Categoria: thoughts on life and its philosophy

The Iron Lady and the Postman

da Peter Herrmann's Blog, posted in general, thoughts on life and its philosophy

Well, many of us complained at the time: The Iron Lady Margret Thatcher reflecting in an interview for Women’s Own that

there is no such thing as society.

There are surely different ways to look at this statement. And one perspctive came to me the other day, something of a deeper meaning getting entirely hold of me, something demonic.

So, what happened? Well, I finally got a new job: A job as postmaster. Yes, I worked the first day in “my own post office”. A green machine standing in the Student Centre at UCC. Three steps: 1) weighing the letter and saying what it actually is: a letter, a large envelope, a parcel …, 2) then choosing where it should go: country of destination. Then 3): buy a stamp (and if applicable: add airmail sticker). I completed the three steps successfully and said goodbye to the postman, looked around (checking if somebody would observe me but there had not been anybody, really – just some people holding the paper under the arm, making phone calls while walking with others through the hall …, just society around me). Feeling safe, I nodded kindly at the postman, i.e. myself: “Very kind of you …” I walked away, thinking about the next possible step: I take the letter with me the next time I travel … – and at that time it meant that I would soon travel again: I booked the flight on the internet, checked in already (leaving soon enough), booked online the train ticket for the next leg of the trip … No, at least up to now nobody stood at the door of any aircraft, handing em over the key: “you know where to go, don’t you? …, and most of it is autopilot anyway …

It is not really the technical side which I see as decisive. It is a different point: the perversion of freedom by welding it with individualism as it is in part grounded in the enlightenment.

We easily forget this side of enlightenment: it aimed on establishing the individual – and its civil society – as counteracting the feudal “state”. The goal: establishing the free individual. And as such it is actually an issue standing at the very outset of modernity – surely gaining the upper hand and not being the only option of historical development, but also surely nothing that comes as a surprise. And if we look at this development a little bit closer, we can clearly see that we may also gain an explanation for the fact that many of the complains frequently return on the agenda, though they may take different expressions – the same statements brought forward in different wordings: Goethe’s Sorrows of the Young Werther; Schiller’s Letters upon the Æsthetic Education of Man or Rousseaus social romanticism as for instance expressed in his Emile.

Part of the core standing behind the perceived and expressed loss – and the often implied longing to some form of suggested natural order – is surely the simple matter that the world seems to be entirely commodified.

However, much of today’s critique concerning the over-commodification, the alienation of consumer society sounds idealist-Aristotelean insofar as it presumes a pre-economic approach to value. Marx, in the first volume of The Capital, engaged on this topic, acknowledging:

In the first place, he (Aristotle) clearly enunciates that the money form of commodities is only the further development of the simple form of value – i.e., of the expression of the value of one commodity in some other commodity taken at random

(Marx, The Capital: Chapter 1.3)

And he quotes Aristotle – we read:

“Exchange,” he says, “cannot take place without equality, and equality not without commensurability”

But then he importantly opines:

Aristotle therefore, himself, tells us what barred the way to his further analysis; it was the absence of any concept of value. What is that equal something, that common substance, which admits of the value of the beds being expressed by a house? Such a thing, in truth, cannot exist, says Aristotle. And why not? Compared with the beds, the house does represent something equal to them, in so far as it represents what is really equal, both in the beds and the house. And that is – human labour.

With this we arrive, indeed, at what is in present context the core of the matter in question: a certain factuality of the loss of society. It is the paradox, emerging as de-valuation of actual labour by establishing under the new conditions a separate, distinct value, seemingly outside of, external to the seedbed for which it germinates. This paradox of the the manifestation of the fundamental split between the different dimensions of human activity is expressed by the frequent emphasis within Marxist theory of the distinction between use value and exchange value and already the difference between labour and work on which Engels adds in a footnote in the first chapter of The Capital

The English language has the advantage of possessing different words for the two aspects of labour here considered. The labour which creates use value, and counts qualitatively, is Work, as distinguished from Labour, that which creates Value and counts quantitatively, is Labour as distinguished from Work.

So we may go today a step further than Engels did when he suggested in his work on the Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State a distinction of “the production and reproduction of the immediate essentials of life”. He opined

On the one side, the production of the means of existence, of articles of food and clothing, dwellings, and of the tools necessary for that production; on the other side, the production of the human beings themselves, the propagation of the species.

And we may add, increasingly today, a third dimension to it: the production and industry of conscience and appearance, including the production of apparent values, manifested in un-founded money, capital that exists (so it seems) only by flotation as its very process. The essence of meaninglessness.

This paradox, which is very fundamental to capitalism in general, is today furthered to the extent to which we arrive at a stage where social labour apparently does not – or increasingly does factually not – need the technical dimension of combining with other labour, i.e. labour of others. It is combined in the unitarian act of a relationship between man and machine. And with the fetishisation of the machines it appears as the relationship between the human being to her/himself. Self-reflexivity in extenso. The Hegelian absolute idea perverted to the absolute self, being able to claim god-likeness. The complex relationality, defined by the dimensions of

  • relating to oneself – the identity in the narrow, self-reflexive sense
  • relating to the ‘general other’, unspecified as other person
  • relating to the specific other, specified as person belonging to a certain class or ‘socially relevant ‘ group
  • relating – definitely not least – to the ‘external’, ‘organic’ nature

(see e.g. Herrmann, Peter, forthcoming: Social State – Welfare State and then? Where to Move from the Welfare State? – A Cooperative State on Sustainable Sociability as Perspective for Innovation) is now entailed in one single inter-act: that between the individual and the machine. But what is more, by this new virtu-re-ality time is equally repealed. It culminates in the one act and – apparently at least – gives us the feeling of having power, the control over time in the here and now. What is wrong with it? The simple fact that the existence determines the consciousness as we know fro the Preface to Karl Marx’ Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy.

And as such it is twice caught in a trap: By the fact that the existence is a wrong one, one of illusion. And then by the fact that the wrongness of the consciousness actually comes to the fore latest when it is confronted with the real existence: the fact that we lost not only control over the reality – in space and time – but that in addition we lost potentially the power to change it: to total individual that has lost power over society to the extent to which s/he married it with the alienated act of work.

The matter’s roots can be found long time ago – and are from the beginning of their germination deeply ingrained in the entirety of modern societality, interpenetrating societal, social and individual development. And as such they are closely linked to a ‘positivation’ of existence, as such a matter of solidified reification, development of accountability and thus freedom – the freedom as outlined in the various definitions as for instance given by Schiller in the letters mentioned above, or to take another example: by Spinoza. In his understanding freedom is not least a matter of reaching out to the substance of things in question

Per substantiam intelligo id, quod in se est, & per se concipitur: hoc est id, cujus conceptus non indiget conceptu alterius rei, a quo formari debeat.*

(Spinoza, Baruch, 1677: Ethica Ordine Geometrico Demonstrata. et in Quinque Partes Distincta)

In abstract terms, this is surely also linked to the definition of freedom S spelled out by Frederick Engels:

Freedom therefore consists in the control over ourselves and over external nature, a control founded on knowledge of natural necessity; it is therefore necessarily a product of historical development.

(Engels, Frederick, 1894: Anti-Dühring. Herr Eugen Dühring’s Revolution in Science; in: Karl Marx Frederick Engels Collected Works. Volume 25: Frederick Engels: Anti-Dühring. Dialectis of Nature; London: Lawrence & Wishart, 1987: 1-309; here: 106)

But it turns out to be a double-edged sword as the price to be paid should not be overlooked.We see at the same time the attempt of a fundamental separation within the process of thought.

The untamable organic processes and the linked magic of the renaissance are left to adventurers. The matter of the industrious bourgeois, emerging from craftsmanship, who requires a rational enterprise, is the manufacture. So we can state in very general terms: Economic and scientific progress are in the realm of crafts-related technology linked to the technology in manufacturing. Only when on the foundation of such crafts-related technology the real enterprise could be established, mechanisation of the entire process of production cold be established. And only when mechanisation, excluding the main natural forces, interpenetrated industry, we find the space for subordinating the natural forces under the human will: scientifically and economically.

(Borkenau, Franz: Der Übergang vom feudalen zum bürgerlichen Weltbild; Paris: Libraire Félix Also, 1934: 9)

It is not least the individual now gaining a new position as now, looking at the human being it

is play which makes man complete

as Schiller says in the XVth of his letters.

However, this freedom, the possibility of playfulness is immediately strangulated: to the extent to which the means of production are in the private hands of individuals, we find the development of a society that actually does not exist – and in this sense there is, indeed, no such thing as society. Instead there is a society that is made up of individuals.

Of course, a complex issue as we are, for instance, still dealing with class individuals. And of course, it is a complex issue as being class individual means also today the property bound control over the means of production. But it is also a complex matter as importantly the current development of the means of production allows at least on the level of establishing individualism as ground pattern – the inescapable and permanent reference of the self to himself.

But here we arrive at a further paradox, the emergence of an anthropological stance of this modernity which permanently mystifies the present existence, the existence in the presence which is shifted into eternality. In a lecture about “Men in a Civilised World” Herbert Marcuse highlighted 5 points, still highly relevant for today – points that did not loose anything of their validity by the fact that we are supposedly living in a secularised world. These are

  • seeing life as tribulation – we first have to earn it by labouring
  • suggesting the better life as gratification
  • supposing life as battle, as effort to survive, pleasure being a matter of organisational principle – this actually translates into striving for productivity in favour of “society”
  • nevertheless, leaving the “refined values”, contemplation for something that exists outside of daily existence: during leisure time after work, at weekends
  • and not least as matter of the afterlife, where spirit and soul unite and finally – Dante in his Divine Comedy so eloquently writes about the painful way to be gone before we arrive – we reach supposed “real life”, the ultimate … self in the other, in god which is nothing else than the ultimate loss of self as we finally and definitely giving up the very core of human existence: its social character.

But apparently we can get there before now, earlier and still in the here and now: The apparent production of the self by her/himself and the inescapable life in a world of appearance. – The right we have now, reaching a paradox again, seems to be the right to determine our self, the right of independence, the right to play. But actually these rights to freedom are now nothing else than the negative rights of being protected against being entirely, physically swallowed by the machine, similar to the rights Georg Jellinek talked about when – in his Contribution to the History of Modern Constitutional Law, writing about The Declaration of Human and Citizen’s Rights – looked at the turn from the 19th to the 20th century at these rights as matter of protection against the state: negative in this sense – a matter of protection, not of production – a board game: seemingly overboarding, factually following the board that determining the rules, leaving the many to string puppets. All sounds of the symphonic play centred on production, on economy – but it is not the sound that determines the existence, it is still the real life – and it is not the need to compose different songs, but the need for an entirely different music.

Hello Mr postman …

——

As said In the beginning, I would be travelling soon – in the meantime I did. All working perfect – with e-bookings of tickets and e-check-ins. All made even easier by the fidelity cards of the different airlines, railways and hotels, which nowadays replace the fidelity-smile between Grainne at the travel agency and me, fidelity-wink by Paul … And I still am travelling – the only that actually nearly went wrong …, well the other day I looked on the ticket, saw the ten and thought I have so much time before the train leaves … – and fortunately I looked a bit later again, finding out that that ten stood for the date, the actual time had been 8:05 and all this happened at 7:58, without setting timer and alarm-clock things happen, of course.

Half-time which brought me to Berlin. I leave the train at central station, walk from there, being overtaken by a young women, from somewhere in Asia. While walking she takes the camera out of the bag, Just after she passed me, she stops, takes a photo: the Reichstag – a brief stop only, and soon she moves on, takes another photo and walks quickly towards the Brandenburger Tor. Tourists – individuals and groups … . I interrupt my walk before moving into the central quarters of the self-appointed new German Empire. A small, plain monument, erected to remind us of the individuals who had been killed by the fascist regime, reminding us of what happened between 1933 and 1945. Something that had its roots in the irresponsible individuals and an individualism – seemingly collectivist, but …, yes lacking the negative rights of being protected against being entirely, physically swallowed in the concentration camps. In front of the building of the German Parliament moment of silence for me – remembering those individuals who lived as personalities, being well aware of the relations in and by and for which they developed.

… – I have to move on now, have to go into the building, being swallowed by a small group of people, who apparently came from a meeting in another part of the complex of government buildings around.

_________________

*Translation: By substance I mean something that is in itself and that is conceived through itself, in other words something of which a conception can be formed independently of another conception.

four in one – A Contribution to the International Women’s Day

da Peter Herrmann's Blog, posted in general, social quality, thoughts on life and its philosophy

Four-in-One-Perspective – or One Divided by Four Equals One

Thoughts in connection with Frigga Haug’s presentation of Die Vier-in-einem-Perspektive (Haug, Frigga, 2008/20092: Die Vier-in-einem-Perspektive. Politik von Frauen für eine neue Linke; Hamburg: Argument Verlag – reference [i.e. page numbers in brackets], where not specified otherwise, is made to this book. Translations by P.H.)

That the capitalist welfare state, based on the rule of law, can only maintain itself by simply prolonging the strategies which arguably led to its dominance is not only obvious from the very recent developments, i.e. the severe crisis emerging from the collapse of the finance system. If we are realistic, this will be historically just one crisis amongst many – and leaving its harshness aside, we have to accept that the capitalist system itself is still very well able to cope with it in its own terms. Even more so, it is exactly at the moment of this severe economic crisis that capitalism comes to its height: unadorned, free of all supposed ‘ballast’ and ‘social junk’ it shows its immaculate purity, its true face: here ‘immaculate’ simply means that it is only concerned with what capitalism in its purest form is about.[1]

There is a ‘but’, of course: as well known this ‘pure capitalism’ undermines its own existence on at least four dimensions.

* First, this system fails in its own terms. We may look at different dimensions as for instance the tendency of the profit rate to fall. Two other aspects may be highlighted as they play a particular role at stages of developed capitalism: (i) developed capitalism is very much based on mass consumption – a feature that is not only linked to the so-called Fordist stage but goes much beyond. However, put bluntly, pure capitalism is undermining this condition as it systematically prioritises mechanisms in order to reduce income – (i) by way of (aiming on) low wages (with major impact on purchase power), (ii) by way of keeping social support low and relying on family support based on the argument of subsidiarity (‘privatisation of the social’ which is of course a contradiction in terms) and (iii) by asking for low (corporate) tax (lowering this way possible public demand).

* Second, the latter two moments are, however, also moments of further capitalisation.[2] On the one hand it takes the form of privatisation of economic activities which are at their very core public (already moving into the areas of ‘privatisation of public security’. On the other hand it is about the inclusion of an increasing array of issues into the realm of capitalist production.

* Third, the legitimacy of this system is further limited with every further move into any of these directions. On the one hand we may point on the development that had been characterised as contradiction in terms: the ‘privatisation of the public’ and the ‘individualisation of the social’. On the other hand we have to point on the increasing and specific ‘socialisation’ as it emerges from the increasing and even complete absorption of previously private household (production) by the market – such process goes much beyond colonialisation of life worlds: we are witnessing the complete subsumption of all spheres of life under the principle of a profit-based ‘market’ system – already well known from the works of Karl Marx. This represents an objective dimension of redefinition. And we are witnessing a specific hegemonisation as we know it from the works of Antonio Gramsci and which can be seen as subjective dimension of redefinition.

* Fourth, capitalism is thus historically characterised by another fundamental contradiction: Pure capitalism cannot survive as it is economically undermining the conditions of its existence (mass consumption and ‘fair competition’); socially creates an increasing number of ‘outcasts’, not least by pushing people into precarity and involuntary freelance work (‘self-employment’), thus undermining its legitimacy; ecologically it is not able to solve the fundamental problems as it is based on the feature of growth as end in itself, thus being inclined to unscrupulous exploit fossil resources. However, capitalism cannot survive either by even modest alteration: changing the system of remuneration and introducing protective mechanisms around working conditions, introducing social protection, in particular by acknowledging the social character and meaning of certain previously private activities and environmental protection even of a modest kind are undermining the system as well: requiring its distancing from profit as central criteria of control ….

This means not least that especially at such a crossroads thinking about alternatives faces in particular the difficult fourfold challenge of (i) developing alternatives that are going far beyond the current system, moving beyond alterations; (ii) avoiding voluntarist approaches, (iii) not loosing out of sight that such search and future reality has to take the given conditions into account – not only as something given but furthermore as something that developed and can only be understood in the perspective of its development and finally (iv) avoids glorification of patterns that had been characterising earlier historical stages, at the time appropriate but not allowing being (mechanically) transferred.

Frigga Haug, based on the experience from research in varied fields and following a feminist research strategy, took up this challenge by the presentation of the Four-in-One-Perspective. Politics by Women for a New Left. It is a compilation of contributions with very different foci, however: as such providing more and other than a patchwork. The overall topic is the search for a new strategy, but more so: for a different (understanding of) society. Point of departure is not primarily the analysis of the general crisis of the current epoch of capitalism. Rather the analysis of the fundamental division of society – going hand on hand on the one hand with the division of labour and on the other hand with the social division as class division and here even more the gender division are at the centre of the debate. And the second angle is a general vision of the society that is envisaged, asking for social justice which is derived from the most fundamental principle of equality.

In concrete terms the elements of society, societal structuration and politically-strategic development of society are located in four areas, namely employment, reproductive work, cultural development and politics from below.

Importantly the approach is not simply looking for policy changes – although they play also a role in some contributions (for instance explicitly in the contributions on ‘The [female] patient in the neoliberal hospital’ or ‘Quota for women and gender mainstreaming’) – but for politics. At least from the perspective of mainstream policy making (sic!) and in particular in the Anglo-American perspective this is an issue that needs to be emphasised. This is even more important as the now widespread orientation on governance in the EU-(member states)-context is actually more closing the orientation than it is opening up perspectives. The fact that more ‘stakeholders’ are involved – thus opening the ‘stage’ – has the paradox effect of narrowing the agenda, being one moment in the increasing technical and instrumentalist approach we find in the political arena.[3]

Implicitly this means that the feminist perspective – and this is an important point – is in actual fact not so much a feminist perspective in a restrictive understanding. Although there are important aspects explicitly coming from such perspective in the strict sense, I would see it with a different emphasis. At the end it may be called a ‘genderist perspective’, meaning that we are dealing with a perspective that is not primarily proposing a politics by women but in actual fact politics that takes societal arrays into account that had been and still are faded out, a fact that is very much due to the fact of being issues that are treated in this way due to the fact of their gender bias but where we are mainly dealing with issues that may be not less importantly approached by an overall perspective. This is made clear on another occasion – the presentation of the perspective the in an article in Das Argument (Haug, Frigga: Die Vier-in-einem-Perspektive als Leitfaden für Politik; in; Das Argument; Hamburg: 291/2011: 241-250), where we read:

On this basis we can see that for women the question cannot be simply about equality within these structures of the system but this very structure is at stake. Consequently the segregation of many areas as politics on women-issue is emerging as critical point from a feminist perspective. This segregation made politics on women-issues a trap: in last instance moving within such realm meant to maintain the overcome structures. Therefore the 4-in-1-perspective develops into politics concerned with general liberation.

(242)

Of course, the question ‘And what is with women?’ remains an important one, going through all spheres of life. However, not less important is – and this in actual fact one of the main threads through the work in question – that many issues are societal in a much wider sense. Though, being here and now ‘gender issues’, requiring a feminist approach in the narrow sense, they are not less issues that also need to be approached in a wider perspective. Of course, this can easily lead to hair-splitting debates. But Frigga Haug makes also reference to the importance of related questions when she makes reference to the contributions by Althusser and Structuralism (passim).

Therefore some hesitation emerges when the core of the project is presented by saying that

we develop as guideline for a perspective of politics a fundamental modification of division of labour. We aim on a systematic conjunction of those four areas of human practice.

(20)

This is followed by a short elaboration of the underlying understanding of the relevant areas, namely employment, reproductive work, cultural development and politics from below. In my view the notion of ‘four areas of human practice’ deserves special emphasis and I would suggest going a step further, seeing all the areas as matter of a process of relational appropriation. Leaving other aspects aside, my attempt is to open the door for two important aspects: first such approach may bring us a step further towards a thorough integration of these areas and with this it allows us secondly to elaborate the genuinely social dimension of human practice. Institutional forms and also the core-reference of the activities: production of commodities and means of sustenance, production of the ‘humane human’, the lifelong unfolding of own personality and the codetermination of society (s. ibid.), are in this perspective getting secondary, the social personality move centre-stage. We can specify this by the following systematisation of relationality, we are dealing with

*  auto-relation

*  group-relation (as general sociability)

*  ‘other’-relation (as ‘institutionalised and ‘defined’ socialbility – including class relationships etc.) and

*  environmental (‘organic nature’) relations.

Mind, however, this systematisation is not more than a heuristic, analytical tool and we have to avoid the danger of drawing a horizontal dividing line, aiming to replace the vertical division. With this perspective a notion brought forward by Michael Brie in his short Draft of a Political Strategy based on Frigga Haugs Four-in-One-Perspective (linked from http://www.friggahaug.inkrit.de/ – 02/12/2011 10:16 a.m.) opens a trap: he orients on a

strong sector that is characterised by public finance and extensively self-organising sector in the area of education, culture and science, which is not least nurtured by the voluntary engagement of the many who live socially secured

(1)

and presents the ‘exchange society’ as something that is globally given and more or less unquestionable. It is surely a matter of a new mode of life. But Frigga Haug goes beyond that – without psychologisation/individualisation – stating that

the ‘fundamental question’ of sociology, concerned with the relationship between individual and society is augmented by the psychological question, asking for the architecture of the individual her/himslef. With thus we do not think individual and society as initially separate in order to be subsequently able to ask for their link/interpenetration as it is usually undertaken in sociology. The other way round we begin by saying that human beings are soci(et)al beings. This means we do not ask in which way society deforms and alienates the individual; instead we ask how they are (by societal conditions) hindered to unfold their sociability.

(176)

This is an important step – and as much as it links back to ancient thinking as for instance the famous Aristotelian notion of the political being (see Aristotle’s famous phrase of the ‘political animal’ in Book I and for instance extensively Book II of Politics). However, it is now open to the necessary transposition into complex soci(et)al conditions.

With this we see on the one hand that gender relations are relations of production (contribution in Das Argument; op.cit: 241), but with this the challenge that we have to focus more on the changes within the different areas. Calculating 4 times 1 has to arrive at two results: it results in four matters that need to be changed ‘internally’ and it results in one, a new soci(et)al entity. Indeed, we are importantly concerned with the need

to revolutionise the fundamental structures of soci(et)al practice: profit as driving force and that means the power of the realisation of capital taking precedence over the labour, based on division of labour and property

(43).

Importantly it means:

In order to move the realms out of their marginalised position they would need to be generalised and consequently they would need to be revaluated. And in the same vein the realm, that is seen as societal work would need to be occupied by women, with this its dominance needs to be undermined. If both sexes would share into all areas … a negative power and control relationship is broken up. To me, this seems to be a precondition for allowing love returning into labour. Subsequently the movement of women will be central on the way to humanise society.

(45)

With this we have to ask if it is sufficient to put the important separation in the life of wageworkers … between work and leisure time on one level with the notion that wageworkers are ‘during their leisure time at home and, as private beings, that escape work’ (49). In my view there is need for a thorough reflection on private, public, individual and social. This is surely a matter of investigating the model of civilisation (a term and concept introduced on page 103). But it is not sufficiently getting clear if such a shift away from the concept of the mode of production can sufficiently cope with the danger of a new pattern of exclusion. On the one hand the proposed orientation is excitingly opening political debates for seriously dealing with sociological theories of civilisation as matter of increasing ‘inner socialisation’ (as for instance elaborated by Elias’ Socigenetic and Psychogenetic Investigations under the main title of The Civilising Process [Elias, Norbert, 1939: The civilizing process: sociogenetic and psychogenetic investigations. Translated by Edmund Jephcott with some notes and corrections by the author; edited by Eric Dunning, Johan Goudsblom, and Stephen Mennell; Oxford, UK; Malden, Mass., US: Blackwell Publishers, 2000). On the other hand it needs to be elaborated further by making full use of and developing further the investigation into the process of production as undertaken by Karl Marx in the Outline of the Critique of Political Economy (Grundrisse) [1857-1861], where he dedicates a chapter to Production, Consumption, Distribution, Exchange (Circulation). Taken seriously, looking at the General relation between production, distribution, exchange and consumption, means looking seriously at the actual model of civilisation. In case we elaborate this understanding of production further, the 4-in-1-perspective can be tightened and extended by orienting on a sociogenetic and psychogenetic investigation of the civilisation of the mode of labour.[4] Thus we arrive not least at labour – or perhaps we should speak even of production with its four dimensions – as a matter of (i) development of personality, (ii) development of inter-personal relationships, (iii) development of society, and (iv) working[5] conditions (cf. importantly 114). For my own work this is inspiring for further elaborating the theory of régulation which I tentatively extended by adding to the accumulation regime and the mode of regulation the life regime and the mode of life (see for instance Herrmann, Peter, 2011 b: Mergers and Competition: Whereto leads the Economisation of the Social Sector? In: Herrmann, Peter [ed.]: The end of Social Services. Economisation and Managerialism; Bremen: Europaeischer Hochschulverlag: 18-61, in particular 56; Herrmann, Peter, 2011 a: Deciphering Globalisation – An Introduction; in: Herrmann, Peter (ed.): All the Same – All Being New. Basic Rules of Capitalism in a World of Change; Bremen: Europaeischer Hochschulverlag: 3-60).

The important point is that this is on the one hand strengthening the actor and practice perspective; however, on the other hand it is opening the perspective on the positive role of ‘The World that does not end in the private home’ (contribution on page 162 ff.). My point here – and this follows from the extended approach to relationality – is to aim on overcoming the apparent dichotomy between human actor and organic environment. This allows also to engage with the contradictions that arise from ‘the disruption and contradictoriness of the soci(et)al being as such’ (180) under consideration of the fact of society being not least a reflection of how people (and humankind as such) engage at a given stage with the organic environment. The understanding of ‘cultural practice’ as it is introduced later by seeing cultural as ‘action/activities that are an end in themselves’ must be somewhat problematic. As social beings and this is as relational beings, even self-reference is by definition also ‘means-tested’. However, this does not refer to any usual understanding of a restrictive stance nor does it refer to a utilitarian understanding. Rather, it is about what had been said before: the process of relational appropriation – we should revisit the principle underlying the Kantian approach as it is expressed in the categorical imperative, demanding each individual to

treat himself and all others never merely as means but always at the same time as ends in themselves.

(Kant, Immanuel, 1785: Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals, passim)

The challenge is to elaborate on the tension between ‘never merely’ and ‘at the same time’. The question is if this tension allows sufficiently determining the character of what social personality is about. This means that – for women and men – an important question is not ‘mastering of nature’ (241) but appropriating relationships – as matter of developing ownership (the ‘property’ dimension) and as matter of suitability (being appropriate in social practice). As correct as the claim of mastering of nature is made in the contribution on ‘Women – Victims or Culprits?’ as much we need to extend the question in a relational perspective, searching for a perspective on true soci(et)al development rather than arriving at the trap laid open by easing the situation of individuals and groups. On a different level, we are here dealing with the same tension as we are facing it when discussing quota-politics/policies and mainstreaming: what is a legitimate orientation on one level and during a certain phase, is in danger of turning into a constraints at another stage. Means-tested can now be understood as moment of personal development, better: development of personalities, freely adapted from Friedrich Schiller who elaborates on this by looking at the role of play, pointing out

… as the sensuous impulsion controls us physically, and the formal impulsion morally, the former makes our formal constitution contingent, and the latter makes our material constitution contingent, that is to say, there is contingence in the agreement of our happiness with our perfection, and reciprocally. The instinct of play, in which both act in concert, will render both our formal and our material constitution contingent; accordingly, our perfection and our happiness in like manner. And on the other hand, exactly because it makes both of them contingent, and because the contingent disappears with necessity, it will suppress this contingence in both, and will thus give form to matter and reality to form. In proportion that it will lessen the dynamic influence of feeling and passion, it will place them in harmony with rational ideas, and by taking from the laws of reason their moral constraint, it will reconcile them with the interest of the senses.

(Schiller, J. C. Friedrich von, 1794: Letters upon the Æsthetic Education of Man. Letter XIV)

And of course, in the Marxian interpretation we see from here the meaning of the definition of freedom as it is outlined in the contribution of the Marxists-Internet archive:

Freedom is the right and capacity of people to determine their own actions, in a community which is able to provide for the full development of human potentiality.

I suggest to go from here beyond the orientation on self-realisation as oriented along the lines of action that is an end in itself – and in this sense self-reflexive – and focus instead on socio-personal development as practice of appropriation by which power as ability and power as control are balanced with each other. Self-realisation gains with this – as socio-cultural practice – an immediate character of a higher form of socio-personal activity. As important as it is to rebuke the notion of double-burden of women – employment and housework – as quantitatively oriented reductionism (184), it is necessary to move further and add the explicit and elaborated ‘social dimension’. Here it seems to be necessary to clearly spell out what the consequences of the change are actually for men. Power moves again to the centre of the soci(et)al dispute. And as much as this is a question of power of men over women, it is much more the power distribution on a structural level, concerned with counter-balancing the process of production as organic whole as Marx outlined it in the Grundrisse. A closer look at this question would allow developing further the question of the soci(et)al character of those activities that are distinguished as (a) ‘production and administration of the means needed to life and in the relation to which the means of production are developed further, thus providing the foundation for further division of labour’ and (b) ‘the area in which life is created, cared for and maintained and which is marginalised against the other area’ (contribution in Das Argument; op.cit: 241).[6] And it requires to address at least the following three moments: (i) exactly determining the actual soci(et)al character of this work, (ii) looking at the recognition of this soci(et)al character and (iii) the exact way of ‘designing’ this soci(et)alisation (see also on this topic 199). Having in this way a look at the inner conflict and inner-rebellious attitude allows us to develop a new perspective. Two-foldedness of existence (Doppeltheit der Existenz), developed with reference to Klaus Holzkamp’s work (202), means that the individual produces society and with this her/himself. In the perspective of the presentation of the 4-in-1 perspective it means ‘that in the bourgeois society this twofold challenge humans face is distributed unequally between women and men’ (ibid.). It is now proposed to go a step further, proposing that gender-specific culture (205) has to be developed more explicitly as transition project (see contribution in Das Argument; op.cit: 246) and as such it has also address explicitly its own abolition – if and to the extent to which this is agreeable we may learn from the discussion of Marxist theory of the state and the discussion of the question of the need to overcome the capitalist-bourgeois state by a new state which had been suggested as a state in dissolution. Philosophically it means to overcome static approaches, by inherently processualising any structural thinking.

From here we will be able to move further when looking at the ‘double character of soci(et)al production, on the one side producing life and on the other side producing the means necessary for life’ (323). In the presentation this double character appears somewhat disjoined from the previously mentioned ‘two-foldedness of existence’. Merging the two-by-two perspectives may be developed further, class and gender question can be elaborated further in order to find the points of their clear overlaps and their clear separations.

With this, the emphasis of the ‘dispute over time’ which is centre-staged on another occasion (contribution in Das Argument; op.cit: 242) may also be enriched by another perspective, clearly defining time as being not more than a container – a container for the dispute over the social and social quality as it is dealt with in another four-in-one perspective: the search for social quality (see Laurent van der Maesen/Alan Walker [eds.]: Social Quality. From Theory to Indicators; Houndmills. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012).

[1]      This puts recent debates on a more humane capitalism, on revitalising the so-called social market economy also on the spot of dubious mis- and wrong understandings, dangerously opening the doors of ideological trimming.

[2]      It is more accurate to speak of capitalisation rather than monetarisation. We are in actual fact concerned with the aim of capital as a moment that realises itself.

[3]      This could be seen in very concrete terms with the consultation processes of green/white papers issued by the EUC.

[4]      Mind the shift from work earlier in this text to labour at this stage. Also, instead of speaking of labour conditions it has to be highlighted that we are now speaking of the mode of labour.

[5]      Here again working conditions as matter of immediate involvement not least into the process of capitalist production.

[6]      All this not least needs elaboration with respect of the two sides of power and also appropriation as mentioned on another occasion in this comment.

David back on stage

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

Returning from Athens – a visit in solidarity with the …, well actually perhaps better to say: in search for an overall European and global solidarity – reading something about Donatello’s David, surely one of the most felicitous pieces of art. Originally standing in the Medici palace in Florence the capture read:

The Victor is whomever defends the fatherland.
All powerful God crushes the angry enemy.
Behold, a boy overcame the great tyrant.
Conquer, O citizens.

The Medici: as usurper suggesting to defend the liberty of the subject.
– looking from here at the EU/IMF/WB-Troika, may be we are really back to New Princedoms?

Awkward Fame

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

A note had been sent today, somebody proudly announcing that he had been mentioend in speech of a high ranking politician. And isn’t indeed that we all have a little it of this: like the midge being drawn to the light – there seems to be the strive to be part of the grandesse of power. As much as we stand on the sholders of giants, allowing dwarfs to look far afield, we seem to be glad seeing ourselves contributing as footnotes in the thoughts of others.
So, being recognised by the highest figure in the state is surely enviable – notwithstanding the critique one bring forward to the very same state and representative.
And in my own way I enter the arena for competition: I am moving towards some hectic days ahead (some info here), into the middle of trouble. Solidarity meetings in Athens with striking workers, meetings with trade-unionists and activists, talks in the parliament and also talks about the need to provide sound scientific answers: perception, evaluation, classification, interpretation, conclusion – never forgetting the very basic toolbox of research in daily life. hectic and challenging but good to be able to do something that may also be quoted by presidents etc.,though probably more interpreted there as rioting, agitating and asking for too much of a change.
But in which way ever, we need a really fundamental change – and we need to take up the question of political responsibility. As Aristotle states in his Politics

For man, when perfected, is the best of animals, but, when separated from law and justice, he is the worst of all; since armed injustice is the more dangerous, and he is equipped at birth with arms, meant to be used by intelligence and virtue, which he may use for the worst ends. Wherefore, if he have not virtue, he is the most unholy and the most savage of animals, and the most full of lust and gluttony. But justice is the bond of men in states, for the administration of justice, which is the determination of what is just, is the principle of order in political society.

But what he did not say is that there will not be a philosopher king – we are not living in Kallipolis. In the real world values, theory, analysis has to mean something different – as Marx said already in 1843, in the Introduction to A Contribution to the Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right

The weapon of criticism cannot, of course, replace criticism of the weapon, material force must be overthrown by material force; but theory also becomes a material force as soon as it has gripped the masses. Theory is capable of gripping the masses as soon as it demonstrates ad hominem, and it demonstrates ad hominem as soon as it becomes radical.

Thus, at the end the question will be who the giants are and how the footnotes really contribute meaningfully the body text.

The Celtic tiger revived – now taking shape of paper tiger

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

Sure, there  had been some danger Mr Murphy could have been hit by the brick he dropped – but he stumbled briefly, and the attempt to regain balance nearly increased his speed though unfortunately not changing the direction. And now it seems that he lined up to revive the Celtic tiger and smart economies surely require smart societies and smart universities and only smart people will be able to move Ireland towards a big society – finally big brothers are not only there to watch but they are also there to be followed.
So, a recent mail to all staff in the ivory tower of the academic savour reminded that

The first half of 2013 will mark Ireland’s Presidency of the European Union.

and stated

This is an opportunity for UCC to enhance its international recognition.

The following content then said:

I will be grateful if each of you would consult with your local management teams on themes for conferences or symposia that might be organised here during the first half of 2013.  You might then send a one pager to me by the end of January and thereafter we will prioritise those projects that are likely to have maximum impact, likely to acquire support and enthusiasm from the relevant Minister, government department, state agency etc.  An indication of pragmatic budget requirement will also help.

Yes, it is admittedly difficult to outline in such a letter to so many different department, schools, disciplines – and people – the substantial side of it. However, the entire mail doesn’t even mention really even the honest question if we, UCC, departments and schools thereof have anything to say that is “outstanding”. It is not to say that we don’t have anything to say. But there is another point which makes me thinking.
I just finished reviewing “tons of abstracts” for a world congress later this year – something with social science, social development, social policy – doesn’t play a role here to say more. There had been many submissions. My general comment, sent to the organisers:

I just completed the review. Somewhere in the foregoing process the reviewers had been asked to be generous, not least in the light as not all submitters would have an academic background. My point would be more that some of the contributors are so much caught in very tight academic frameworks of a “technicist minimalism” they they fail seeing new, real questions. They are very much basic standard presentations, probably by young academics. Though I accepted them, I think the most important contributions are actually coming from those who are open and bring new perspectives into the debate – academic or not. I look very much forward to taking part in the debates

And another point coming to my mind: two days before I submitted a paper for publication – some time back I had been asked to write it. And it took longer than expected. AndI sent the document also to some close colleagues, writing in an accompanying mail:

…. , some reading – the draft of a chapter I just submitted – and some short remarks: the topic and approach is rather unconventional and in particular this approach is somewhat unusual as it contradicts to a more or less large extent the traditional “regime analysis”, aiming on linking into the traditional social policy debate, however, also adding a different dimension to it by looking for the link of social and welfare politics into a wider framework of the mode of production. This allows making the economic perspective much clearer than especially Esping-Andersen does without falling into the trap of seeing social policy and the link to the economic system only by way of ‘productive social policy’. As such it is not meant to give an alternative view by way of an exclusionary perspective. But it may well be useful as adding to other perspectives of the debate. And it may also serve as contribution to a debate on the future of the ‘welfare state’ – not a revolutionary perspective but nevertheless a perspective that is reflecting the current stage of development of capitalism and a scenario that can be developed (as one option) from there.

Please, note that this text is not for further distribution.
….

Not well advertised, and it will not be part of mainstream-publishing and going beyond “smart solutions” it will be most likely not easily recognised by such “high-level” enterprises as the EU and the respective presidencies. But I admit I feel touched by the expression of interest by some colleagues – from different continents, showing interest. And I am actually somewhat touched (if this is the right term), reading in one of the mails:

I have two main comments.  The first relates to your use of Marx in your analysis.  While you write in English you do not write for Americans. Reading your Marxist analysis would bring about two responses from an American audience.  The first is that they have no idea what you are talking about.   Second, it is the enemy and if not that, irrelevant. My position to your writing is that to be useful it needs to be debated and in our world today and that needs to be done on both sides of the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans.

Thank you – and thank the others for these nice encouragements. And thank you, my Hungarian friend, writing today, in a completely different context:

things are worse than turmoil, I am very sceptic to see the reactions to all the errors of the past years

We see, there is surely more needed than inviting people to take up an

opportunity for UCC to enhance its international recognition

Though it is an old joke it is still true:

….. but I would not start from here ….

It is not about saying something; it is still about what to say.

Sure, some postmodernists claim that we are in principle all experts for everything. Though I am not denying the actual problematique of post-modernism, I see a simplified understanding of such statement simply as problematic. The many Mr. Murphys, well trained medical experts, getting the unbelievable high income of medical consultants, should work in that field where there specific qualification is required.
Would he trust me if stand in front of him, the scalpel in the hand …?

SMART – Silly Move Against Reason – Tautology

Not the Time to Say Good-Bye

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

January 15th, looking back over the many years, one may even say: over an entire era that seems to be behind us, overcome – looking back to the 15th of January 1919 shows so clear that an era ended but this end is far from being the end of history.

Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht, most consequent members of the German left, fundamentally opposing against militarism not only by words but also by their political action had been killed on that day – after a trial: briefly pretending that everything would be dealt with according to the rules of the proverbial German law and order they had been stabbed and thrown in the river, showing to which extent the German law and order had been ready to bend the law in favour of ‘order’. It had been the order or normality – the mad normality. The 3rd commandment (see comments for correction) – here from the Exodus-version

Though shalt have no other gods before me

– had been translated by German law and order politics into the sovereignty of the state, disjoined from the people, disjoined from truth, opening the way to any arbitrary ruling within an illusionary world of rational-legal authority. It had not been by accident that one of the most pronounced analysis of the development of different systems of authority, ruling and governance had been presented by the German sociologist MaxWeber, not least pointing out the complex contradictions, highlighting the dangers of a development towards an iron cage in which we may be easily trapped; law and order – the seedbed and fruit of an authoritarian personality as analysed by Theodor W. Adorno, Else Frenkel-Brunswik, Daniel Levinson and Nevitt Sanford (1950), the dangers “eclipsed by the light of reason“.

It is true:

With the finest leaders of the German Communist movement murdered, the gates of rising German facism opened unhindered.

And it is equally true that shooting people, throwing them into a river as it happened to Rosa and Karl, is not the only way of killing. The Silent Revolution which Ronald Inglehart had in mind after wrapping everything into figures surely shows something as all statistics say something. But it easily lets us forget its companion: the silent killing – performed on the catwalk, in the statistical offices, and the careless orientations on an alleged elitism…, and the hesitant agreement with critical voices: remaining on the surface level or limited to agreement behind the closed doors …. all this should makes us think of the two and what happened to the world after they had been silenced.

It may sound distant – but it may sound obvious and challenging at the same time, not least for working in academia: we have to be brave, looking for powerful points even if they are not obvious, not matching the powerpoint-format.

Yes, it is time to look back – not in order to say good-bye, but in order to move forward.

that’s mad … – sure, but what?

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

Greetings from the ivory tower of academia 😉
Off now to theatre: ‘One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest’ – Leaving ivory tower to see the real world

Of course, it had been meant to be a joke when I wrote in an e-mail, before leaving office yesterday.
And being there in Munich’s Volkstheater, sitting next to the director, I read the short text accompanying the program, written by Manfred Lütz – only a few sentences and paragraphs being reproduced here in translation:

Watching as psychiatrist and therapist the evening news, one is frequently irritated. You hear about war mongerors, terrorists, murderers, white collar criminals,  stone-cold accountants and bare-faced egomaniacs – and nobody is treating them. Well, such guys are even considered as completely normal. Thinking then about those people I am the entire day dealing with, touching dementia sufferers, sensitive addicts, highly sensitive psychotics, harrowing depressive people, thrilling maniacs I am often caught by the a suspicion. We are looking afer the wrong people! Our problem are not those who a considered as mad – our problem are the normal people.

Oiginally I thought about reproducing Lütz’s entire text, on a few pages bringing back to mind all the experiences, the work, the protests …., all the things from the time way back, when I worked in a psychiatric hospital. Following the excellent performance I thought how much changed over the many years: open wards, community care, modern therapeutic approaches rather than a psychiatric clinic with about 2,000 patients, two therapists, many psychiatrist and ball-rollers end one key, for every door. – We, a few of the people working there, had been fighting, in the spirit and at the side of Basaglia, Laing …, fighting like Don Quixote against windmills, but also having some success: some clear successes and some that are more on the dubious (just the day before I discussed with a colleague here in the institute over lunch the huge difficulties we have [had] in Sweden: opening doors is not establishing social spaces).
Sure, there is still tremendous maltreatment, ignorance and breach of human rights in particular in psychiatric hospitals and also in the way of non-integration of people in ordinary every day’s life.

But what may be more worrying is how uncontested we have to state the truth of something else Manfred Lütz highlights, writing about the ‘normal madness’ and not least the ‘madly normal’, those who are obsessed by normality:

No wonder then that everything that does not comply with the norm is a terrible nuisance for this extraordinary normal people. Sure, nobody dares disrespecting the norm against those who are at the top, being a small grey mouse. So every furious feeling against those at the top turns easily to aggression against those at the bottom.

Sure,  we see ‘occupants’, can nearly celebrate an increasing protest in different veins – globally. But we are equally witnessing increasing nationalism, xenophobia and narrow-minded elitism, going hand in hand with number-crunching in search for evidence.

We need more though: not opening doors, but demolishing walls. We do not need a tamed capitalism, but a thorough analysis of what this new capitalism actually is about: the shift from accumulation to appropriation; the replacing of capitalist accumulation on grounds of the metabolism between human beings and nature, the relationality with the four dimensions of

  • auto-relation
  • group-relation (as general sociability)
  • ‘other’-relation (as ‘institutionalised and ‘defined’ socialbility – including class relationships etc.) and
  • environmental (‘organic nature’) relations,

moving to a new mode of production, generating value on grounds of the dominance of abstract processes in the sphere of distribution and circulation. The organic whole, Marx had been talking about in the Grundrisse is … – is it dissolved? Turned on its head?

Only then, with a clear analysis, we will be able not restricting ourselves on another interpretation of the world’s surface but on finding a way to change the world’s essence.

– Presidents should rethink what they are doing. Rather then talking to chamber members about the loss of elitism the Mister Murphys should talk to people who gained their expertise from life and it’s anomalies. Normality is dangerous as long as it is the normality of accepting what temporarily may (have) work(ed).

Well, there is occasionally indeed more realism in theaters than we can find in ivory towers, being the heavy oak furniture of today’s high level officers. We only have to bring it from ‘Luhmann’sche’ background noise’ to the main speech on the stage. not by radicalist action, but by truly radical analysis.

Sir …. – Yes, Milord ….

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

And one surely could enter with this a more or less exciting excursion on the use of the different salutations, the hierachies and also the ways in which forms or substance is carried over different eras. Don’t we all know the landlord? And don’t we all appreciate the awareness of the home as the castle? (and if it is the case, don’t we all appreciate our status as client, protected and looked after by the patron, hoping for the lord being our servant?)
Sure, plays with words; and nevertheless not only a matter of play in the sense of Schiller’s ascendence to a state of freedom, the elevation from the blunt realm of need, reaching the realm of insight, and foresight and re-sight …, ops: the sight is here spectation, the term is then respect.
It is beyond this play also a matter of the rules of disguise, the permanent crossing of borders and at the end the loss of ground. The world is a stage – and occasionally we may loose out of sight if we are moving in the real world or on a stage, or if the world is actually truly not more than a stage.

Frequently this had been an issue for me not least in reflections on the current changes of the economic system – in its very fundamental patterns, going far beyond neoliberalism and austerity policies etc. – for instance when reflecting on the Ode of Joy and the Tragedy of Europe

The difficulty of fully understanding what is going on in the political-economic development, the social policy and the emergence of new mechanisms of governing ad governance – mechanisms that emerge in front of our eyes as New Princedoms is not least one of being ‘tempted by disguise’.
Capitalism today is at least not hesitating in any way to step into any saucer standing in the way in order to allow the impression that this capitalism is not capitalism anymore but the renaissance of politics dominating the economy, accumulating power rather than capital – and actually not accumulating it but appropriating it by the means of violence and sham.

Indeed, have a look: he is a chip of the old block.

But still, there is one thing that deserves further thought: arts in the olden times had been more a matter of showing monetary wealth and ‘investing’ excess money. Today it is not least a means of making money.

The analysis still needs to be completed. Not least as it would be much too easy to look at it out of context. Rather, this just a tiny piece of a jigsaw. Another piece can be seen in something that is at first sight rather distant: a new law, currently initiated by the Geman government. It is about empowering private security firms to protect ships sailing under German flag – not such a new thing as private security firms are alreaday since some time employed with matters that had been strictly defined as state duty.  This new advance is not about anything more or less than the transport of such ‘liberalisation’ into ‘international realms’: Like the self-elected currency watchdogs of IMF and World Bank we find now the erosion of state sovereignty in a different realm.

But again not a simple thing to assess. At first glance it is of course something that has to be rejected. However, we may also ask: why should the military forces continue participating in ‘private wars’. Finally we have to recognise that acts of priacy against the merchant fleet is … a private matter. So in any case we are facing a dilemma. This dilemma is about the very principle of sovreignty which is in the ‘modern’ state itself deeply engraved by an irresolvable contradiction: the people as supposed sovreign is governed by the state … which is (a) sovreign. Even in a ‘perfect democracy’ this cannot work without problem. – Even more so, it is doomed to fail in the light of another move across borders: one of the supoosed achievements of modernity is the separation of powers as we usually see it based in the ideas of Montesquieu. But looking at his ‘ideal state’ of balanced control we have to acknowledge two other important moments: Montesquieu himself had been equally important in his emphasis of the ‘new individualism’ – he had not been thinking of a state as people but a state of people. And not less important is the fact that he errected his vision on the ideas of Bodin who outlined a little bit earlier (1576) in his Six Livre de la République the state (république en Franch and Commonwealth in the English translation [I cannot access the Latin version now – could be interesting]) being the sovreign over both what would be the civil society Hegel had been talking about (i.e. the bourgeois economy) and also the ‘private realm’ or what we name civil society in the spirit for instance of Tocqueville. Remember, for Jean Bodin the state is characterised by centralisation of teh structures of decision, th bureaucratisation of the channels of decision and the emergence of a structured legal order – in particular the latter being a point of reference for Montesquieu.

Be it as it is – and that means: be it something that needs to be further explored in depth, we should be aware of what is centrally development before our eyes: it is not primarily about the scandals, it is not so much about the obvious impoverishment or the elitism of particular systems – well designed by the new nobility and badly defended by self-nominated noblemen who think they can cure educational systems with a sclapel. It is about the fundamental change of the mode of production. Naming and shaming this as neoliberalism and austerity policies would, I am afraid, be garment dyeing.

– And some scepticism may be allowed when new Robin Hoods claim to serve as rescuers.

The World is a Stage or Felix Krull Enlightening the View on Capitalism Today

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

And frequently it is suggested that the sociologist Erving Goffman coined this phrase. Without disregard: what my great colleague Erving did, is nothing more than sociologising what William Shakespeare outlined already around 1600 in his comedy As you like it, (first published in 1623).

All the world’s a stage,
And all the men and women, meerely Players;
They haue their Exits and their Entrances,
And one man in his time playes many parts,

And before Erving Goffman presented his Presentation of Self in Everyday Life (published in 1959), Thomas Mann dedicated time to this topic, writing the Confessions of Felix Krull (the genesis of this unfinished novel spans between 1905 and the middle of the 1950s).

In some respect one may say, it is all one topic: the roles we play, the images we present – a reality that is fictive by presenting its reality in certain images as much as it is real to the extent to which it is a combination of fictions, stories we tell and combine in different ways. Own stories and our stories, interweaving with the narratives told by others.

The Seven Ages to which Shakespeare refers, in 1838 depicted by William Mulready; the confidence, which is a misleading English translation of imposture about Thomas Mann, is actually talking: the mendacity of a time that at the first instance moved towards WWI, and later, when Mann took up the work again, lost itself in the emerging German post-WWII economic miracle; everyday life Erving Goffman has in mind when analysing a society that suggests its own modernity in Rostowian sense as archetype of development’s ultimate goal.

All the Same – All Being New.

The Basic Rules of Capitalism in a World of Change are surely not a novel or a play for the stage of any theatre let alone a comedy.
Nevertheless, the supposed fictive character that seems to provide the foundation of today’s economy shows exactly the withdrawal not into an illusionary world but on the contrary the establishment of a real world that follows entirely different rules: the rules not of a fictive accumulation but the rules of a real appropriation.
The theory becoming a material power (as Marx mentioned it in his Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right from 1843/1844) can only merge into this new realm if it fully acknowledges this seemingly small difference between accumulation and appropriation.

________________

Bastian Kraft staged his version of Felix Krull in Munich’s Volkstheater in a masterful way, showing exactly this difference. Felix – the ‘three Felix’ – appear smart like today’s economy, likable and handsome – and they do it to such an extent that some kind of participation offers immediate conciliation. And only leaning back allows to recognise that all the camouflage is a seductive play, not allowing us to escape or forcing us to abscond completely.

There is not much that has to be added to Michael Weiser’s critique in the Kukturvollzug, a digital feuilleton for Munich:

It is Felix Self-Threesome, a Krull-trinity, that orders power onto the stage: one may say Mühlenhardt, Fritzen and Fligg embody different facets of Krull’s real character. The three do not agree in their respective version of their own history; again and again they interrupt each other and repeat scenes of the story of imposture. … . What is the essence, the true character of the human being? This is the question one poses again in the next story which probably again doesn’t lead anywhere. It may be already revealed that at the end the three show real intuition before Felix Krull’s imposture ends in a complete crash.

(Here the German original text)

Es ist ein Felix Selbdritt, eine Krullsche Dreifaltigkeit, die Kraft auf die Bühne beordert: Mühlenhardt, Fritzen und Fligg verkörpern quasi verschiedene Facetten des Krullschen Wesens. In den Variationen ihrer Geschichte sind sich die Drei durchaus nicht einig, immer wieder fallen sie sich ins Wort und spielen zur Selbstvergewisserung Szenen jener Hochstaplergeschichte nach. … . Was ist des Menschen Kern? Das fragt man sich und ist schon wieder in der nächsten Geschichte, die vermutlich wieder nirgendwo hin führt. Im Finale, so viel sei verraten, beweisen die furiosen Drei nochmals richtig Fingerspitzengefühl, bevor Felix Krulls Lügengebäude einstürzt.

This crash, its charcter and cause, are important. It is the crash of a tower, erected in a sensible way by putting block on block, changed in a seemingly reasonable way: taking one block away from the bottom and putting it onto the top and taking one block away from the bottom and putting it onto the top and taking one block away from the bottom and putting it onto the top and taking one block away from the bottom and putting it onto the top … and, yes: towers, societies and economies are not established in a way that they can survive without the foundation they stand on ….

And the performance had been nothing of a crash – and exciting adventure, the music by Arthur Fussy adding to an experience of a sociological didactic play that makes for a most pleasant …, learning.

_________

Coming briefly back to the title of Erving Goffman’s book: The Presentation of Self ….

The Presentation, living in a world of presentation is as such not the problem. The real problem is the presentation of presentation, the duplication of the process.

And as much this is a matter of the economic development, it is also a matter of academic life today: the thinking in models, the suggesiton of blueprints as reality …. –

– … the European model worked, until it distructed its own foundation …; the liberal economy suceeded as long (well: as short) as it could claim to a reasonable extent its liberalism …; finance capitalism could maintain its profitability as long as it managed to pretend to have its foundation in the real economy ….

But fiction remains fiction – even if it develops by griping the masses.

Europe Ancient and Present

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

– Nero Claudius Caesar Augustus Germanicus had to climb up a hill …

…. and from the elevation he looked down on The Burning of Rome, devastating one of the cities we consider as major source of what we call today EUrope, devastating the living space for uncountable lives, and also being a factor in the crumbling away of the overcome powers. It is said that he had been satisfied, laughing by the outlook.

Today we do not have to climb up a hill to see what happens – too clear are the signs of the developments taking place on the upper echelons of society, today even literally above our heads: on the upper floors of the finance centres, in airport-lounges of the international jet-set and in the modern ‘clouds’ if we take them as metaphor of a technologically developed global society that employs these means as instruments for advancing financialisation and speculation.

Another criminal offense that provides the foundation of modern Europe can be taken from another ancient source – the country of reference now Greece.

According to the Greek myth, Zeus, the Thunder-God residing on the Olympus, in the shape of a bull abducted Europa, the daughter of the Phoenician king Agenor and carried her over the sea to Crete. Agenor sent his sons out to search for their sister. One of them, Kadmos, landed in Greece and was told by the oracle of Delphi that he should wander around, armed with his spear till he reached the cowherd Pelagon in the land of Phokis. He should kill Pelagon – the man of earth, “born to die” – and choose the cow with the sign of the moon on both her flanks and follow her, till she would lie down, with her horns on the ground. On this hill he should kill and sacrifice her to the earth Goddess and then found a big city on this spot, Thebes.

Kadmos followed the oracle and became the founder of Thebes. He married Harmonia, the daughter of Ares, the War God, and Aphrodite (…). It is not clear from the myths whether he killed the moon-cow, obviously his sister Europa, or not. In any case, one does not hear of her again. She, the raped and abducted woman was only the means to lead the warrior and new culture hero into the foreign land and to his greatness.

(Maria Mies: Europe in the Global Economy or the Need to De-Colonize Europe; in: Peter Herrmann (Ed.): Challenges for a Global Welfare System: Commack, New York: Nova Science Publishers, Inc.; 1999: 153-171; here: 160 f.)

Today this may be translated into a political dilemma – that between national supremacy and sovereignty and true international and global solidarity and integration. The weekend’s Financial Times (10/12/2011) states

Mr Cameron will receive plaudits from Conservative MPs when he returns to the Commons on Monday. But back in London he may reflect on former prime minister Tony Blair’s bitter observation in 2006: ‘Co-operate in Europe and you betray Britain, be unreasonable in Europe, be praised back home and be utterly without influence in Europe.

But it is not only about the farewell by and from Britain.

It is also about the behaviour shown by the German Bundesbank. Accordingly – and again with reference to the FT:

It was exactly the rhetoric used by Germany’s famously conservative Bundesbank, to which Mr. Draghi paid tribute.

As such, it not only put pressure on governments but build is credibility among Germans, many of whom remain wary of handling control of their currency to an Italian.

As much as the two latter references resonate some form of abduction – at least the abduction of responsibly choosing points of reference of politics and policies we find the reference to the Nero, his will to establish power on the debris of the past and present, reflected in another statement from the same edition of the FT (though in a different article):

Britain was ‘as isolated as somebody who refused to join the Titanic just before it sailed’, said Terry Smith, chief executive of Tullet Prebon, the interdealer broker.

Taken from here it seems to be clear: the ship is sinking. The new steps are not more than an empty promise.

At least looking at Germany, the strong and supposedly reasoning power, shows that there is indeed little reason for optimism and trusting that cointry’s ability to balanced and strategic action. ‘Cracks spreading through Europe’s banks’ we read as if attentive observers didn’t knew this already – and as if it would be new that also the ‘strong political and economic powers’ are facing a serious threat: ‘Bail-out could be on the cards for Commerzbank’ and in France ‘Moody’s downgrades lender’s credit ratings’.

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In this situation surely only few are really leaning back like Nero Claudius Caesar Augustus Germanicus. On the contrary, new programs show up, new efforts are made public and …

… and apparently forlorn admonishers are another time turning up, vehemently claiming the right of reason – or are they claiming the reason of right?

One of these apparently forlorn admonishers is Juergen Habermas, recently called in an article in the Spiegel as ‘the last European’, and looked at in terms of ‘a Philosopher’s Mission to Save the EU’.

As such, indeed

he accused EU politicians of cynicism and turning their backs on the European ideals.

So, according to Georg Diez, author of the said article

Europe is his project. It is the project of his generation.

And surely one may approach it this way. However, there is a catch with such an assessment. At the time of Europe’s early institutionalisation Habermas and ‘his generation’, namely people like Max Horheimer and Theodor W. Adorno had been actually highly critical about the approach towards integration based upon instrumental reason. In an earlier work, Habermas states the problematique of the incremental and piecemeal capitalist reformism as

in its own terms the struggle between classes constituted itself only on the basis of the capitalist mode of production and with this it constituted the objective situation on the basis of which the class structure of the politically constituted traditional society could be recognised. Capitalism regulated by the state as it emerged as answer on the manifest class antagonism which resulted in threats for the system, leads the class conflict to a standstill.

(Habermas, Juergen, 1968: Technik und Wissenschaft als ‘Ideologie’; in: Technik und Wissenschaft als ‘Ideologie’; Frankfurt/M.: Suhrkamp: 48-103; here: 84)

In this way, systems are not ‘rational’ in the sense of an abstract and generally acknowledge rationality. Rather, they

exist as long as the development of the sub-systems of instrumental action remains within the realm of the legitimising virtue of cultural traditions.

(ibid.: 67)

Looking at this position we have to say that it is against this Europe to the extent to which this Europe is not at all based on what Habermas would see in a later perspective as the general principles of rationality – and it is important to note that at this stage we are dealing with an entirely different historical situation. Any rationality – limited by the self-reference of the ruling, hegemonic class – had to be historically limited to maintaining the functionality of the given system. As such it had been not least a matter which I characterised myself later by pointing out

The different involved actors have in part the same, in part different, even contradicting interests. Subsequently we find the emergence of specific criteria of success, reflecting the substantial determination by the respective position within the process of reproduction.

(Herrmann, Peter, 1995: Movements and Organisations in the Cyclical Processes of Socialisation; in: Swiss Journal of Sociology; volume 21/1 :85-106; here 97)

In 1995, Habermas himself acknowledges, pointing in the same issue of the Swiss Journal of Sociology on the tension between fundamental rights and their regulation, emphasising that

the materialisation of law shows itself in side-effects

(Habermas, Juergen, 1995: On the Internal Relationship between the State of Law and Democracy; in: Swiss Journal of Sociology; volume 21/1: 11-20; here: 18)

In principle, we are still dealing with the same pattern of distinct rationalities behind which the fact of multiple hegemonies is hidden and by which it is blurred: the ongoing principle of class interests and its expression by the reference to the nation state on the one hand and the reference to the supranational level on the other hand. Habermas indirectly addresses this issue in a contribution on the Concept of Human Dignity, referring to relevant conceptualisations as

universal legal concepts [as] facilitate[d] negotiated compromises

(Habermas, Juergen, 2010: The Concept of Human Dignity and the Realistic Utopia of Human Rights; in: Metaphilosophy; Oxford/Malden: Blackwell: 474-480; here: 475; see also Habermas, Juergen, 2011: Wie demokratisch ist die EU? Die Krise der Europaeischen Union im Licht einer Konstitutionalisierung des Voelkerrechts; in: Blaetter fuer deutsche und internationale Politik 8/2011: 37-48; here: 37)

However, he remains caught in the irresolvable contradiction between the different claims of sovereignty. The problem can be seen in the fact that he insufficiently differentiates within the multilayered systems. Rather than clearly spelling out the various contradictions as such:

  • the contradiction between [i] the suggested people as sovereign on the one hand, [ii] the sovereignty of the actual hegemon (i.e. the ruling class) on the other hand and – as mediator – [iii] the sovereignty of the nation state as third realm
  • the contradiction between [i] the suggested people as sovereign, [ii] the actual national hegemon, [iii] the nation state as relatively independent power and [iv] the inter/supranational level
  • the contradiction between the now four suggested sovereigns ([i] national people, [ii] national ruling class, [iii] national institutional system [iv] inter/supranational level) and in addition [v] the different other relevant national systems, each of them again existing as such complex unity

Habermas escapes into a realm of abstract reason and hope. So we read in a contribution on Human Dignity and the Realistic Utopia of Human Rights:

On the one hand, human rights could acquire the quality of enforceable rights only within a particular political community—that is, within a nation-state. On the other hand, human rights are connected with a universalistic claim to validity, which points beyond all national boundaries.20 This contradiction would find a reasonable solution only in a constitutionalized world society (not necessarily with the characteristics of a world republic).

(Habermas, Juergen, 2010: The Concept of Human Dignity and the Realistic Utopia of Human Rights; in: Metaphilosophy; Oxford/Malden: Blackwell: 474-480; here: 475)

Again, this leaves us with a very general plea for reason – and as such Habermas shows another time what he showed over a long time already: the individualist and voluntarist shift. At the end, Habermas’ earlier orientation along the lines of class struggle and class justice moved first to a general principle of discoursivity and ends – for the time being – at the point of an absolute idea. As such it is caught in the danger of

  • being squeezed between individual responsibility, the duty if emerging as good-doer (see Michaela Haas: Es geht nicht um viel. Es geht um alles. Die Rechnung ist ganz einfach: Wenn jeder von uns nur ein bisschen was beiträgt, ist die Weltarmut so gut wie beseitigt. Also: Was hindert uns daran?; in: 09.12.2011 SZ-Magazin|Magazin: 34-38),
  • disappearing in an abstract and idealist cloud, impossible to be controlled as it can claim its value from ‘pure reason’
  • emerging as a new Herrenmensch, pleading to individual politicians and countries to behave responsible, using the power for the suposed general interest.

Finally Habermas addresses the – in a contribution in the Blaetter fuer deutsche und internationale Politik –

federal government that holds in conjunction with the German-French cooperation the key to European future and it has the responsibility for the date of Europe.

(Habermas, Juergen, 2011: Wie demokratisch ist die EU? Die Krise der Europaeischen Union im Licht einer Konstitutionalisierung des Voelkerrechts; in: Blaetter fuer deutsche und internationale Politik 8/2011: 37-48; here: 37)

It is only consequent, that we then find for instance the German Die Zeit drawing a parallel between Kant and Habermas as we learn from the article by Georg Diez. However, if something like it is suggested it is probably more reasonable to highlight the affinity between Habermas’ Euro-euphoria and Kant’s three works on reason rather than the latter’s work on ‘Perpetual Peace’.

Of course, we still find in Habermas’ writing the argument against instrumental reason, reading that

that power has slipped from the hands of the people and shifted to bodies of questionable democratic legitimacy, such as the European Council. Basically, he suggests, the technocrats have long since staged a quiet coup d’état.

(from the article by Diez)

But point of reference is now rationality as general pattern, independent of class struggles and differences in and contradictions between interests.

Consequently, there is some truth in the sentence that

the activists of the Occupy movement refuse to formulate even a single clear demand, [and] Habermas spells out precisely why he sees Europe as a project for civilization that must not be allowed to fail, and why the “global community” is not only feasible, but also necessary to reconcile democracy with capitalism.

However, the developments over the last years in general and in particular over the last days, culminating in Friday’s decision, clearly show that dreams do not offer a solution when it comes to a clash of interests.

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So at least I have to admit for myself, being younger than Habermas and perhaps in some way still the same generation:

Europe is my project. It is the project of my generation.

I write this, trying to defend myself and also with some bitterness but not least with some energy aiming on maintaining it as my project – Europe, another Europe.

Coming back to the debate on sovereignty – and on Habermas – the difference and struggle between the perspectives on sovereignty and hegemony is currently focused around a potentially fatal trinity

  • finacialised utilitarianism and in tendency decoupling of the entire economy from actual use value
  • particularising individualism and isolationalism
  • strive for hegemony of this particularising force – taking the form of re-nationalisation and re-regionalisation, commonalisation, discoursation but also appearing in the form of governancisation, communitarianism, professionalism, functionalisation and formalisation.

This seems to be a vicious circle – the Faustian ‘vitalising circle’. We are, indeed, living in this society and we simply have to start from here – suggesting ‘but I would not start from here’ may said to be the saying in which the Habermasian plea for reason can be summarised. Working in academia and having worked on EU-issues for  some time, I lived sufficiently long moving within this trinity, trying to push for an alternative. It is about looking at a time of unsettling processes and debates; it is about moving on stages of dazzlement: areas of ‘good governance’ that emerge latest in hindsight as arrays of greasy ground, giving some security by golden chains [actually in hindsight it looks better than actually being on the battlefield]; it is about distraction from and artificialisation of needs and interests and it is about the isolation in alleged power positions. I still believe there is nothing wrong with the engagement in those democratic institutions to which I refer. On the contrary: today, these institutions are more important than ever. Entering into distractions by allowing laws of liquid modernity (Bauman) taking power over seems to be more dangerous than withdrawing from any engagement.

However, while moving on these stages one has to resist the temptation of looking for a new point of departure rather than starting from the existing point. And the given point of departure is a world that is not trinitarian, nor binary. However, we have to look for the real world and its contradictions. As much as words and ideas may shape the world, as much as issues that are located on the level of the superstructure play a role in shaping decisively the organic whole of social existence, we nevertheless cannot take this as an excuse for starting the analysis from there. It is still the real economy and the real political power-process that has to be point of reference. Such perspective does not allow us to stop at rejecting greed nor does it allow us to simply look for ‘better regulation’ alone. As important as such issues are we should take the current situation as challenge to thoroughly ask ‘What is the actual change of the productive forces and the mode of production?’

This means also that it is surely correct when the taz criticizes Angela Merkel in the weekend-edition (10/11.12.2011), stating

Evidently Merkle doesn’t think in a systemic way … . For her the problem the problem is located where it becomes manifest, visible.

Indeed, the problem is not about public deficits. However, the analysis provided by the taz (and by so many others) is not really looking at the fundamentals either. It is questionable

that it is a matter of the crisis of the banks/banking system. Dubious loans had been granted without restraint – be it to poor house builders in the USA, a venturer in Spain or careless credit institutions in Ireland. Public debt exploded only subsequent to this snowball effect.

This still sounds as if responsible and circumspect approaches on the finance markets and by the finance institutions (and the governments who failed regulating them) would have fundamentally changed the situation. To some extent only one should follow this. To a larger extent it is about the fundamental change of the system and a new circle of primitive accumulation or as for instance Harvey names it: of accumulation by dispossession. At least it is a point that allows to begin asking serious questions – and also looking for serious answers as it is now about about the process of relational appropriation, i.e. what (kind of) property is appropriate for what and who is and should be the owner.

It is my Europe – even this crisis-shaken Europe, apparently in danger of braking up – to the extent to which I have to admit: I failed thoroughly engaging in such debates that had been aiming on moving further, going beyond the given framework for reason as within this framework reason will barely move beyond technicist solutions, instrumental reason. – And the same is true for allowing academic debates drifting increasingly towards short-term orientations, engaging in bean-counting and finding administrative solutions for substantial questions.

And it is my Europe – and ‘my academia’ alike – to the extent to which I still refuse to engage in certain debates and/or to which I am ready to follow the stony path of resisting the search for simple answers to difficult questions and searching for a new varnish where a new grounding is needed. – No reason to look up, following the clouds in their move nor a reason to climb on up. looking for a spot from where one can look at the devastating fire. If Diez writes on Habermas

it should be mentioned that Habermas is no malcontent, no pessimist, no prophet of doom – he’s a virtually unshakable optimist, and this is what makes him such a rare phenomenon in Germany.

I may claim that I feel myself very much like that, even on the stony path of harsh and twisted way of reality rather than on the idealist way of an absolute idea of rationality.

And stating it this way it also a self-critique not only on the personal level. Also the left should critically look at what actually happened to the own analytical approaches. Orienting on practice – the practice of others and own practice does not mean looking at reality. Practice is only emerging as matter of reality to the extent to which it is able to develop a historical perspective.

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What remains? It remains the evidence that rats show empathy – a series of experiments evidenced this.

Since Wolfgang Borchert’s short-story ‘Outside, in front of the door’ we may live with the reassurance that rats are asleep at night.

And the saddening fact, seemingly completely out of context that in a small town near Hamburg an association of owners of allotment gardens decide that only 12.6 of the owners may have a non-German background.

It may be that the latter is not really so much out of context – finally Nero Claudius Caesar Augustus Germanicus had not just been ‘sitting and waiting’. He is also known as one of the most pronounced persecutors of Christians. So, we see in any case that there is surely no end of history; nor is there any reason to believe that the clash of civilisations, if it exists, really comes by accidental encounters of different faiths. It still is, as it always had been, about a clash of interests.

Before I stated the focus on a potentially fatal trinity

  • finacialised utilitarianism and in tendency decoupling of the entire economy from actual use value
  • particularising individualism and isolationalism
  • strive for hegemony of this particularising force – taking the form of re-nationalisation and re-regionalisation, commonalisation, discoursation but also appearing in the form of governancisation, communitarianism, professionalism, functionalisation and formalisation.

All these and other particularisations are in the better case a withdrawal from collective responsibility; in the worse case they are the justification of particularist interests which cannot mean anything else than the survival of the fittest …

At the end, we are not dealing with any of the trinities mentioned – at the end we have to define a clear alternative. Helmut Schmidt – in his writing on Ausser Dienst (‘Out of Office’) – contends in the last chapter that today individual rights are secured, however morals do not exist (anymore) and are actually questioned (from the last chapter of the audio-book-version). There is surely some truth in it. However, there is a fundamental catch. There will be hardly any relevant – appropriate – social moral as long as we do not achieve rights that are thoroughly understood as social rights. And this surely means not least a matter of looking to advance the process of relational appropriation. If this wants to evolve as real answer it has to go much beyond looking for questions in small spaces.