Categoria: contemporary socio-economic situation

Excursus – Reality …. – or: World as Surreal Jigsaw

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

There may be good reason to think occasional writing – reference to Kant, Hegel … are bizarre, a kind of excursus, an excursion into another world of the unreal, surreal …

And there may be equally good reason to think that an occasionally look at the reality is about engaging with something surreal, something that is not real but an invention of thinking, a jigsaw of different pieces which are – and that would be the difference to a real jigsaw – randomly spread across an open field.

I frequently use the actual travel time: the time of actually moving from one place to another, hanging around on airports, being cramped into one of these tubes made from metal, wires, plastic … – the tube called aircraft and while standing at the belt, waiting for the luggage, occasionally for more or less extensive reading of different newspapers – I admit, sometimes it is just because they are there, offered for free. So censorship, own selectivity, availability simply replaced (or complemented) by chance. And I admit that especially the ‘random airport collection’ is occasionally very much a favoured one, especially as it is frequently the more ‘serious’ press that is offered to those who would easily have the money needed to buy them (or to those who paid ‘special money’ for their flight ticket). The ‘serious journalism’ not least of the business papers and the liberal press: liberal here more in the humanist sense rather than its perverted economic stunt.

And a short snapshot may be offered here, yesterday’s reading. The initial reason for writing this short ‘review’ is twofold. An article in Monday’s FAZ. Baerbel, with whom I had been sitting together in the train on the way from Freiburg to Karlsruhe – the first leg of the trip to Finland – gave it to me. An ‘analysis’ offered by Schirrmacher, titled ‘I begin believing that the left is correct’. Though the title raises the expectation to read something extraordinary, the article itself had been very much an ordinary piece about the apocalyptic mood of a bourgeois.

Than later read in the Handelsblatt, if you want: The real German Financial Times (The paper that had been established many years later as German offshoot of the original FT, which goes back to 1884

launched as the friends of the ‘Honest Financier and the Respectable Broker’, with Leopold Graham as editor

is a relative shallow brother) the news about the measures planned by Merkel and Sarkozy: ‘Core Europe hits back’, looking at the ‘anti-speculation campaign’ by the two heads of state, claiming to establish an instrument against short sales. ‘Short sales’…, sounds like ‘zero-‘ and ‘negative growth’.

The truth of zero-growth is probably that we are really facing a growth of nulls in politics and economy. Indeed, coming to the German Financial Times then, an article, criticise that there are so many Pettifoggers in the Higher Echelons, talking about the fact that Germany’s most important managers do not respect laws and contracts, ant think this is normal.

And we can read that

this is worrying: In place of a sense for justice and injustice which we would especially expect from top managers we find expertises to secure dubious practice which legal experts compose in any required dictum.

(The German term is Absicherungsgutachten).

So far so good – and we all – left and right know that we are facing a

Sick Society, to which the youth rampage in Great Britain left deep wounds

and

judges sentence the rioters in summary trial to prove the superiority of the legal system

(German Financial Times)

Ops, the sick society proves its strength literally: showing its ‘strength’, its ‘power’ by means of coercion? One has to say then that (I may add: fortunately)

The public is not impressed: The Critique of the British societal model is increasing.

How should the public be impressed? Some may even look for strength as long as the hegemonic power is able to stigmatise the youth as hooligans and looters.

But there is more at stake, getting obvious when one looks at UK plans to remove rioter’s benefits as we learn in the short note on page one of the Europe Edition of the Financial Times. As I frequently and on very different occasions pointed out: The new social state is lurking around the corner as state based on mercy and charity, any time possible subject to politicians decision to withdraw it. Again we find the search for protection, for securing measures and their legimitation by procedure rather than the legal right …

Who could deny though that some kind of regulation is needed? But does that justify such breach of principles that we thought off as fundamental and human rights?

Hans Zacher, emeritus in Munich, founder of the MPI (the one to which I am corresponding) and surely more at the conservative end of political spectrum, emphasises in his book on the Social State (which I consider as rather Kantian in its foundation) the close connection between the social and democracy, stating for instance

Therein lies another essential communality between democracy and the social. Democracy is a process. The social is a process. And both processes feed and drive each other forward.

He points as well on the appropriateness of the title of a book edited by Wolf-Dieter Narr and Claus Offe: Welfare State andMass Loyality (Cologne, 1975).

But David Marsh in the Handelsblatt has no problem in taking a broad brush in order to get rid of any Kantian notion of reason, rationality, discourse of rights, employing instead frank words: it is not about benefits for one and withholding them for others. He sees it as fact that it is

only the concentrated power that secures silence.

And back to the economy:

– also when it comes to the financial markets.

Good one may say: finally somebody who sees the need of taking control. It may well be that I am obsessed by this topic: the political, the economic and how it is separated from and merged with each other. And as much – and regrettably – both are frequently separated, here they are dangerously brought together: as if the protest by the young people, though not expressed as political protest, would be the same as the ‘protest by the bankers’, though also not expressed politically. In actual fact the self-aggrandisement of the top-managers is not really a moral abjection. It is the protest that is in some way parallel to the representatives of the heavy industry in the late 1920s/early 1930s: They are looking for expansion and for this they need political control – and this is what they are aiming at.

Could it really be financial capital that plays today the role formerly played by the heavy industry? At least it has to be noted that earlier analysis and statements, drawing on parallels between the 2008(ish) and end of 1920s-ish crisis have to be completed – and actually we may refer to an article in the weekend edition of the Sueddeutsche, where Ulrich Schadefer wrote

What an illusion – and what worrying parallel to today’s crisis, the second world economic crisis as it has to be called in the meantime.

What they mean is that the crisis lasted much longer as politicians admitted (in 1931 they called the crisis off, spoke of returning to growth and prosperity …) and that the crisis could by now means be seen as regionally limited.

If Merkel, Sarkozy and others would be willing and able to act against it (The article in the Handelsblatt states that politicians up to know helplessly watched at development but Nicolas Sarkozy and … Angela Merkel [want] to end this game that is ignoble) would doubtlessly be good.

But reading then the FT’s Europe edition one may loose hope.

Berlin and Paris rule out eurobonds

and what follows is the well-known squabble, concerned with their own – national and personal – princedom, not concerned with any ‘common good’ if such thing would exist at all.

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Finishing the Jigsaw?

The one ‘vision’ of finishing the jigsaw presents itself as total destruction: the power, creating total disorder in the name of order. One may honestly ask if the helpless reaction of a David Marsch* is not leveling the way for people like Anders Behring Breivik …

And one should ask why there is so much debate – in the Handelsblatt even a little special – on the financial market, the debt crisis and obviously related matters, but for instance only leaving a small note in the political section  in the political section on page 8 of the SZ for just briefly announcing that EON, the multinational trust, plans to lay-off 11,000 of 85,000 workforce. In the Handelsblatt it ‘scores better, being left to page 54. Admittedly the SZ has a long article on page 24 which deals more indirectly with the EON issue – but the way it is written suggests it as a distinct, somewhat distant topic.

And one may ask why there is so much talk about liberalisation, free entrepreneurship and these days the division of the German nation – until 1989 the FRG and GDR – and at the same time there is so little attention given to the fact that it had been liberalisation of the finance markets that are a major part of the crisis scenario, that free entrepreneurship led to such a power concentration that today even liberal politicians fail to keep it under control and that today the German society is deeply split by a social wall – I commented already earlier and elsewhere on this issue.

And one may consider the link between the surely in many cases helpless, desperate youth protests, the ‘protest’ by bankers, gamblers and the like, fighting tooth and nail against democratic control and the loss of hope of the middle class. An earlier edition of the Handelsblatt asks

Is it really the money? What is in many cases more important is something else: recognition. Some would say respect. What matters is the self-esteem that is rooted in the sense and certainty of being part, of being valued as human being. If somebody feels excluded of ignored does – in the worst case – not respect property of others or even respect of other people. It is also when we look at the decent of the middle classes where it is not just money, but fear of loosing the respect of society – a respect that is considered to be rightful.

Discussing middle class politics and policies is surely a matter in its own right, a wide and contradictory field. However, reeding in Saturday’s thejournal.ie about Italy austerity measures: Government ‘puts its hands into the pockets of Italian people‘ and learning that

The proposed cuts to such critical services as local transportation and welfare would have “a depressive … effect,” hurting most the underclasses and inhibiting the productive north of contributing to national GDP, Roberto Formigoni, the governor of the northern Lombardy state, told reporters

does not tell much new – and we find a similar article for instance in the German FT; but thinking at the same time about what Philipp Loepfe writes in today’s Tagesanzeiger (Switzerland), namely that Capitalism destroys itself, – a suicide based on the fact that middle classes, small entrepreneurs: the supposed core or the liberal market society is pushed to the margins by the multinational trusts … – and reading in the SZ the somewhat heartening story about a small entrepreneur of the former GDR, too old to continue the business, not finding a successor as all potential successors moved to the former West – the entrepreneur faces now the problem of not having sufficient private resources to retire …. Indeed, after The Underclass Had Been Left Behind (as Wolfgang Streeck titles in the Handelsblatt, writing about the youth protest in London, precarity moves more and more to the centre of society.

Looking at the US, all this plays not least into the hands of the political right, namely the demagogic tea-party.Ands it plays into the hands of some not less anti-growth attitudes. To avoid being misunderstood. I am the last who suggests uncritically following the mainstream growth policy – I made this occasionally clear when talking about Joseph Stiglitz and his reaction on my question during an UN-University-conference to years ago or so. But the Handelsblatt article on Tyler Cowen as ‘The Theorist of Stand Still’ shows how subtle the arguments can easily move into a dangerous direction of a new-new liberalism.

Easily celebrating ‘The Good Spirit of the Neighbourhood’ in the last article of a series in the German FT, looking at ‘Do-It-Yourself-Citizens’, going hand in hand with celebrating the ‘Entrepreneurs emerging from the Street’, and article in the same paper: it is about the new capitalists in the so-called countries of the developing world.

And it is indeed about what I had been working on over the last weeks: emphasising in Bonn during the Global Forum on Human Rights, as part of the presentation to the MPI and during discussions with colleagues: again and again criticising the holy trinity as today’s capitalist saviours suggest:

* pre-modern, feudal patronage, charity and self-help – pure individualism as talked about in the contribution with Claire

I* suppression and open violence as means of stabilising the interest of the minority – pure government; governance, dismantled from its embellishing rhetoric and wearing the veil of Corporate Social Responsibility

* globalisation of pure capitalism – the Emperor, like resurrection of a superpower to which we just said farewell.

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Today’s Trinity of father, son and holy spirit – Today’s form of securing profit, rent and wages, suggestively merged in the postmodern patchwork biography, based on and leading ‘democratically’ to precarity for everyone. – Sure, there had been even some of the top managers getting suicidal when facing the hard reality of having abused the trust of so many people, facing the reality of having been part of the machinery that destroyed the foundation of the existence of individuals as societies. They faced a kind of reality which recently presented itself to me in form of one of the great pieces of paining: Peter Paul Rubens The Large Great Judgment from 1617.

I started by saying that reference to Kant, Hegel … my be bizarre, a kind of excursus, an excursion into another world of the unreal, surreal … But in either world we surely have to search for criteria

that allow to identify what is just and what is unjust (iustum et inisutum).

         May be after all that the worlds are not so much apart as they seem at first glance.

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* Marsch (sounds like Marsh) is the German term for march, walk

Human Rights – Law and Economy

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

But I wouldn’t start from here … – Contribution to Theorising Human Rights

Indeed, it is easy to say what we frequently suggest as solution to some of the problems – the Irish way: “But I wouldn’t start from here!” And indeed, it seems to be a simple thing, just starting from somewhere else and going a smooth part, just forward. The one thing is, of course, that we frequently do not really have a choice: we are just thrown into something, 18th Brumaire: history as nightmare, made by us but under conditions we find, that out of reach for us. But for the sake of truth, don’t we have to admit that we don’t think much about from where we start – not taking account of the variety of options as conceptualised by way of a counter-reality by Musil in his  “Mann ohne Eigenshaften” (“The Man without Qualities”)?

Human Rights – Law and Economy

is the title I gave to a public lecture I had been invited to give in the series of lectures at the Max Planck Institute for Social Law and Social Policy, a lecture which is part of my stay in Munich – generously supported by the MPI (and giving work-opportunities in the library that are tempting to stay there over night) – will present some of the tentative results of the on-going research. The aim is to see the connection between Human Rights (legislation) and economy not in terms of the need to strive for just distribution of the wealth of this planet. Rather, at the core of the work are conceptual considerations. Sure, it is correct to say Human Rights begin at the breakfast table, the need to avail of sufficient resources for everybody. But we should not forget that the greatest ‘injustice’ is a system that can claim justice on the formal level. Although this is an underlying topic of the current research – and the presentation – at its heart stands the question of different modes of production and the way in which this has repercussions in the reflection on human rights and vice versa: in which way human rights perspective may impact on developments of the mode of production.

On a very pragmatic and really trivial level, working here again for a while, one has to strive with the every day’s decision from where to start: the library, the desk work (including the need to do the homework, following from teaching in Finland, Hungary and Ireland) or with meeting colleagues for shoptalk or simply for gossiping.

Narrowing the Gap between the World’s Richest and Poorest

da Peter Herrmann's Blog, posted in contemporary socio-economic situation, works, projects, publications

That had been the title of the workshop to which I contributed during the Global Media Forum, organised in June by the Deutsche Welle. In the meantime the recording is available from a site containing material from (nearly?) all workshops.

The workshop in question, organised by the attac-network, namely its German branch took place on Wednesday the 22nd. In my contribution (from about minute 24 – before Fabian Scheidler, kontext -tv, later then discussion) I emphasised the need to take up the challenge of addressing human rights issues not only and not even primarily as question of distribution. Breach of human rights is primarily an issue of the global mode of production and has to be addressed as such. This has also implications for the way in which we defined these rights.

Some of the questions are also addressed in a book which is currently with Rozenberg publishers where it is prepared for publication. Its title:

God, Rights, Law and a Good Society. Overcoming Religion and Moral as Social Policy Approach in a Godless and Amoral Society (title tbc)

Looking Back – Looking Forward: Responsibilty

da Peter Herrmann's Blog, posted in contemporary socio-economic situation, social quality, works, projects, publications

It is so easy: Talking about Human Rights as matter of charity and good will and virtues. And it is so difficult: of course we find this blunt, brutal violation: open for everybody. And of course we have to everything we can against the killing of women for religious reasons, religious fundamentalism (which, by the way “we” enlightened people of the west, can easily see as serious issue when we look at them, though we are easily overlooking when it comes to religiously motivated  violation in the christian traditions in every days life).

Some real issues are then easily left out – and can easily be seen not only here but also here – just mentioning two examples: Not just the gap between rich and the poor – but especially the fact that this growing is not least consequence of the rich gaining on the back of the poor. Just one of the interesting facts that had been mentioned during the one of the sessions of the conference that took place over the last days: tax evasion as one of the causes – and it is so easy. Another issue which cannot be easily issued is the fact that the mode of production is limited not least by its orientation on commodity production which is systematically, structurally fading out issues of producing the social as equity oriented system.

Of course, it is a complex issue – and I hope that I can make at least some contribution to the debate. It had been part of the work I undertook in Ankara and Moscow over the last month and will be part of the work which is planned for the next month – it is on the way under the title

Social Policy – Production rather than Distribution. A Rights-Based  Approach.

The final publication of this publication will hopefully be announced some time at the end of the year, proposing the need for a fundamental change of  the social policy debate. It is also meant to lay the ground for a shift in the social quality debate and its orientation on sustainability.

Indeed, human rights are about economics and the responsibility of the rich countries. – Surely something to be further discussed during the next days in Esslingen,where we will be working during the XVth International INKRIT-workshop on the Historical-Critical Dictionary on Marxism.

A short PS: on the positive, not to say delighting side: though not dominant in the published debate, sessions on such critical issues had been well attended.

On another positive side: the forum I attended and I mentioned in earlier posts took actually place in the building which in earlier years hosted the German parliament. It is now an international conference centre. Other buildings, formerly hosting parts of the German government, are now accommodating offices of the United Nations. Some shifts, at least ….

The War – Finally Won? Or: Responsibility of Education

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

“There is no such thing as society”- Margaret Thatcher is famous for these words. And here is a little bit more context – and extract from the interview she gave in September 1977 for Woman’s Own

I think we have gone through a period when too many children and people have been given to understand “I have a problem, it is the Government’s job to cope with it!” or “I have a problem, I will go and get a grant to cope with it!” “I am homeless, the Government must house me!” and so they are casting their problems on society and who is society? There is no such thing! There are individual men and women and[fo 1] there are families and no government can do anything except through people and people look to themselves first. It is our duty to look after ourselves and then also to help look after our neighbour and life is a reciprocal business and people have got the entitlements too much in mind without the obligations, because there is no such thing as an entitlement unless someone has first met an obligation and it is, I think, one of the tragedies in which many of the benefits we give, which were meant to reassure people that if they were sick or ill there was a safety net and there was help, that many of the benefits which were meant to help people who were unfortunate—” It is all right. We joined together and we have these insurance schemes to look after it” . That was the objective, but somehow there are some people who have been manipulating the system and so some of those help and benefits that were meant to say to people: “All right, if you cannot get a job, you shall have a basic standard of living!” but when people come and say: “But what is the point of working? I can get as much on the dole!” You say: “Look” It is not from the dole. It is your neighbour who is supplying it and if you can earn your own living then really you have a duty to do it and you will feel very much better!”

Indeed, it is a whole mindset – and leaving Falkland aside, leaving other wars aside which had been fought for one or the other side with success during the 1980s this can be seen as a victory not just for the then British government but for a story that finds roots in the Scottish and English enlightenment: An economic system and its justification which meant that finally the bourgeois besieged the citoyen (not by accident we speak of a bourgeois revolution and in English language [like in German language] we barely know a term for the citoyen): the free marketer and his basis: the free producer winning over the free spirit and his foundation: the free thinker.

Indeed, the free spirit, the free thinkers of that very time when Bentham, Mills and Smith urged for their stance had been very much … – well, actually from the same idealist gauge as their bourgeois complements. Still, there had been a difference. The liberalism in economic meant pleading for a system that was devised with certain characteristics undermining the freedom it claimed: this kind of competition meant the systematic founding block for economic oligopolistic and monopolist power; the accumulation mean the systematic tendency of the profit rate to fall, thus urging to financalisation … – and most importantly: the freedom of the labourer meant – as Marx emphasised – being free in the double sense of being free as person, i.e. not being owned as slaves or in a relationship of personal dependence from a landlord: free to sell their ability to work to any employer; and also free from the means of production other than their own capacity to work (thus selling their labour power rather than their labour or the product of it.)

It is not completely correct to speak of idealism in many cases – it had been just the ‘oversight’ of biased economists viewpoints, being caught in their cages of the emerging bourgeois society.

As said, their citoyen-contemporaries and actually – though not necessarily knowingly and/or willingly – allies had been surely idealists. And though the German language doesn’t have word for the citoyen, they have had plenty of them: they still occasionally claim to be the nation of poets and philosophers. One of them: the great Johann Wolfgang von Goethe.

In his scientific studies we find thought-provoking passage. He contended:

To know nature, one ought to be nature itself. What one is able to express of nature is always something specific, that is it is something real, something actual, namely something in relation to oneself. But what we express is not all that is; it is not the whole nature. … Although they can say nothing of things-in-themselves, that is, are out of relation to us and we to them, and because we recognize everything that we say to be in our own mode of representation … it is evident that they at least agree with us that what human beings can predicate of things does not exhaust their nature …*

Three positions, at first sight close to each other:

There is no such thing as society

And they are so different in their final substance:

* The free spirit, claiming individuality as personality, well educated (German language has the term Bildungsbuerger – I don’t know exactly what it means: the citoyen rooted in education? Or the citoyen living amongst educated citoyens? Or the citoyen living through behaving in an educated way? – Nuances, opening a wide array for a discourse on civilisation. In any case somebody for whom ‘egoism’ is inherently linked to, undeniable knows that this individual being is only possible and meaningful as part of a universe. And, though possibly Christian, believer in god, convinced that achieving the good depends on his action, immediately acknowledging this embeddedness.

* The utilitarian: bourgeois, surely not egoist in a strict sense, guided by moral sentiments and trusting that the good will be result of an invisible hand of gods goodness or the markets mystic power.

* The iron lady – in a way we may feel pity for her as she is assigned the role of having not only phrased this loss so well but also being responsible for it: Thatcherism. And indeed, she had been the ‘winner’, in a way we may say her evil spirit transforming Labour (if there had been such thing as real Labour – but that is another question, part of it already discussed in Marx’ work Critique of the Gotha Programme. But as much as her success had been carrying on into the future we should not give her too much credit: she continued very much what had been structurally engraved in the blind trust in the free market, and in the trust in relative productivity advantage (surely very bold: one could see Ricardo as a forerunner of Amartya’s and Martha’s capability approach**) and the cunning*** of the nation (sorry lads, I know, you only wanted the best).

In this light, MT had been only describing a reality.

Still, there is another light – and with this I come to the responsibility education has to accept. Thatcher only executed a tendency that had been strucutrally inherent in the development of the British and world economy. But nevertehless – is this part of the cunning of reason Hegel did not have in mind? – she planted the seeds: nurtured and cultivated a mindset that – with some exceptions as for instance the miners’ and printers’ strike – allowed to structures to take over: to become the one reality of various realities that would have been possible.

And this is what we, those working and studying in the academic world – should never forget: there is only one reality, but there are different ways to shape it.  Surely without pleading for an idealist approach – seeing it as matter of practice in the truest sense instead – I think we are as well responsible as we are not just working with students as they come (not least as they come from an overwhelmingly authoritarian schooling system, with the experience of living in an undemocratic, consumerist, competition oriented society …) but as well with students how they want to can be. To show how the ballast can and has to be left behind means not least showing what democracy, transparency, empowerment etc. means. Preaching virtue is not worth the paper they are written on as long as we do not – collectively – show ho they can be lived. To paraphrase the young Marx:

The idea emerges as material power if and when it merges with the mass of the people.

I want to remind you at what Ernst Bloch pointed out – and quote a summary from a text I write and that will soon be published,

highlighting four different kinds of possibilities, namely (i) the formally possible – what is possible according to its logical structure; (ii) the objectively possible – possible being based on assumptions on the ground of epistemologically based knowledge; (iii) the objectively possible – possible as it follows from the options inherently given by the object; (iv) and the objectively real possible – possible by following the latency and tendency which is inherent in its elementary form

(see Bloch, Ernst, 1959: Prinzip Hoffnung; Frankfurt/M: Suhrkamp [written in 1938-1947; reviewed 1953 and 1959]: 258-288; Herrmann, Peter: forthcoming: God, Rights, Law and a Good Society. Overcoming Religion and Moral as Social Policy Approach in a Godless and Amoral Society; Herrmann, Peter, forthcoming: Searching for Global Policy).

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* Goethe, Johan Wolfgang, 1827: Conversations with Riemar; 2.8.1827; in: Goethe’s Gespraeche; Flodoard Freiherr von Biedermann; Leipzig: 1909-1911 (five volumes): I: 505; quoted in: Goethe on Science. An Anthology of Goethe’s Scientific Writings. Selected by Jeremy Naydler; Edinburgh: Floris Books, 1996/2006: 124 f.

** I want to add that I have really great personal respect for both of them! And this statement should not in any way be misinterpreted as offense!

*** The German word for cunning is List – and it had been Friedrich List whom we may see as founder and promoter of a system of national economic systems (of innovation).

Globalisation – Sunrise

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

When the sun rises, it makes the one staying in the shadow feeling comfortable; the one who happens to be unshaded feels uncomfortable feels uncomfortable and even bad. Still, no one dares to to ‘for’ or ‘against’ such a development because the celestial body is not responsible for who and why has happened to be in the worse or better conditions. These are problems of another type: social problems related to the issue of equality, social justice, etc. Therefore, one should confront not natural developments but unjust social relations. At the same time, one should have in mind that, in spite of the objective and the subjective to be interconnected into the organic whole, the subjective factor is not able to dominate natural development. It, nevertheless, plays an important, sometimes even decisive role in human destiny.

Alexander N. Chumakov, 2008: Recognizing Globalization; in: Alexander N. Chumakov: Philosophy of Globalization. Selected Articles; Moscow, 2010: 36

Challenges and Possibilities

da Peter Herrmann's Blog, posted in contemporary socio-economic situation, general, works, projects, publications

There are approximately 40 million Kurdish people inhabiting Kurdistan. In addition, there are several millions Kurds living abroad, mainly in Europe and North America,

but other parts of the world, as well. Since World War I, the Kurdish people have been forced to migrate due to the lack of freedom and discrimination imposed by the countries occupying the area.

For decades the Kurdish people have struggled for recognition of their basic human rights, and now for the first time are drawing international attention to their cause with the establishment of the Kurdistan Regional Government, the continuous tension in northern Kurdistan and a new approach to bring relevant issues to light. These factors and the recent waves of changes in the Middle East and North Africa have created a source of inspiration to strengthen and harmonize the Kurdish efforts for the future of Kurdistan.

This is taken from the website of the World Kurdish Congress.

This “Kurdish question” is several respects employing me for a very long time already – though only occurring as a kind of background noise, but not in Luhmann’s understanding but though in the background it is very loud and very clear. And it has for me different dimensions, changing over time: simply the “old solidarity” but as well the challenges, many challenges linked espcially to the unknown. The role of religion(s), the roleof economic development which is in this case very much about a twofold or multiple peripherialisation, the question of human rights of course and also the role of the international influence: developmental politics and its too often oppressive character.

And still, it is shocking how little is known. Though I personally surely would loke to know more that I actually do, I probably have to accept the simple insight: the brain is smaller than the world. But I am glad to be able to support at least the initiative to enhance research and to join The Supportive Committee of World Kurdish Congress (WKC) the Establishment of the World Kurdish Congress (WKC)

Without ambitions to develop sound overall expertise I look forward to the debates during the first congress, planned for October in Amsterdam.

Support versus Disciplining – Disciplining through Support

da Peter Herrmann's Blog, posted in contemporary socio-economic situation, works, projects, publications

On the occasion of my recent visit in Warsaw were I attended a conference on which the translation of one of my books had been launched I had been after my presentation asked by Jan Smoleński from Krytyka Polityczna (Political Critique), an organisation of the Polish left if I would be available for an interview. Dealing with a critique of current developments and looking for the fundamental politial-economic shifts in particular in the EU-member states over the last decade(s), the interview is now available on the website of the organisation.

Making Friends

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

Talked to a doctor here in Ankara, the ODTUe-health centre, on occasion of a health care field study – medical doctor is relevant as he wants to go to a conference of professionals from the sector which he had been asked to address. The ‘which’ translated to where: Dublin – that is the place where the conference will take place.

And Ireland – together with the UK are apparently those EUropean for which he needs a visa even for this. Well, he goes there, and even goes there together with his wife and his son. And in every shop, every pub …, on any any occasion where he could spend money, so bitterly needed by the Irish economy he will say: Sorry, don’t have money anymore. Had to pay 180 Euro to the Irish government to obtain the visa.

Well, with this statement he got at least one Irish friend – though that friend still has a German passport …

There may be one thing added: foreigners, working at ODTUe, even for a short time, are immediately covered by the Turkish health system.

There may be another thing: The health reform here, very much about privatisation (finally we want to be “good EUropeans here as well), will most likely change that and finally we all have to pay – then it doesn’t matter if we are Turkish, Irish, living here or there …. – freedom and democracy. Searched for this Brecht-piece, and strangely (?) enough, the first site coming up bears the title: ‘Responsibility for a Healthy World”