it. It is necessary because if we want to survive we will have to try to exercise influence on others. We have to seek power as such. ... He is one of the very first philosophers who claims that we are all born equal. ... Namely, he said what comes from this equality is this unending fight; that because we desire the same thing-- and he operates with the scarcity assumption, that what is desirable is actually scarce--that we'll fight each other. ... Well there are really two basic laws of nature. One law of nature is that you are forbidden what is harmful to you. Right? You have to pursue self-interest. Here again you see the rational choice theory speaking. Right? People are self-interested, and this is the law of nature that we should be self-interested. Right? We have to do everything in order to preserve our life. But there is a second law of nature, he argues, and this requires that we--what you would not do--yeah, not to do others what you would not want them to do to you. ... Well in the state of nature if there are no restraints, there is no civilization."
Locke lecture: "So we are all born free and equal. ... Men are all made by God, the omnipotent, right? And we are his property; a kind of theological argument. And we are not--have not been created for the pleasures of one another. So there should not be any man who is a superior, by principle. Because we are free, right? ... And in the state of nature, he said, we were all governed by reason. And that actually sort of--because we are all reasonable, we are born reasonable; we are born to be able to be rational. Right? And we should be able to understand that we are not supposed to harm each other.
... Hobbes said that we are actually learning morality out by interacting with others who are desiring the same stuff what we do. We are learning it from struggle, right? It does not assume that this comes out of our rationality, that we are reasonable and by nature good. He does assume that we are reasonable. ... So there is a scarcity assumption in Hobbes, and there is an abundance hypothesis in Locke, and you have to make up your mind who is appealing to you more. Do you think that the scarcity assumption is a better one, or the abundance argument is an empirically more appealing one?"
Montesquieu lecture: "But he said, but there is also a general spirit, a spirit which is above the individuals. And this is a very French theme, right? You cannot explain it from the individual; there is some general idea. Durkheim will call it collective conscience; Rousseau will call it the general will. Right? The very French idea that there is some consciousness above the individual consciousnesses--this has formulated so powerfully the first time by Montesquieu. And he actually said as civilization is progressing, the influence of the natural conditions declines, and the importance of general spirits increases. Or to put it with Durkheim, the collective conscience becomes more and more important. ... Okay, as I said, he's a methodological collectivist. Right? And I just explained this to you a little, right? A methodological individualist who begins--in order to develop a conception of society, you have to start with the individual; the only reality, what you can observe in individual action and individual consciousness. Everything else, what you suggest, is speculative. Right? This is British individualism and empiricism. Right? The French emphasizes there are stuff, like law. This is why the legal system, the law, is so important for Montesquieu. That's why the major book is called The Spirit of Law because the law is not simply a sum total of individual consciousness. It stands over us, and we get into a society and the law, the legal system already does exist."
Rousseau lecture: "Then in 1755, he writes a very interesting book--if you have spare time, read it--Discourse on the Origins of Inequality--Again, a very provocative book. In some ways there is some sort of Hobbesian idea behind that. He said, well it starts with love, but if you are really in love, well you tend to be jealous. Right? If you are deeply in love, passionately in love, then you don't like that the person who is the object of your love may have a love in somebody else; then you are jealous. And the idea is--this is the origins of inequality; we are jealous, right? There is one precious good--to put it with Hobbes--we all desire, and if somebody else desires it as well, and has a shot at it, to get it, then we become jealous, right? We want to grab it, we want to monopolize it. So this is a source of inequality, right? ... Now Rousseau, as we will see, adds a new, interesting element. He said, well, it's not quite the individuals, and he introduces the notion of general will. There is a general will which is well above the individuals--extremely important idea, has a degree of insights and realism. It's also a very dangerous idea. Totalitarian regimes very often advocate it. General will that you--and I will quote Jean Jacques for you when he said, "the individuals will have to be forced to be free"; that follows from the idea of general will. Well he's a complex thinker-- liberal on one hand, a contractarian on the other hand, and paves the road to totalitarianism."
Rousseau lecture 2: "All right, so nature good, society corrupts. Well people in nature are good; society corrupts. Well this is the opposite argument to Hobbes. Or, in fact, Durkheim's idea that you need more control over society is also opposed to Rousseau's fundamental idea. And he said, well a child does not know vice and doesn't know error. It is introduced to the child by society. And then he gives--though he was not much of a believer--he gives a bit of theological argument: "Everything is good as it leaves the hands of the author of things [God] and everything degenerates in the hands of man." "Man turns everything upside down. He wants nothing as nature made it." We are being told to get rid of our natural instincts. And this is again lovely, right? "Man must be trained like a school horse." So it's lovely. ... The task of education, not training, is not to tell you what the truth is. The task of education is to help your brain operate sufficiently to tell what is an error and to figure out when you are making an error. That's why there is no easy solutions. There is no right answer to the question. There are competing answers to every important question. And the task of education is to consider the pros and cons, to consider what speaks for and against the evidence, and then to make a judgment what is the proposition you will accept to try to eliminate error. That's what education is all about. ... Now this is turning savages into social beings, moving from amour de soi to amour propre. The love of oneself, amour de soi, is always good. There is nothing wrong about it--what Adam Smith will call self-interest. Well the child is born with amour de soi. Takes the toy away, "It's mine." Right? The other child will say, "No, this is mine." Right? This is amour de soi. I want it. Right? Amour de soi, as we will know from Freud. I want the breast of my mother. I want to monopolize it; this is mine. Right? That's amour de soi. Well but on the other hand we have to extend our relationships; we have to interact with other people. And amour propre will be when we realize there is another people who are also led by amour de soi, and we figure out the way how to live with them, by interacting with them. ... And there are--the first maxim is, "It is not the human heart to put ourselves in the place of people who are happier than we, but only of those who are more pitiable." So it is actually our weakness what makes us social, not our strengths. "It is our common miseries which turns our hearts to humanity."
Adam Smith lecture (various invisible hands, self-interest, rational markets, but also need for sympathy): "This is the central question: Where does our conception of good and evil come from? But Adam Smith already here asked this question, and he said, well "what's the solution?" That inside you there is an inner person. You are two people. You act, and there is somebody inside you who is watching you, and that inside you will tell you, "You did something wrong; that was not the right thing to do." ... Then he says--this is something which is kind of inspired by Hobbes--we are led by passion. But now he is not emphasizing fear. He said, "also by sympathy." ... We try to please people. We want to impress people. We want to have a reputation; we want to have a good reputation. We want to act honorably. So we are seeking sympathy. We have a sympathy--we have an understanding of other people's human conditions--but we are also expecting others to understand us and value us. ... Because indeed, if self-interest implies that I also want others to respect and evaluate [correction: value] me, the self-interest also implies that I want to do good to others. This is in your self-interest, that you can say at the end of the day, "I am a good person." Then, in fact, pursuing these self-interests may not be all that different from the common good because it is inside you.... And the arguments are if you are interacting with each other, do not expect benevolence. It is appealing to the self-interest of the person for whom I expect something, and not is benevolence. Well he said well we address ourselves not to the humanity of the people, not to their self-love, but we want people to take advantage of this. ... "Individuals are the better judge of their own interests than anybody else.""
Mill lecture (re Bentham, utilitarian): He said, "Well we are created to seek pleasure and to avoid pain, and therefore if we can minimize the pain and maximize the pleasure, that's when we achieve the greatest happiness." That's what will be called utility. Right? So action is right if it is leading to happiness. Right? We all want to be happy. Okay, well and this can be actually quantified. The action is right, morally right, if the sum of pleasures minus the sum of pains, multiplied by the number of persons affected by action is positive. Right? Sounds reasonable, right? If more people are happy in society than unhappy, then the society does as well as it can. Right? That's really the argument. ... So, he said, "The two big masters are pain and pleasure"; somewhat a kind of similar argument to Hobbes. And he said, "An action may be said to be conformable with the principle of utility when the tendency is to augment happiness, and that is greater than to diminish it." And what is utility? "Utility is that principle which approves or disapproves a reaction to augment or diminish the happiness of the party whose interest is in question.""
Mill lecture (higher levels of happiness which are individuated, legality not the same as justice, justice is higher, therefore personal liberty should not be infringed for expediency): "he also becomes very sort of unhappy with the expediency emphasis on utilitarianism--instrumentalism, the coldness of the argument. ... So he says, well there is higher happiness. Right? There is a lower level of happiness and there is a higher level of happiness. To have a good steak, well it is pleasurable. But to listen to the Ninth Symphony of Beethoven, it's greater happiness. Right? It's a higher level of happiness when you hear the concluding chorale of the Ninth Symphony. You are through the roof of pleasure; you have a higher level of happiness than eating a nice rare steak. Right? That's a higher level of happiness. ... --"Individual liberty is the ultimate value, and expediency"--and you know what he means by expediency, that you get there by using the least means and you maximize the return--"expediency cannot justify intervention against individual liberty." ... The main themes in the work Utilitarianism is the concept of higher happiness; human beings have faculties for more elevated appetites than animals have. Then he talks about justice and legality. It's a very complex issue, but where he thinks that the law is a more restrictive notion than justice, and he stands for the idea of justice, and shows some contradiction between law and justice as such. And then he talks about justice and expediency--why justice cannot be simply explained by expediency. ... And I hope it got you up in speed--utilitarianism and John Stuart Mill, and Adam Smith, and you see how actually John Stuart Mill and utilitarianism radicalizes one stream of thought which is in Adam Smith, but Adam Smith is not quite ready to go as far as Bentham went, and even not as far as John Stuart Mill went."
Mill lecture 2: "These are the main themes of his book on utilitarianism, the way how he departs from Bentham--a very important change that he's beginning to emphasize there are higher happinesses we can seek. It is not simply quantity but quality of happiness is what we seek. A very important contribution, I think, and this is an idea which is only touched upon by Adam Smith but really not properly developed, and certainly completely missing in Bentham. It is really Mill's contribution which is very important for contemporary economic theory, neoclassical economics. They call this preferences, that we have preferences, and therefore individuals will attach different values to different utilities. And this really comes from the work of John Stuart Mill, when he makes this distinction between legality and justice, and what is legal is not necessarily just, and what is just is necessarily approved by laws. And then justice and expediency: what is expedient is not necessarily just, and well just may have its cost and may not be the fastest way to get there. Right? ... And therefore, he emphasizes there is a qualitative difference between human and simply animal appetites. So therefore you simply cannot do what Bentham did, simply add up appetites and to say if more appetites are satisfied, better off the society is. The chief good, so he argues, is virtue. Be virtuous and then you will feel good; you will be happier if you are virtuous, as such. ... "It is unjust to deprive anyone of his personal liberty and property." ... Well while Bentham only emphasized that we are seeking pleasure, Mill emphasized self-development. He said we have to--in our lifetime, we have to develop our capacities. Right? And what follows from this, individualism and liberty; these are the major values, rather than just satisfying our needs. ... This follows very logically from his argument of these higher happinesses, preferences, arrived at by individual judgments--not superimposed by government but individuals decide what is the higher value they attach to a utility. And therefore it can be minorities which do have different preferences, and we have to respect those preferences. That's very crucially important ideas. ... And individual liberty should always take precedence over short-term utilitarian consideration. Right? The main value is that individually that--believe me, this is not a contradiction, it follows very logically from the idea of preferences and from the idea that there are qualitative differences between utilities, and you are the only one who can decide what is worse for you. Nobody else can make a decision, a judgment for you. This is consistent with Adam Smith, by the way. ... And he said this is absolutely necessary to have total freedom of speech because an opinion, which suppressed right, then we lose the opportunity to exchange truths for error. ... government cannot limit individual liberties, only if that causes injury. ... And well interference. The only justification is self-protection. Right? This is very much in line of Hobbes' argument."
Nietzsche lecture: "the big project in Nietzsche is to offer a critical scrutiny of human mind, but not to have any critical vantage point. Right? To criticize the very principles of good society and good, to critical scrutiny. Where does it come from when we have the conception of good and good society? That is his project. ... he was a great admirer of the Greek civilization. And here he--his idea is that the whole human history is driven by the struggle between a Dionysian and Apollonian principle. Dionysian means--right?--your sentiments, right? You act out of your instincts. And Apollonian means the reason, as such. And the book contrasts Enlightenment. Enlightenment is reason. It's a victory of Apollonian principle over the Dionysian principle. And he kind of rejected--this is also why he's also kind of post-Modern, right?--he rejects Enlightenment and Enlightenment excessive rationalism. ... Well Nietzsche has a philosophy called Notion of the Übermensch. The Übermensch is the person who achieves self-mastery, who--basically the alienated person--right?--who is in control of his own life--right?--and can express himself authentically, without oppressive civilization. Right? That's the Übermensch. ... In a way this is a Buddha. It is an idea of a Buddha, but not a passive Buddha. He disliked Buddhism as much as he disliked the Judeo-Christian tradition. The problem with Buddhism was that it is too passive. He wanted to have an active Buddhism. Right? Somebody who becomes a master of its life, through action, acting out his feelings and his even sensual essence in life. And therefore he can overcome what he calls "the eternal return." Right? He can overcome the iron law of these--you know, this is again comes from almost Marx. Right? Reified consciousness. The reified word can be broken. There are no rules. Right? You can realize yourself in the world, and you are not ruled by the external world. ... But I hope you get sort of the bottom line. Right? The bottom line is have a radical critical theory, which does not need ultimate value to be critical of false ideas and lies. Get truth; and the ideal is the person who can fulfill itself in the world, and conquer the world as such."
Marx lectures, comparisons to Smith: "So the first point is there is in--you know, we are talking about commodity producing commercial societies, to put it with Adam Smith. ... We treat each other as an instrument to reach an end. Right? We call the others only when we need that person for something. Right? We act out of simply self-interest in interacting with the others. We lack compassion. Right? We lack love. Right? We lack sympathy. Right? You know, he probably did not read his Adam Smith carefully enough. Right? He has not been reading much Smith until '44. This is where he's beginning to read Smith very carefully, around this time, in '44. Anyway, you see the point what he is making. And I think what Marx describes in alienation, particularly alienation from fellow human beings, is something what probably some people in this room can respond to, and to say, "Well yes, I did experience that. I have been treated as an object. When I go to the admission office, occasionally an administrator treats me like a piece of paper. ... And then we get, starting with the second Marx, the first step towards the second Marx is the "Theses on Feuerbach," what I want to talk about today. And I'll try to economize with my time, right? Right? I have to learn from Adam Smith--right?--to be more utilitarian and to make sure that means and ends do match with each other. Okay, let's come back to Hegel and Hegel's theory of alienation. ... He now enters the road of radicalization, moves away from Hegel, and tries to carve out his own intellectual and political project. And he writes the paper "On the Jewish Question" in which he says, "Well Hegel is right. We need something universal. We should not allow society just to be the struggle of particularistic interests." Right? This is in a way against Adam Smith's utilitarianism. It's not enough that individuals fight each others' interests out, and that will end up to a universal good. We need some universal good to be achieved, and it will not simply achieved by particularistic interests followed. That is Marx's point. But then he writes an introduction to the Critique-- Contributions to the Critique of Hegel's Philosophy of Right. And in this introduction he said, "Well, we need something; universal emancipation. But who will bring universal emancipation to humankind?" Right? He's looking for an agent who can carry this out. And in the introduction, he said, "This will be the proletariat." Well you may say now he's entering the wrong road--right?--and he's entering a very--he's basically painting himself in the corner, where he will be for the rest of his life, trying to show that indeed the proletariat will emancipate us all, and will create a good society as such. ... But many thinks that Jürgen Habermas was the greatest philosopher of the twentieth century. He said, "Well yes, Marx in "The Theses on Feuerbach" is right" at one point. I mean, Habermas had his 'culture' turn, moved away from materialism. But in most of his life he said, "I am a materialist because I also believe that the ultimate reality has to come through sensuous experiences, through the senses." Right? But he said, "Marx later on, the mature Marx became reductionist, because the sensuous activity he identified with the economy, with production, with economic activities." And he said, "In "The Theses on Feuerbach" he got it right. All sensuous activity are material." "So therefore," he says, "let's not simply limit our analysis to production, but let's look at human interaction." When we interact with each other, this is also a sensuous activity. Right? So he creates peace between Sigmund Freud and Karl Marx. Many people try to do that. Right? That this is not an opposition, that it is either production or your sexual drives. You know, your sexual drives--your sexual interaction with others--is very much sensuous. Right? It's actually more sensuous than doing a job--right?-- than, you know, being in McDonald's and serving hamburgers. That's sensuous activity. But all right, you know, sexual interaction is very much sensuous. That's Habermas's point. And Marx, in "The Theses on Feuerbach", opens this possibility up. It's a very open argument. Okay? This is actually one of the reasons why he does not publish it. It's too vague. He wanted to be more precise, and then he wanted to go--he was reading Adam Smith and Ricardo, and spent all of his time in the British Library reading these economists, and he wanted to bring it back down to earth, to the economy and economic interest. ... Okay, what are the major themes in The German Ideology? First, he offers a materialist view of history. Then he offers a theory of modes of production. Then he's beginning to develop forces of production and initially division of labor; and this is a problem. This is very much Adam Smith. He's still very strongly under Adam Smith and understands the evolution of society as the evolution of division of labor. And then he describes-- tries to describe the forces of production and division of labor--modes of production and describes a subsection and modes of production and give a very about human history. And then he develops what I would call--he's the first who creates a sociology of knowledge--how to study sociologically, socially how you can understand conscience, human consciousness. ... Well he said, "Well, we can distinguish therefore differences between nature, how the productive forces"--he means by technology--"is developing and how"--he uses initially the term the inter--"the intercourse, internal intercourse is changing." And by this he refers to division of labor. A very Smithsian idea, Adam Smith's idea. Right? That history evolves a greater division of labor--we will see in Emile Durkheim also this central idea--you can see the evolution of society by increasing division of labor. ... There is actually not a single theorist I can recall who, like Karl Marx, not only has a very specific set of ideas in what stages human evolution, from the very elementary societies to the most complex one evolved. There are many who offer typologies like this. We have seen in Montesquieu, we have seen in Adam Smith; there were many who did that. But what is unique about Marx, that he has a genuine theory of history. He has a very powerful argument what is the exact causal mechanism which leads the transition from one form of society to another one; what drives historical evolution. Marx is genuinely the Darwin of social scientists, in this respect. What Darwin could do with The Evolution of Species, Marx was capable to do in the theory of history. It's a genuine theory. Right? A theory, when you have an idea what are really the causal mechanisms, what links cause to an effect. And Marx has such a theory. ... Well there are some very important key differences, as we proceed from The German Ideology to the Grundrisse. Well in The German Ideology there's one important difference. History is driven by increasing division of labor. And I pointed to this in the earlier lecture. Here he draws directly on Adam Smith. He basically takes it over from Adam Smith. That's what Adam Smith did. In the Grundrisse, on the other hand, he sees a movement, a gradual movement over history, towards private ownership; that's what drives the story. "A gradual separation of the laboring subject and the objective conditions of the worker." That's how he describes now human history. And doing so--separation of laboring subject and the objective conditions of labor--enables him in the Grundrisse to bring back the notion of alienation. He already seemed to have forgotten and put it on the shelf. Then he will forget it again. But for this piece of work, the idea of alienation re-interpreted as the making of private ownership and the separation of worker and the objective conditions of work is very crucial, very important. ... As I said, in the initial formulation, he really thinks this is the division of labor, rather than property relationships. And I think we have seen it, he will--this comes straight out of Adam Smith, what you have read. Right? The relations of different nations among themselves depends to which each has developed these productive forces, the division of labor and its internal intercourse. So that's exactly--right?--what Adam Smith said. Hunting/gathering societies, grazing societies, agricultural societies, commercial societies, they all correspond to different levels of division of labor. And that's what Marx initially tries to do in The German Ideology. And he deals with the question of the property relations, but he said, "Look, property relations also change, but these changing property relations are simply the outcomes of the increased division of labor." So it's basically determined by the division of labor. "If I understand the level of division of labor, I will understand property relationships as well." That sounds actually quite reasonable. And these sections of The German Ideology, by the way, were rediscovered by Marxists in the 1950s, especially Marxists who were living in the Soviet Empire. ... He turns into a historical materialist in The German Ideology, but does not quite get it yet. Right? Too much under the influence of Adam Smith. The division of labor is still important and private property does not get the centrality of the analysis, what it's supposed to have for the theory. Then you read the Grundrisse, in which he kind of--now private property is in the central place, but he tries to bring back the idea of alienation. And he also considers that in The German Ideology he became too deterministic; history is more open than he may have believed. And then finally he finishes the book--at least the first volume of the book he always wanted to write--Das Kapital. ... So let's move to the question of theory of exploitation. And I will have to start this with the labor theory of value, and to go back to Adam Smith and to see how Marx is proceeding. Then I want to make a step further, Marx's distinction between commodity production and the capitalist mode of production. This is again taking his point of departure as Adam Smith's, Adam Smith's idea of commercial society. And what Marx does, well there are different types of commercial societies. One he calls the petty commodity production, and the other one capitalist mode of production. As we all know, he never used the term capitalism. He comes the closest to this concept by using the term capitalist mode of production. Neither Smith nor Marx had the concept of capitalism, as such. Then in order to understand what is unique about the capitalist mode of production, we have to understand Marx's theory of labor power as a commodity. ... And now the labor theory of value. The point of departure is John Locke and Adam Smith. Right? As you recall, already John Locke suggested that all value is created by labor; or, I mean, he's a little more cautious, at least 90% of all value is created by labor. ... And, as you recall, Adam Smith claims at one point, "All value is created by labor." Well but of course Adam Smith, when he comes to explaining the distribution of wealth, takes a step back from this proposition. And we discussed that when we discussed Adam Smith. Let me just remind you what the step backward. Right? The tension--right?--in Adam Smith was that on one hand he claims all value is created by labor, and then when it comes to the question but how is wealth or income distributed. He said, "Well it ought to be distributed between the three factors of production--right?--labor, capital and land; wages, profit and rent. And they have to be equally distributed in a just way, between these three factors of production." Right? And I think you remember we clarified that this is not a contradiction in Adam Smith. Somehow when he's claiming that all value is created by labor, he almost has a theory of human nature. Right? That in the state of nature, when there is no private property of land, and there is no accumulation of capital, then all value is created by labor. But this is just in this imagined--right?--natural conditions of existence. In all complex societies private ownership exists and private--and capital is being accumulated. And then, you know, in order to get production going, the capitalist has to rent--give capital, advance capital, to the worker. Without the advancement of capital, the laborer would not work. And therefore the owner of capital has due claim for part of the value which is created in the process of production. Because it took risks--right?--by offering its capital, and it had to supervise the labor process, and wants to have compensated for its risk taking and its supervision. And you could not operate without land, without a site. All activities need a site, and if somebody owns that site, they'll have to be compensated that you are on the site; and that is rent. Well this is a little more problematic in Adam Smith. You know, for capital he makes a pretty strong case, you know, why it is fair for the capitalist to collect profit. For the owner of the land, he--they are collecting rent. That's a little more problematic, whether rent is also something, a just income. And we all have a little unease--right?--when we are talking about rent, or when we are talking about, for instance, rent-seeking behavior. Right? That sounds a bad behavior, if somebody's seeking rent. Right? The reason is simple; because we associate in our mind rent-seeking behavior with monopoly. Right? Rent-seeking behavior comes from monopolistic ownership, and we don't particularly like monopolies. Right? We want competition, free competition--right? Free markets, and not monopolies. Right? Monopoly's a bad word. Anyway, this is a little of a problem. But nevertheless I think his fundamental point, in Adam Smith, that there is some fair distribution of income between the three factors of production, because they are all necessary for the production for the production process. ... Okay, then let's move further and let's try to figure out how--what Marx does to Adam Smith, and how he radicalizes Adam Smith. Marx does not want to go the Adam Smithsian way, to say there is a fair distribution of wealth between the three factors of production. ... And here there is an agreement--right?--with Adam Smith. Right? You have--right?--factors of production. But Marx wants to be consistent--consistent in saying that all value is being created by labor. ... So Marx starts to shy away from the idea that there is a kind of fair distribution between capital, land and labor. He said, "No, I mean, all value is being created by labor." So this is his kind of reconstruction of the labor theory of value, and leads us into the idea of exploitation. ... Okay, let's move a little further and makes--and let's have this important contribution what Marx makes between petty commodity production and capitalist mode of production, right? It's trying to sort of break up Adam Smith's idea of commercial society or market economy or capitalism. Marx seemed to have a more complex notion. Well he said this is petty commodity production, and he again offers us a little equation here. He said petty commodity production begins with a commodity, and then you go to the marketplace, sell this commodity for money, in order to purchase a commodity. This itself is commercial society. This is commodity production. But it is not capitalism. Right? ... Now but then he said well capitalism is a different ballgame. We are talking about a capitalist economy when the cycle starts with money. ... "Well, we have an economic system in which we have--right?--people who accumulated capital, and they are entering the marketplace. And what do they do? They produce commodities. And why do they do so? Because they want to have more money; that's it."
Nietzsche lecture - intro: "I think it's also very easy to see the point of departure from Marx--some continuity, but the basic point of department from Marx in the work of Nietzsche, Freud, and Weber. If I can put it very simply, the major departure is that they all depart from Marx's economic reductionism--right?--the emphasis on economic interest, which is actually not only Marx. Right? It was common in Adam Smith, and Marx as well. They depart from this and they emphasize that the problem in modernity is not so much in the economic system; it is much more in terms of power and consciousness. The problem of modernity is repression, in one way or another. The problem of modern life is that we internalize the reasons for our own subjugation, as such, and somehow we have to figure out how to liberate ourselves from this internalized subjugation. Why do we obey orders? Why do we actually accept that we are subjugated? This is the central question, I think, Nietzsche, Freud, and Weber are posing. It's again a question which has not been really asked by the other theorists we discussed so far. They just had civil society as a point of reference for the good society. Now the problem for Nietzsche, Freud, and Weber is in us, internally--in us, how we solve the problem within ourselves. So this is a kind of introducing the three authors. In some ways one can say Nietzsche, Freud, and Weber not only foreshadows twentieth century social theory, but in some ways they are the first of post-modern theorists--right?--the theorists which are beginning to come to terms with the oppressive nature of modernity, and try to figure out how to transcend that."
Weber lecture (summary of Marx, Freud, Nietzsche, Weber): "But there are fundamental differences between the four authors. And in some ways there is a similarity between Marx and Freud. Marx and Freud all take their point of departure in their project to be critical of consciousness for sensuous human experience. Right? Material reality. In one way or another they are both materialists. Right? Of course, for Marx it is reductionist, because this sensuous human experience is reduced to the economy. "You tell me what your position in the economic system are, then I understand what your economic interests are. You are behaving and you are thinking according to your economic interests, and then I will understand what is on your mind." Well, by the way, it's not all that different--right?--from Adam Smith and rationally acting individuals. Marx has some similarities. Only he offers it critically, while Adam Smith offered it affirmatively. But that is Marx's reductionism; that what is sensuous experience is reduced to the economy."
Eric
Saturday, 1 June 2013
Thoughts on Amanda Bynes
As a child comedic actress, Amanda Bynes was an energetic standout talent, the sweetheart of her generation, and an impeccable role model - the millenials' Shirley Temple. Like Temple, Bynes grew up into a lovely young woman, but the qualities that made her a star as a child didn't carry over to her adult appeal, and her career stalled. Unlike Temple, who matured well away from Hollywood, Bynes has struggled since retiring, and her troubles have crescendoed over the past year.
What's happened to her? What is she doing? It's cruel but expected that the tabloid media would exploit Bynes to feed the public's appetite for lurid news of a debased role model and pop cultural icon.
My first guess is her tabloid-fodder behavior is due either to burning out and rejecting her managed life as an actress or immersing in extreme performance art, like Joaquin Phoenix's year-long project but deeper. It also reminds me of Charlie Sheen's meltdown, which was both real and exploited by Sheen in ways that presaged Bynes. She has the acting chops to pull it off - after all, retirement didn't remove her talent - and once upon a time, she seemed ambitious enough to try it. Given Bynes's altered appearance in the tabloids and on her Twitter account, it's jarring that in the video of her recent NY criminal court appearance, she still sounds and looks (at least the part of her face that's exposed) like America's sweetheart Amanda Bynes, which gives some credence to the possibility that all of this is an act. Altering appearance and playing a character is acting. And the role she apparently has chosen is ratchet. Or maybe Delirium.
Bynes said she no longer loved acting because she was only playing other people's characters when she announced her retirement in June 2010. If she is radically reinventing her performing career, she's using social media as her canvas to draw with new rules where she once colored carefully within the lines. Add the drug arrest, crude defiance, and growing notoriety to her new style, and she should have the street cred to jumpstart a singing career.
Her current persona is so over the top and such a departure from her old persona, and because she is generating much of the attention with her tweets and antics in public, I also can't discount the possibility that Bynes is a creative genius who has totally committed to exploring the artistic frontier of 21st century social media, pop culture celebrity. Improv is in Bynes's skillset, and the actress who grew up in the eye of pop culture could be doing a vicious Andy Kaufman-esque epic troll on pop culture. (I mean, this tweet, which uses this photo of Rihanna and Bynes from the 2007 American Music Awards that Bynes calls a "mocked up image", which she may have copied from this article, has to be a troll testing the limit of the public's credulity, right?)
Another indicator this might be performance art is her August exit from social media and then November reemergence with a startlingly different persona. Was she preparing the role during her break from Twitter?
Except Bynes has left and returned to Twitter before - @AmandaBynes is her 3rd Twitter account after @chicky (her nickname) and @MsAmandaBynes. In addition, she has accounts at several multi-media hosting sites. The simple explanation for Bynes's August exit and November return to social media is she's compulsive. With her past Twitter accounts, Bynes also would impulsively share overly personal or odd thoughts and similarly posed selfie photos, delete some tweets on second thought, eventually delete the account, then start a new account.
If she's playing a role, it's a role she prepared long before publicizing it in NYC. Her NYC tweets differ from her LA tweets more in degree, albeit a large degree, than in kind. Her current look - flamboyant, body hugging, long straggly hair, wigs, bold colored nails, large dark glasses, piercings, thick make-up, street-style jewelry and clothes - was evident in her selfies 2-3 years ago. The look was just less developed then. The softer, even pensive, look in her eyes was in her older selfies, too. Apparently, Bynes's style preference has been evolving away from her polished Hollywood image for several years, and she simply dropped her Hollywood look for a more urban look when she moved to NYC.
Judging by the tweets from her current Twitter account, social media has taken on an outsized importance for Bynes. Twitter is her castle where she is in control. It's where she is standing her ground to fight the tabloids for her image. Twitter is her self-managed publicist, set, and stage. If she intended to seek attention - and she does seem to relish her new fame, intentional or not - she's succeeding. Bynes has become a pop culture phenomenon with a cult following of over 1.6 million Twitter followers (and rapidly growing) who validate her every provocative act by cheering on their "queen". I didn't follow Bynes's career as a child star and Hollywood starlet, but I'm paying attention to her now.
While the argument that Bynes is acting is intriguing, I suspect the once shining star burned out and is going her own way. As a child comedienne, Bynes was high energy, even manic, and off beat. Yet in interviews during her early 20s, a subdued, self-possessed, sleekly composed Bynes was conscientiously committed to a disciplined transition to Hollywood starlet. She talked about avoiding the trouble plaguing her peers because she had invested too much into her career. Perhaps ratcheted too tight, the line snapped under too much strain. It was obvious in the interviews that the back-and-forth rhythm of interviewing didn't come naturally to her, as though she was an introvert struggling to project a sociable vibe. Some reports imply she adjusted poorly to young-adult Hollywood celebrity and felt alienated. Or perhaps she was repressing a lot in her transition to Hollywood starlet and finally rebelled against conforming to a constrictive artificial image. (See the insight from former child actress Mara Wilson.) The pay-off to her career for conforming also fell short. The first rumors of erratic behavior by Bynes on the set of Hall Pass coincided with her career stalling. It's hard to know what precipitated which, although it's telling that Bynes never acted again despite praise for her turn in Easy A. Until Hall Pass, her reputation had been she was a reliable professional and dream client. Since then, Bynes has broken away from her original career path, sunk into herself, and now is a woman going her own way.
Bynes's current persona is diametrically different from the persona painted by the personal quotes on her IMDB biography page. Since leaving LA for NYC in September 2012, she has disconnected from friends and family. If she was trapped in a false identity and felt stifled by disingenuous relationships, then I can appreciate Bynes purging her old life and starting a new truer life while filtering for people she trusts. It's possible the persona she has cultivated since leaving LA reflects the real, unconstrained Amanda Bynes. The conspicuous tattoos especially strike me as an overt rejection of her Hollywood starlet image. As much as her old fans prefer the glamorous role model, Bynes looks happy with the changes she's made. Whatever help she needs, I hope she isn't forced to pretend to be someone she doesn't want to be in the process.
Bynes's transformation may also have been precipitated by a trauma, such as a romantic failure. The first reports of behavioral changes and her career stalling coincide with a 2009-2010 love affair with rapper Scott Mescudi, aka Kid Cudi. Before her relationship with Mescudi, Bynes spoke often of her sheltered lifestyle within the protective bubble of her work and family. Her lifestyle and priorities seemed to change dramatically with her love affair with Mescudi. She has been vulnerably compulsive about her attraction to black men, especially rappers. This past winter and early spring, yearning for love was a dominant theme in Bynes's social media, perhaps referring obliquely to a man she felt she needed to ground her. (This instagram hit home with me.) While she has mentioned singing and photo shoots, her tweets have conveyed more raw sexual need than career ambition.
Or Amanda Bynes is undergoing what it looks like: a manic break. Hypersexuality is a symptom of the manic phase of bipolar disorder. She may seem like she's playing a character because her reality is distorted. Bynes's drastic changes in her look, attitude, and behavior recall both Sandy Olsson's makeover for Danny Zuko in Grease because she "needs a man" and Delirium (formerly Delight) from Neil Gaiman's Sandman. The jarringly hateful, angry vulgarity from the one-time feminine paragon reminds me of Melinda Moores in The Green Mile before John Coffey sucked out her brain tumor.
If the start of the manic break is pegged at her reportedly "paranoid and fearful" behavior on her last movie job, Hall Pass, in June 2010, the trend has stretched to 3 years. (Although her last movie in theaters, Easy A, was released in September 2010, it was filmed in June 2009.) Bynes reportedly rejected an intervention attempt in 2010. There are rumors that, in private, she showed signs of incipient schizophrenia as a teenager. Reports citing her former neighbors in LA say that in the same timeframe of her driving incidents last year, her behavior inside the gated community, such as poor maintenance of her house, no longer walking her dog, and over-all social isolation, changed months before she moved to NYC. Other reports from LA from around the time she moved paint a picture of a deteriorating mental state with increasingly severe breaks from reality played out in public. She was hiding her face from paparazzi the same awkward way in LA. Based on her tweets and accounts of her behavior, her perception of the world has shrunk, simplified, and twisted, her memory is warped, her thought process is jagged, and she's become fixated on a few recurring themes, such as sex, romance, and people's looks, most of all her own (eg, her nose, cheeks, hair, age, and weight). This paparazzo's video of Bynes before she left LA shows traits that have grown in NYC: compulsiveness, erratic reactions, denial, fixation on her beauty image, petulance, and a mercurial mood swing from fearful pleading to an angry tantrum (granted, paparazzi are vile to her and deserve her anger). Her denials seem almost sociopathic, although I can't say she is a sociopath. Beginning in 2010, tabloid articles and videos have consistently reported behavior indicating a progressive mental breakdown along with her denials. If Bynes's transformation has been a performance, it's an all-in, all-time performance.
An odd feature in many of Bynes's selfies is her right eye is shut. It looks like a wink, and she's presenting it as a signature expression, but it doesn't always seem intentional. Her notorious selfie video shows her right eye fluttering shut twice in what appears to be an involuntary movement. It's similar to her right eye closing momentarily while her left eye stays open in this animated GIF from She's The Man (filmed 2005). If her eye is shutting involuntarily, I wonder if it's related to a neurological condition. But again, speculation about her "wink" is based on evidence that Bynes chose to share on Twitter and therefore must be considered with some skepticism for that reason.
To recap, Bynes is masterfully playing an epic troll and reinventing her career, burned out and going her own way, traumatized, and/or suffering a genuine manic break.
Does she need an intervention? If she's trolling, then she's in control of herself and the situation and doesn't need help. If she's going her own way, then she may not be in control of the situation, but she's in control of herself and would be protective of her independence and personal space. If she's suffering a manic break, then she needs help.
The difficulty is how to approach her if it's a combination. Bynes seems to be going her own way and suffering a manic break. Protecting her independence and personal space while she constructs her self is reasonable, but her boundaries would also keep out help for her mental illness, especially if she's paranoid. Bynes appears unable to differentiate between healthy self-actualizing behavior and mentally ill compulsive behavior.
Where's the line? Unless she becomes a danger to herself or others, Bynes has a right to her privacy.
No one's been hurt so far. Bynes identified Nadia as her assistant. Assuming Nadia really is her assistant, then she has help. (I'm surprised no tabloid reporter has tracked down Nadia's story. That Nadia wasn't with Bynes here nor has been recorded elsewhere with Bynes brings Nadia's role into question.) Reports say Bynes has been isolated in NYC, but if she's making new friends, then we should be concerned about their intentions if her judgement is impaired. Nonetheless, while considering her condition, it's relevant that despite a supposedly debilitated mental state, the run-ins with law enforcement, and worrisome hearsay and circumstantial evidence, Bynes has taken care of herself and yet to enter into any serious trouble. For example, despite the rumors of heavy drug use, various reports say the police did not find drug evidence in her apartment, she passed her post-arrest psychiatric exam, which included drug testing, and Bynes has been lucid in court. Her attorney in LA says their interactions have been normal. If Bynes actually is out of her mind and engaging in risky behavior, especially living without handlers (besides possibly Nadia), it would stand to reason that Bynes would have been harmed, harmed others, or fallen into serious financial, criminal, or other legal trouble already. Yet, to my knowledge, Bynes's affairs are in order and she has not crossed the line from eccentric, erratic, off-putting, and perhaps risky behavior to actually harmful behavior. She's kept busy, maintained her daily living activities, and managed complex activities such as her legal cases in LA, moving across the country, plastic surgery, going out of town, and multiple changes of residence in a short span. Which implies she is in control or exceptionally functional for a woman who's supposedly out of her mind.
Indeed, the tabloid reports of worrisome behavior are mixed with contradictory reports of normal behavior. She is a talented actress who may be able to focus and act normal even when her mind has slipped. Her condition may be episodic or triggered rather than constant. Her Twitter history, with its cyclical bursts of compulsive odd and/or angry tweets, then deleting, retracting, or denying them, indicates a turbulent, shifting state of mind. Or maybe intervention isn't necessary because she's in control and not sick, and it's all a master act or extreme makeover.
Who knows? If more Hollywood starlets are dissatisfied as Hollywood starlets, maybe Amanda Bynes is the harbinger of a new trend. Revolutions are not always begun by the perfectly rational. Radical changes have swept the pop cultural landscape before with breathtaking speed. Image in the entertainment industry is artificial and only as resilient as the underlying machinery that generates it and the organic consensus that sustains it. Bynes's aggressive use of social media may change the machinery and her ostentatious rejection of the Hollywood norm may lead to an unraveling of the organic consensus. It's possible that within a few years the new normal for actresses will be more like post-Hollywood Amanda Bynes than Hollywood starlet Amanda Bynes.
However this real-life drama plays out, I believe, sadly, the glamorous Hollywood starlet, conscientious, impeccable, luscious good girl, America's sweetheart Amanda Bynes is gone. Amanda Bynes brought her to New York City to kill her, and maybe that's for the best. Whatever is driving her and however distasteful her choices, she is determining for herself the woman she wants to be. I hope she finds her self and her peace. She says she wants to be married with children and she's 27 already; I hope she finds the man she needs to love and care for her. I hope she doesn't hurt herself. If she needs help, I hope she takes it.
PS: Former child stars weigh in maturely with a variety of insights.
PPS: Some people suspect this is really Amanda Bynes. Several of the tweets are alarming.
Eric
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