Categoria: academic life – living in academia

Independent thinking ….

da Peter Herrmann's Blog, posted in academic life - living in academia, thoughts on life and its philosophy, works, works, projects, publications

… and the small steps the academic world undermines it …

Two weeks teaching are over, today with the long Sunday sessions … – it is good to see the students (well, some of them) again being around, eager to learn, interested in understanding the world and gain independent thinking. Sure, independent thinking does by no means deny the meaning of work that had been done – putting all us of on the shoulders of giants and as well on those of the forgotten labouring masses of the academic world on which the monuments of giants are erected. Al this talk about giants and the acknowledgment of the pedestals on which they stand is not just about referencing but it is of fundamental importance to learn about the work that had been done, climbing on the shoulders of giants. And this is not least a matter of methodologies, theories and methods. Only this way we are able to work according to fundamentally important principles: Asad Zaman presents them in the following way:

The first of this is to consider the central role of institutions as mediators of change. … A second principle is “methodological communitarianism,” according to which only collective action creates social change … . A third principle is the strong interaction between the social, economic and political spheres which requires simultaneous consideration of all three … . A fourth principle is the reflexive relationship between theories and history. Changing historical circumstances generate theories designed to understand this change. In turn, theories affect history, since responses to change are mediated by theories. Finally, … social change is initiated by external factors, but understanding the process of change requires considering responses to these external stimuli by various groups.[1]

But what is then about independence? Just before taking up teaching again, I submitted an article to a journal – and the style guidelines deserve in the context of learning independent thinking some special attention:

The use of personal pronouns (‘I’ and ‘we’) is to be generally avoided in the text, as are phrases such as ‘This paper will analyze …’, since the paper itself is an inanimate object and incapable of cognition.

The age old and lasting Werturteilsstreit (value judgment dispute) in new veils. This dispute was at its height before WW I, in the early 1960 and it has its clandestine renaissance now — Doesn’t the quoted formulation suggest that any academic should leave personality, opinion, values etc, at the wardrobe when entering the ivory tower? – Sure, another reading is possible: academics of all disciplines, leave the tower and act in a responsible way wherever responsibility is asked for. Not least on the streets and squares – when crossing them and blocking them …

Coming back too teaching, the challenge remains: how to prepare academics to find the door of the ivory tower, making them thoroughly aware that getting in does not suggest one has to stay inside.

It is indeed still true what had been said in thesis 11:

The philosophers have only interpreted the world, in various ways; the point is to change it.

Part of my tiny contribution to the interpretation and change can be found here in the lecture recordings, which will be frequently updated throughout the term.

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[1] Zambian, Asad, 2016: The Methodology of Polanyi’s Great Transformation; in: Economic Thought 5.1: 44-63; here: 46; I may add that I talked about methodological socialism in the book “Opening Views against the Closure of the World” which had been published earlier this year.

Blurring Borders

da Peter Herrmann's Blog, posted in academic life - living in academia, contemporary socio-economic situation, thoughts on life and its philosophy

The STOA Report on The Collaborative Economy informs that

[t]he founders of Defense Distributed are not terrorists. They are US based libertarians who support gun ownership, and found in 3D printing a means to allow ordinary people with no advanced skills to create and own a gun without having to obtain a license.
And the small print of the footnote adds:
• Under US law guns manufactured by individuals for personal use are not subject to a licensing requirement.
Of course, as a contribution on the website on 3DPrint assures
officials in every country see it as their responsibility to try and fight many new designs and new issues that someone like Wilson brings to the forefront, especially as threats of terrorism surface constantly
There is no doubt urgent need for such “protective policies” – I talked the other day to a friend who lives in a village near Brussels – she, a vivid and brave women, is afraid these days to go to Brussels, and she said many are. I do not even mention the fear of students, and their parents here in China.
There is something else that is possibly more remarkable than the technical side – and the side of the control of technology. The article from the mentioned 3DPrint-site talks about
[r]esponding to press questions regarding accessibility for terrorists with a ‘don’t really care’ attitude
and this is what “libertarians” of a certain kind do – they don’t care, to be more precise: they do care only for themselves, following one of their “great masterminds” who asked
who is society?
and replied:
There is no such thing! There are individual men and women and there are families and no government can do anything except through people and people look to themselves first.
Indeed, the(se) libertarians entered systematically the stage in the 17th century, in particular in England, the home land of the capitalism we have today. And it is the(se) libertarians whose activities evoke discussions, suggesting that
[i]t is not yet clear just how much this technology presents a real danger to the public
What is not clear? If we pose the question that technological advancement has to be applied to the advancement of private wealth, if we see the public as secondary, its wealth a result of
individual men and women and … families and no government can do anything except through people and people look to themselves first.
to quote Thatcher again, then it is clear how much real danger there is: it is the danger of the past that as nightmare burdens our society – the nightmare of total and systematic individualism … – difficult to get back under control, as known for a very long time:
Sir, my need is sore.
Spirits that I’ve cited
My commands ignore.”To the lonely
Corner, broom!
Hear your doom.
As a spirit
When he wills, your master only
Calls you, then ‘tis time to hear it.”

And they are really not terrorists?

Rudolf Hickel: Versuch eines Nachrufs auf Herbert Schui: Theoriegewaltiger Kapitalismuskritiker

da Peter Herrmann's Blog, posted in academic life - living in academia

Gastbeitrag – übernommen aus dem Rundbrief der Memo-Gruppe

Rudolf Hickel

Versuch eines Nachrufs auf Herbert Schui: Theoriegewaltiger Kapitalismuskritiker

Als die Nachricht vom Tod Herbert Schui’s sich verbreitete, war die Betroffenheit groß. Seine Mitstreiter, seine Freunde, aber auch diejenigen, die er in der Wirtschaftswissenschaft und Politik scharfzüngig kritisiert hatte, wissen, ein großer Ökonom in der Tradition der kritischen Politischen Ökonomie steht für die dringend notwendige Aufklärung nicht mehr zur Verfügung.

Seine wissenschaftliche Karriere begann er nach dem Studium der Volkswirtschaft im Forschungsprojekt „Geldtheorie und Geldpolitik“ an der gerade neu gegründeten Universität in Konstanz. Der Chef war damals der hoch renommierte Monetarist Karl Brunner aus Rochester (USA), der die Federal Reserve Bank scharf kritisierte. Da hat Herbert Schui die Giftküche der Marktfundamentalisten kennengelernt. Er arbeitete als wissenschaftlicher Assistent mit dem deutschen Monetaristen Manfred Neumann, der als Fundamentalkritiker des Keynesianismus auftrat, in diesem Forschungsprojekt zusammen. Zur Summer-University rief Brunner als Vertreter des internationalen Monetarismus viele Jahre die allerdings nur der neoklassisch und monetaristisch zuzuordnenden großen Ökonomen an den Bodensee. Herbert Schui nutzte die Chance, auf diesen Sommeruniversitäten mutig mit etwa Milton Friedman, James Buchanan, Harold Demsetz und vielen anderen Vertretern eines Marktfundamentalismus zu streiten. 1972 promovierte er erfolgreich über das System der Geldpolitik in Frankreich. Die Wahl des Landes war kein Zufall. Seine Liebe galt Frankreich und seiner Ferme, dem kleinen Bauernhof in einer damals verarmten Bergregion in der Nähe von Limoux.

1974 wechselte er zur neu gegründeten Universität Bremen. Seine Lehre zu allgemeinen Fragen des Kapitalismus aber auch zu den Grundannahmen der modernen Preistheorie wurde von den Studierenden geschätzt. In Bremen wirkten die theoretisch und politisch gefürchtete „Trio Infernale“ Schui/Huffschmid/Hickel. 1980 wechselte er zur Hochschule für Wirtschaft und Politik in Hamburg (HWP). Dort wurde er zum führenden Kopf einer Wirtschaftswissenschaft, die kritisiert, wie Konflikte zwischen Kapital und Arbeit mit neoklassischen Mythen verdrängt werden.

Mit seiner Theoriegewalt und im Bemühen um Aufklärung konnte er sich nicht auf den Elfenbeinturm reduzieren. Schon in seiner Konstanzer Zeit war der Intellektuelle bei den Gewerkschaften als Referent und Berater gefragt. Dieser Aufgabe blieb er bis zu seinem Tod verbunden.

Herbert Schui nutzte auch die Medien, um seine Botschaft gut begründet zu verbreiten. In Tageszeitungen wie der „Frankfurter Rundschau“ und später auch im „Neuen Deutschland“ und vielen anderen Organen provozierte er mit spannenden Kommentaren.

Sein Schritt in die große Politik war konsequent. Mehr als eine Legislaturperiode saß er in der Fraktion DIE LINKE im Bundestag. Dort lernte er auch, wie schwierig es wegen unterschiedlicher Bewertungen innerhalb der LINKEN sein kann, gemeinsame Positionen zu fixieren.

Wissenschaftspolitisch gehört die Gründung der „Arbeitsgruppe Alternative Wirtschaftspolitik“ – auch Memo-Gruppe genannt – zusammen mit Jörg Huffschmid 1975 zu seinen überragenden Leistungen. Er hat Positionen entwickelt, diskutiert und schließlich auch auf den jährlichen Pressekonferenzen vor allem in der Anfangsphase in Bonn vertreten.

Der Ort, an dem die Memo-Idee geboren wurde, sagt auch etwas über den Genießer aus. Mit Jörg Huffschmid saß er am offenen Feuer seiner Ferme in der Nähe von Limoux in Frankreich beim Wein. Die beiden warteten, bis endlich die Lammkeule gegart sein würde. Sie nutzten die Zeit zu einer intensiven Diskussion über die ökonomische und wirtschaftswissenschaftliche Lage. An diesem Ort vereinbarten die beiden Vordenker, ein MEMORANDUM zu einer alternativen Wirtschaftspolitik zu verfassen. Nach der Rückkehr aus dem Süden Frankreichs wurde auch ich in den Ideenimport eingebunden. Zur Erinnerung: 1975 brach die Wirtschaft ein, die Arbeitslosigkeit stieg. Das erste MEMORANDUM richtete sich gegen die damals kreierte neoklassische Parole von den steigenden Gewinnen zu Lasten der Löhne, die morgen Investitionen und übermorgen Arbeitsplätze schaffen sollen. Diese Grundkritik gilt bis heute.

Es wäre anmaßend, an dieser Stelle das gesamte wissenschaftliche und politische Werk von Herbert Schui zu bewerten und zu würdigen. Deshalb nur der Hinweis auf drei Themen, die dieser Ökonom vorangetrieben hat:

  1. Er forschte über die Grundfragen der Anatomie des Kapitalismus und entwickelte die Theorie von Karl Marx wirklichkeitsverankert weiter. Dafür steht seine Publikation „Ökonomische Grundprobleme des entwickelten Kapitalismus“.
  2. Während seiner gesamten wissenschaftlichen Tätigkeit konzentrierte er sich auf die Analyse der monopolistischen Konkurrenz mit ihren negativen Folgen für den Wettbewerb, die Gesamtwirtschaft sowie die politischen Machtverhältnisse. Dabei leistete er Pionierarbeit zur empirischen Bestimmung des Monopolisierungsgrads in Deutschland.
  3. Die Weiterentwicklung der gesamtwirtschaftlichen Analyse nach der Theorie von John Maynard Keynes hat er erfolgreich vorangetrieben. Sein Erkenntnisinteresse galt der Frage, wie ein Marktsystem auf einzelwirtschaftlicher Rationalität zur gesamtwirtschaftlichen Irrationalität in Form von Krisen führen kann. Dabei hat er auch die Verteilungsfrage in der Tradition von Michael Kalecki und Nicholas Kaldor berücksichtigt.

Herbert Schui war ein Kämpfer vor allem gegen die Mythenbildung der vorherrschenden Wirtschaftswissenschaft. Gelegentlich unterstrich seine Lautstärke den unerbittlichen Einsatz gegen affirmatives Denken. Sein Tod sollte zum Anlass genommen werden, sein Werk zu studieren. Dann könnte die Lücke, die er hinterlässt, kleiner werden.

 

____________________ Bremen, im August 2016

 

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Ergänzung Herbert war ebenfalls Mitglied des wissenschaftlichen Beirates von attac

stopover

da Peter Herrmann's Blog, posted in academic life - living in academia, quotes

Franz had consciously sought out death. In his last days, when he was dying and had no need to lie, she was the only person he asked for. He couldn’t talk, but how he’d thanked her with his eyes! He’d fixed his eyes on her and begged to be forgiven. And she forgave him.

What remains of the dying population of Cambodia?
One large photograph of an American actress holding an Asian child in her arms.

What remains of Tomas?
An inscription reading HE WANTED THE KINGDOM OF GOD ON EARTH.

What remains of Beethoven?
A frown, an improbable mane, and a somber voice intoning Es muss sein!

What remains of Franz?
An inscription reading A RETURN AFTER LONG WANDERINGS.

Before we are forgotten, we will be turned into kitsch. Kitsch is the stopover between being and oblivion.

(Milan Kundera: The Unbearable Lightness of Being)

Yes, there is also some academic dimension especially to the last lines, or a dimension to academic work and working in academia. In this perspective it can be seen as characterising academia’s current stage: characterised by self-referentiality and the apparent need to hand control over to administrations or suggested “paradigms excellence” that are caught in confirming what we know, notwithstanding that the reality that we are supposed to analyse is changing and needs changing approaches.

KCK – klatsch, cliché, kitsch

da Peter Herrmann's Blog, posted in academic life - living in academia, contemporary socio-economic situation, joys - what we usually take for it, Peter's Log, thoughts on life and its philosophy

KLATSCH

Klatsch is a German term, though occasionally used in English. And when I first saw the headline
I admittedly clicked on it in a longing for some klatsch, gossip — distraction from the expected, though still worrying news, presenting Trump’s shocking speech of acceptance. Looking at all this development, there are three things that are specially worrying. Two are pointed out in an article in The Financial Times (17/7/2016):
This week, Republicans will endorse the first US presidential nominee since the second world war to reject America’s globalist consensus. It is hard to see beyond that stark fact. Yet it is only the second most troubling feature of Donald Trump’s rise. The bigger one is his impact on the health of American democracy. Even if Mr Trump is defeated in November, it will be hard to put the genie back into the bottle. Budding demagogues will have taken note. You can denigrate most of the people most of the time and still have a shot at the main prize.
The third point, of course not to be found even in the intelligent journals of the bourgeoisie, is that such extremes as Mr Trump make us easily forget the sound criticism of the past  the “health of American democracy”? — Sure, a very sick person appears to be nearly health, of we think about the decaying corpse. But …  I am not really in the American-style Moore films. Still, having recently watched the film
Capitalism, A Love Story
I really liked the beginning, forcing us to ask the question how people in 100, 1000 or more years will think about “our times”. The Trumps, Orbans and Erdogans being comparable with Nero, Cesar and hardly allowing to see the Cicero?

CLICHÉS

Glancing over the article

it showed the perfect match between reality and cliché – even in details:

While Trump family values may not be particularly honorable, they are perversely traditional. Melania Trump told the R.N.C. audience that “Donald is intensely loyal to family,” a claim belied by his own marital history — she is wife No. 3, and No. 2 was the woman with whom he cheated on No 1. Mr. Trump has children with three different women; he blames giving his wife too much responsibility in his business for his first divorce, and his wife’s wanting him to spend too much time at home with her and their daughter for his second.
Yes, hypocrites are not shrinking from slapping into their own face. I remember Milan Kundera about whom I chatted the other day with a friend:

Do you realize that people don’t know how to read Kafka simply because they want to decipher him? Instead of letting themselves be carried away by his unequaled imagination, they look for allegories — and come up with nothing but clichés: life is absurd (or it is not absurd), God is beyond reach (or within reach), etc. You can understand nothing about art, particularly modern art, if you do not understand that imagination is a value in itself.

KITSCH

If there would not be so much bitterness coming up when thinking about recent events …, recent? Perhaps beginning in some strange way with the day when I left the French embassy in Rome: Charlie Hebdo …, a pilot crashing an aircraft with all passengers into a mountain, not being able to cope with his desperation, a “mysterious coup” in Ankara … – a friend wrote the other day that it is
not something a decent European academic can easily understand and digest
all this easily appears as kitsch – because
[i]n the realm of totalitarian kitsch, all answers are given in advance and preclude any questions. It follows, then, that the true opponent of totalitarian kitsch is the person who asks questions. A question is like a knife that slices through the stage backdrop and gives us a look at what lies hidden behind it.
It is
The Unbearable Lightness of Being
that comes to mind – in global politics of “the making history”, and also in the daily work of teaching, something I frequently mentioned on these pages.
And when speaking of bitterness it is also the inability of asking questions … – VERBOTEN, as a french friend would say.

REALITIES – THEATRALITIES

There seems to be a paradox when we are looking for answers – we can only find them with others, not searching alone, not moving alone, anti-totalitarian. And still
When I say totalitarian, what I mean is that everything that infringes on kitsch must be banished for life: every display of individualism (because a deviation from the collective is a spit in the eye of the smiling brotherhood); every doubt (because anyone who starts doubting details will end by doubting life itself); all irony (because in the realm of kitsch everything must be taken quite seriously) ….
as we read also in Kundera’s book.
Doesn’t this mean that we need a radical rewriting of the scenario, instead of the US-lead and Hungarian-regionalist applauded tightening of the reactionary course? A socio-political course that is based on criminal offenses (watch here from the docu The Corporation.), executed by psychopaths (watch here from the docu The Corporation), the political “clowns” only their executors and implementers as we saw it earlier in history.

Attempts and Contributions

My modest contribution to a DIEM-meeting in Greece these days:
The Europe we know is dead – and it worked for a long time to forge the weapon that would work first to dig the grave and then to kill the ambitions. — The ambitions? We have to be careful: the ambitions, as ideas, had beens surely valuable and meant to establish a “good society”. But especially here in Greece, the home-country of Aristotle, we know what a good society really is: he Aristotle juxtaposes chrematistike and oikonomia, only the latter being concerned with a truly integrated system, and with this he refused moneymaking as end in itself.
Talking about oikonomia meant as well to accept the limits of growth.
Europe today – and it did not learn from Greece, not from BREXIT, Nice nor Ankara – is still based on the acceptance of what we may call Capitaloscene. And the following, written by Jason Moore, can capture it:

The decisive historical expression of Cheap Nature in the modern era is the Four Cheaps of labor- power, food, energy, and raw materials. These Four Cheaps are the major way that capital prevents the mass of capital from rising too fast in relation to the mass of appropriated cheap nature – when the delivery of such cheap natures approaches the average value composition of world commodity production, the world-ecological surplus falls and the pace of accumulation slackens. The centrality of cheap nature in the endless of capital can, then, be adequately interpreted only through a post- Cartesian frame that understands value as a way of organizing nature. In this, the law of value is co- produced through the web of life. We cannot make sense of value through a Cartesian sorting of “labor and nature” – commonplace in left green thought (e.g. Clark and York, 2005). Rather, be- cause value relations encompass a contradictory unity of exploitation and appropriation heedless of a Cartesian divide, only an analysis that proceeds from essential unity of humanity-in-nature can move us forward. The present argument, then, is a brief for such a post-Cartesian – I would call it world-ecological – reading of value. The goal is to focus our attention on the relations of the oikeios that form and re-form capitalism’s successive contradictory unities of the exploitation of labor- power (paid work) and the appropriation of a global zone of reproduction (unpaid work) from the family to the biosphere.

And furthermore this capitaloscene is about unpaid labour – only that made paid labour possible. …

Indeed, we need an antroponomic shift: a shift that is not a revival of the old idea. As said, this Europe is dead and we should be ready to burry it. There is a valuable heritage of ideas though and we have to select carefully And  we have to make use of the heritage of an enormous wealth that is available, though not used for the people and projects we need. We have too make “cheaps” a source for the future, valuable and to be paid for. And to accept the limits of growth means that the corpse of the most competitive Europe, celebrated 2000 in Lisbon, has to bear the child of a most cooperative partner in a world that serves the global citizen.

Europe is dead – long live Europe.

“Interesting times” we may say …

da Peter Herrmann's Blog, posted in academic life - living in academia, contemporary socio-economic situation, Peter's Log, thoughts on life and its philosophy

“Interesting times” we may say …

… and we may say that “probably every generation, every era was in its own terms an interesting time” …

but in any case we, at least not all of us can dance it away:

“Frankly speaking I am a bit afraid”

“Ich weiss nicht, wie es weither geht”

“Ho paura!”

Yes, every generation …

****

It may appear to be about details – and these are forgotten, overlooked details – and they are details by way of being

the concrete … [being] concrete because it is the concentration of many determinations, hence unity of the diverse.

As such they are part of the long history of imperialism, colonialism ….

Today it is for instance visible in the fact that the 6 richest countries of the world host only 9 % of all refugees.

Old colonialism went fro a kind of crusades, violently occupying foreign territory; the new colonialism presenting itself as “humane” by closing borders; like the old fascism, gasifying people in concentration camps, compared with its modern form of gasifying populations as we learn from the FT-Brussels briefing, Duncan Robinson stating on the 20th of July:

A conspiracy that started in a “cosy hotel” in Brussels ended in the EU’s biggest cartel fine, after the European Commission handed five truck makers a €2.9bn bill. Senior managers from Iveco, DAF, Volvo/Renault, Daimler and MAN fixed prices and delayed the introduction of emissions-reducing technology. MAN’s decision to blow the whistle was the best financial decision the German group has made in years: it dodged a €1.2bn bill as a result.

Back to the obvious colonialisation in its new dress. Indeed, as the OXFAM-media briefing contends

This crisis is far too big for any one country to solve alone. To save and protect lives, governments worldwide must act together and responsibly. In a couple of months the United Nations and US President Obama are holding back-to-back summits in New York to address this unprecedented situation. These summits are opportunities for rich countries to commit to offering refuge to far more refugees than almost all have done to date, and for all countries to improve the way people forced to flee are treated, and provide them with a dignified future.

Thinking about this, we surely have to go beyond the sole “distribution of surplus”, moving as close as possible to production. And though Imagining a New Bretton Woods, is still not much more than a Modest Proposal, it may be one of the first steps towards radicalisaiton …

Furthermore, and importantly mind: … the concrete is part of the solidarity against this system of global exploitation – the weak showing their strength by “giving more than they have themselves”

Community Doctors: A look inside Cuba’s medical scholarship program

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The idea of inner colonialisation is usually seen in close connection with Rosa Luxemburg – it is, in a nutshell, the idea of the permanent and ongoing “primitive” or “original accumulation” as we know it from instance from Smith and Marx.

And we may think about it by recalling the occupation of the Americas by the White Settlers – the harsh reality that stood behind the kitschy and euphemistic images of Winnetou and Old Shatterhand, presented by Karl May – and looking today at their conservative successors – peacefully dumb (sorry for ads – the clip itself is German/English); and aggressively taking over power (sorry for ads – the clip itself is German/English)

****

“Frankly speaking I am a bit afraid”

“Ich weiss nicht, wie es weither geht”

“Ho paura!”

– And there are enough who have good reasons to be afraid – for instance Erdal. Or Thuli Madonsela

And there still is something we, in the jobs of teachers and researchers have to do, resisting the permanent and ongoing inner colonialisation: We cannot take the fear away, but we have to teach about the conditions under which fear develops, searching together for ways to change this reality …

… living trustfulness as matter of accepting the other and supporting confidence – as condition for being active, for resisting

… as matter of Dreaming of a Butterfly becoming possible and true, rising against eagles and vultures …

… this way we may be searching and finding together with others – colleagues and students valuable people, truly acknowledging the value of people.

Missed opportunity – or Io e Caterina

da Peter Herrmann's Blog, posted in academic life - living in academia, contemporary socio-economic situation, projects, social quality, thoughts on life and its philosophy

Topics in the headlines change – though in some cases it is only about names and institutions.

‘Migration’ for quite a while the dominant topic had been surpassed by BREXIT, pushing the GREXIT to a somewhat historical stage, though they apparently catch up again with T May-gie – may be Theresa May, the potential Iron-Lady the II, will once be known this way.

Headlines changes and so do names – or we may say we still find the old names in the headlines, though roles and positions change: Isn’t it a historical irony that Mr B is not only invited by Goldman Sachs for a bit of work, but that he is invited

to advise the bank on the U.K.’s negotiations to leave the European Union

(Sure, asylum policies need to be changed – so he may find a place in the UK …)

Well, from his previous experience he knows at least potentially enough about the European crisis – though it may be that he missed talking to people saying good-bye.

Be it as it is, there is another thing that keeps my mind busy these days – and it is going a bit back in history. The long way back leads to Narcissus, the bit shorter way to part of the history some of us still know too well – it leads back to Hitler, Truman and Adenauer:

There were three fathers of the division of Germany: Adolf Hitler, because the division was essentially a result of World War II and the German genocide. Harry Truman, as he commenced the Cold War against Communism to avoid that the US-war boom would enter into a recession and developed West Germany as loyal province of the United States in Europe. Germany was divided and in addition the exercise terrain for the troops had been secured by the NATO. Konrad Adenauer, who secured with the Federal Republic that for part of Germany the ‘western model’ – he vilified the other part of Germany as ‘Soviet Zone’ and in 1952 he – as well as the United States – declined the offer of the Soviet Union to German unification: ‘It is better to have half of Germany under complete control than having a limited control over the entire Germany’.[1]

Or in other words:

It is better to have a western-democratic FRG than to have a unified neutral Germany.

In the medium-term – or we may say, one of the possible medium-terms – we may look at Lisbon and the pronounced strategy striving for Europe to be the most competitive region.

Without doubt, such classifications, periodisations and emphasis of any historical incisions are always problematic. But paradoxically the closer look at single events and individuals frequently allow us to understand the larger picture.

1987 Maggie T. contended that

there is no such thing as society

and with this she recognised very well where society was going: a utilitarianism led, competition based understanding of society: individuals being responsible for their greatest happiness and not allowing to keep in mind even the slightest notion of the aim: that it should and would be greatest happiness for all. One can and has to say a lot against the classical utilitarians as for instance put forward by Bentham and Mills; but one has to acknowledge that they wer at least loyal to the vision of ‘such thing as society’ and that it would be there forever due to notions of solidarity and responsibility and morality.

And it also meant  that at least in their vision the

bellum omnium contra omnes

was rejected.

Then it could even be translated into a vision like

Better a cooperative Europe, controlled by all instead of a competitive Europe in the interest of s few.

We barely find a discussion that makes this link of conservatism – the link between human beings as individuals and nation states as patriam populum et proprium suum, the fatherland of its own people and property – explicit …, and it seems not to be changing with fatherlands being increasingly motherlands.

And part of this constellation is easily overlooked – for instance also by Juergen Habermas, writing

The Union is put together in such a way that basic economic decisions that affect society as a whole are removed from democratic choice. This technocratic emptying out of the daily agenda with which citizens are confronted is no fate of nature but the consequence of a design set out in the treaties. In this context the politically intended division of power between the national and European levels also plays a role: the power of the Union is concentrated there where nation state interests mutually block each other.

This is of course not wrong – but it is only half of the truth, and committing the other half makes it possible that nationalists reemerge: the other half clearly is: power, in the Western-European countries as power of a minority over the majority … – the sentence

‘It is better to have half of Germany under complete control than having a limited control over the entire Germany’

gets another meaning here than just being concerned with the relationship between two countries – and in the 60s and 70s Juergen knew this too well.

——

Many thoughts had been employing my mind the last days and weeks – reading Camus’ L’Étranger and living a bit like Simmel’s Stranger, remembering Hegel’s Cunning of Reason and facing the Curse of Unreason, the Eclipse of Reason as so we depicted by Horkheimer. But also may others. After talking the one day with Yi about The Other Dimension, I stumbled upon a film-clip about robots: somewhat funny, somewhat frightening. One aspect that caught my special attention: the robot saying to somebody ‘Pleased to meet you’. My question is not ‘can the computer be pleased’ my question is: ‘Did we degrade ourselves to such a low level, did we programme ourselves in that way WE ARE THE ROBOTS?

And this is how we programme students, to be better business-people and better politicians of the future and … smilingly greeting

Pleased to meet you

before they wipe out the lives of real people, taking about BREXIT, though not asking if is

actually the real topic.

Indeed, a missed opportunity, and I still do not see the debate on a

better a cooperative Europe, controlled by all instead of a competitive Europe in the interest of a few.

But I found one sentence in the video on the robots that caught my special attention. The celebration of one of the successes, namely the machine

being able to follow the leader

——

Something else caught my attention, not least these days while the academic world is busy with marking and deciding about the future of lives (spending so much time for administration instead of allowing us to be together with students, learn from each other, work together for a common future).

I recently mentioned the article, dealing with the envisaged future of universities as fun-parks. There is one sentence in the article of which the meaning is easily ignored:

You are also defining the higher-education experience in a way that has nothing to do with academic rigor, with intensive effort, with the testing of students’ boundaries and the upending of their closely held beliefs.

So, the alternative to fun-park is drill and Nuremberg Funnel?

I am excited by those students who come to me after the exams – not to as for a change of their marks, but to ask for more time needed to develop understanding, for gaining trust in a lived and livable future. And I feel ashamed working within a system that does only allow time for competition, offering little time for the real fun:

Man only plays when in the full meaning of the word he is a man, and he is only completely a man when he plays.

This is what the robots cannot do – and this what a competitive robot, ops, a competitive Europe surely cannot offer.

The digital game should never been mixed up with the digitalisation of the player.[2]

And the religion should remain in the church and not enter crusade into the life again – by occupying our thinking ….

And so we have to do the thinking ourselves …, and find the right action …

===============

[1]      Es gab drei Väter der Teilung Deutschlands: Adolf Hitler, denn im Wesentlichen war die Teilung eine Folge des Weltkrieges und des deutschen Völkermordens. Harry Truman, denn um die Kriegskonjunktur in den USA nicht in eine Rezession münden zu lassen, begann er den Kalten Krieg gegen den Kommunismus und entwickelte Westdeutschland als loyalste Provinz der USA und Standbein in Europa. Deutschland wurde geteilt und der Truppenstationierungsplatz über die NATO zusätzlich abgesichert. Konrad Adenauer, der mit der Bundesrepublik für einen Teil Deutschlands den westlichen Weg sicherte, den zurückgelassenen Teil als Sowjetzone diffamierte und 1952 – wie auch die USA – das Angebot der Sowjetunion zur deutschen Einheit ablehnte: „Lieber das halbe Deutschland ganz als das ganze Deutschland halb’.

[2]      Watch the eyes, minute 3.28 – sure, all after the initial order at 1:42: don’t speak

More to be done

da Peter Herrmann's Blog, posted in academic life - living in academia, contemporary socio-economic situation, works

Please find a reminder – there is still a possibility to prepare your participation by announcing your input – and the is in any case the opportunity to join our debates, more important then ever.

22nd Conference on Alternative Economic Policy in Europe

from 15-17 September 2016, organised by the EuroMemo Group and jointly hosted with the Faculty of Economics at the University of Coimbra in Portugal

The European Union: the Threat of Disintegration 

The EuroMemo Group conference 2016 will be jointly hosted with the Faculty of Economics at the University of Coimbra, from 15-17 September 2016 (Thursday-Saturday). We would like to invite you to attend the conference and to submit paper proposals. Please find the call for papers here.

All papers that present an alternative economic perspective on the conference theme ‘The European Union: the Threat of Disintegration’ are welcome. In particular, we encourage submissions specific to one of the workshops outlined in the programme below.

The programme will be as follows:

Thursday afternoon: The state of the Union

  • Hans-Jürgen Bieling (University of Tübingen): Political State of the Union
  • Catherine Mathieu (OFCE/Science Po): Economic State of the Union
    • Ricardo Cabral (University of Madeira): The politico-economic situation of Portugal

 

Friday morning: The second day will be dedicated to key themes of EU policy within six different workshops.

 

Friday afternoon: Plenary on policy proposals from workshops and special plenary ‘Disintegration or Refoundation of the European Union?’

  • Cédric Durand (Paris 13 University)
  • Fabio De Masi (MEP GUE/NGL)
    • Angela Wigger (Radboud Univ. Nijmegen) (tbc)

 

Saturday morning: Planning meeting: EuroMemorandum 2017 and other activities

Proposals for papers together with a short abstract (maximum 250 words) should be submitted by 10 July. If possible, please indicate the workshop which the proposal is intended for. If accepted, completed papers should be submitted by 25 August so that they can be read before the conference.

We strongly encourage participants to submit short papers (10-12 pages) and to explicitly address policy implications.

If you would like to participate in the conference and/ or submit a paper proposal, please copy the registration form below into an email and reply by the 10 July 2016 to info@euromemo.eu.

Die Letze Reise/Last Journey

da Peter Herrmann's Blog, posted in academic life - living in academia, contemporary socio-economic situation, thoughts on life and its philosophy

Hans Jürgen Krysmanski, ….

… hat mit seiner Umwälzungswissenschaft unseren Blick auf Imperien, auf ihre Kriege, auf Richistan und ihre Geschichte verändert – neugierig, spöttisch, lachend, skurril, charmant, klug, tückisch, gebildet, nachdenklich und auf alle Fälle in Schwarz, meistens mit Rundgläserbrille und manchmal als Irrläufer, in Cowboystiefeln, der durch alle Praxen, Theorien und Imaginationen zappte und surfte, die er kriegen konnte. „Une autre fin du monde est possible“ stellte jüngst ein Nuit Debout-Graffiti richtig. Ein Ende ohne ein Vorleben in einem Imperium der Milliardäre wäre ein guter Anfang – auch für eine letzte Reise.

Ein Nachruf, geschrieben von Rainer Rilling.