Berman's "Dark Ages America"

I posted this review of DARK AGES AMERICA: THE FINAL PHASE OF EMPIRE by Morris Berman yesterday on Amazon.

I also recommend you listen to Berman interviewed by Lenny Lopate on wnyc.org last week -- it's sure to pique your interest.

DARK DESTINY, posted on Amazon, April 27, 2006

A work of breathtaking erudition and synthesis, DARK AGES AMERICA offers no hope for arresting America's career as a self-destructive global hegemon. While that's a difficult conclusion to swallow, Berman amply defends his thesis, drawing his supporting evidence from a variety of disciplines: history, cultural studies, polling data, economic analysis, sociology and social psychology. The possibility of America's turning away from its dark destiny, which in Mr. Berman's analysis is now clearly manifest, is made to seem remote, and, regrettably, convincingly so.

Particularly compelling is Mr. Berman's discussion of America's need for an enemy, an Other upon which to focus in order that we never turn our attention to the emptiness at the center of the American psyche: The Red Menace, the Cold War, the War on Drugs, The War on Terror. Each of these wars has served to diminish and even outlaw critical thinking about America's empiric career. In a constant state of emergency, history for Americans is a set of bullet points which are cynically served up as justification for the latest military adventure. Berman's anecdotes and survey findings paint an American populace that is self-absorbed, provincial, and willfully anti-intellectual, a people for whom bullet points more than suffice.

We watch television shows about tightly knit families and groups of friends, staving off the loneliness generated by the individualistic, devil-take-the-hindmost ethos that is America's real civil religion, Berman says. We turn away from the terror that we inflict on innocent people in order that we may claim their oil wealth and so keep this dwindling life-blood flowing in the veins of the American project of global empire. We pay no attention to the vast sums of money spent to prop up the energy-military-industrial complex. Instead we are distracted by cynical stories of welfare queens, wicked tax and spend liberals, evil dictators and axes of evil, our resentments kept well-stoked and smoldering.

On a personal note, landing at Kansas City International Airport the other day, my vision of America altered by my in-flight reading of Mr. Berman's remarkable work, I saw the landscape through new eyes, a landscape I now understood to have been systematically vandalized by the corporatocracy: big box stores, chain hotels and restaurants, strip malls and gas stations, a landscape everywhere repeated across the United States, a landscape we intend to impose upon the world in order to fulfill our destiny as bringer of freedom as expressed through consumption.

While this cookie-cutter landscape had always before aroused in me a sense of unease, an unease that had become in me clich? and so easily subdued, with the assistance of Berman's perspicacious vision, I became alive to the fact that this American landscape represents in physical form the ingenuity and monomania of America's new empiric form.

Empty of community, driven by the ethos of radical individualism, I saw an interlocking system of endless consumption in which we are all driven by the relentless stoking of our vanity and desire by clever marketers who have taught us to confuse social goods with economic goods, and by a political structure which mystifies cause and effect, which ruthlessly condemns anyone who has the temerity to question the course of this bleak, empty empire.

The Royal Scam

Michael Katz's "The Price of Citizenship" opened my eyes to the ways in which the right wing advances its anti-human policies through psuedo-science, public relations, and disinformation campaigns. Not much has changed since then, except that the volume of the lies has increased. Here's my review from May 2001:

METHOUGHT I HEARD A VOICE CRY "SLEEP NO MORE!" May 23, 2001

With "The Price of Citizenship," Katz performs a much needed demystification of the ways in which the social welfare state and the poor have been attacked and continue to be attacked by social and fiscal conservatives under the guise of consumer choice and the chimerical promise of the marketplace as the best of all possible ways to administer "welfare." A work of breathtaking scope, Katz examines each of the programs of the welfare state -- Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, Unemployment Insurance, AFDC ("welfare"), Public Eduation, etc. -- gives a brief history of the inception of each, and then gives a recent history of how each program has come under attack by the forces of business and and their shortsighted friends in government.

Here's how they do it, according to Katz: Using the same master narratives of sorting citizens into deserving and undeserving categories to begin the assault, then tightening the screws on the "undeserving," the conservative business forces follow up with the panacea of the marketplace as the be-all and end-all solution: get those lazy minority mothers off the dole and into jobs; close down the loopholes in unemployment so that no one will qualify; drive people slowly toward the assumption of more and more risk by scaring them with junk statistics on the imminent demise of Social Security and then offering them the "solution" of mutual funds -- etc., etc., etc. The strategy is always the same: the market will knit up the ravell'd sleeve of care, when in fact it really serves to unravel the social safety net for those who need it most, and, weaves new money-making nets for others in the name of "efficiency" and "choice." These special stronger nets are the new welfare schemes for corporations and the upper and upper middle class.

One of the finest chapters deals with underhanded manipulation by conservatives of the public with regard to viability of Social Security. Katz convincingly shows that Social Security is not in any danger of going bankrupt -- period. He shows how the forces arrayed against Social Security, through misinformation, through the politics of playing younger workers against older workers, has managed to convince most Americans that they will either not recieve their benefits or recieved reduced benefits. Indeed, until I read this chapter, I was one sheep among the many. He then goes on to show how the various "choice" schemes proposed to "fix" Social Security through investment in the stockmarket -- either individually or collectively -- would serve to make financial companies billions and billions of dollars. In every chapter, Katz follows the money, and, sadly it usually leads to the ultra-right think tanks whose clients most stand to profit from the privatization of government social welfare programs.

It may sound by this review that "The Price of Citizenship" is a muckraking screed. Or that it was written by a conspiracy nut. It is neither. Instead it is a deeply researched work that convinces through facts as well as through narrative that the forces of the marketplace through the instrument of the ideology of the market as espoused by the right wing have been successful in undermining the foundations of U.S. social welfare programs (which frankly weren't much to begin with). Katz never uses invective -- the strongest word he uses is "underhanded" in his description of the scuttling of Clinton's health plan by business and medical interests -- instead he marshalls facts, questions assumptions, and draw important parallels and connections between the assaults on all of these programs. After reading this book, you'll be more than prepared to do some debunking of the conventional wisdom about Social Security, "Workfare" programs, HMOs, etc. May I dare say Katz has done us all, and even his country, a noble service by putting the lie to the master lie of the marketplace as the best solution for what ails us. Voucher this, baby!

The End of Democracy

Here's my review of "The Divine Right of Capital: Dethroning the Corporate Aristocrac" by Marjorie Kelly which I posted on Amazon in November, 2001. I was so taken with her analysis that I wrote Ms. Kelly a fan letter to which she graciously responded.

I encourage you to click on the title link above which will take you to my review and others on Amazon. Read the one star reviews for a quick course on the brittle neo-liberal defenses of corporate power, where Ms. Kelly is charged with being a Marxist, with stupidity, with arrogance: all the usual names that are trundled out by the true believers in the corporate creed in response to Ms. Kelly's thoughtful, undogmatic insights into the anti-democratic ethos of the corporatist state.

Here's my review:

THE NEW FEUDAL STATE, November 19, 2001

I was thrilled with Marjorie Kelly's extended analogy of the corporate state as the last bastion of feudal state (and the belief system which upheld it, i.e., the great chain of being, the divine right of kings, etc.). In her introduction, Kelley warns us that she may overuse the analogy -- but really, it's not possible. Nor is the analogy of the American Revolution as a revolution against a regime which saw Americans as colonials (and thus with limited rights -- as England "owned" us, our energies and the goods we produced).

The feudal metaphor explains the queasy feeling most workers get when their advice is solicited in quality circles (it's because its like we're being patronized by the nobles, who are only asking us how we feel to have more effective dominion over us). It explains the pervasive lack of trust employees have for their employers (the lord of the manor only has his interests at heart, and only pays lip service to the importance of developing and keeping employees: when the chips are down, it's bye-bye serfs). She drags out of the shadows the biases of 18th century models of economic man and the nascent industrial system it described, and demostrates how current conceptual frameworks of business are based on feudal values. The king is the law, the law is designed for property owners to enforce their power, labor is always seen negatively, as a cost, an inconvenience, a population that must be ruled. She notes that in current accouting practices, labor and employees are seen on the expense side of the equation, as liabilities, not assets. This anti-democratic bias is so deeply woven into the fabric of how we think about business and how we're taught about business by MBAs, by business scholars, by the media, by the political and corporate establishmen, that to finally bring "wealthism" to surface amounts to a revolutionary act.

At its heart, the Divine Right of Capital is a conversion story. Ms. Kelly, as the 15 year editor/owner of a publication called Business Ethics, wakes up one morning to find that all the platitudes about growing corporate responsiblity, corporate environmental sensitivity, the new kinder and gentler workplace that she had been writing about was never going to work. That a revolution in how we think about business is required. She and her fellow business ethicists were trapped in the conceptual structures of corporate thinking, corporate doublespeak. Since the first commandment of this regime is: the shareholder is King, the Shareholder-King is the only party who needs should be considered (employees? those varlets!) and the Shareholder King is only interested in profit, and thus the corporation must only serve this one master -- a domination structure which is firmly embedded in Ford vs. Dodge, a 1919 Supreme Court Decision, that tends to be viewed as the "latest thing" in corporate governance law. With this conceptual structure in place, and reinforced in other Supreme Court decisions, common law, MBA programs, and the government, Kelly realized business can never become democratized, but must only serve the wealthy speculator or investor class who serves them.

Quoting American revolutionaries at length and efffectively -- a good strategy as the conservative business elements hold them in such idolatrous regard -- Kelly shows us why we Jeffersonian cube farmers must rise and throw off the psychological shackles of the private corporation! Undermine the bogus rhetoric of executive committee of the bourgeouisie and the speculation class! She studiously avoids Marx, because ultimately she believes in the market, she just believes in a new conceptual framework that more reasonably reflects the modern corporation: i.e., that in a knowledge economy, employees are the one thing that is really valuable unlike in the old Robber Baron days, when the track and locomotives and the right of way was valuable -- the things of a company.

Very reasonable, packed with good, well-researched facts, the only thing wrong with it is that she is entirely too reasonable. She's been living with the enemy too long and thus writes drily, and quotes facts and figures to make her points. Tom Paine, whom she often quotes here, was a bombthrower. And although what she is saying may be earth shattering to some, what's needed is cataclysmic break with the past.

The Memoirs of a Superfluous Man

Here's my review of "The Memoirs of a Superfluous Man," a paleoconservative classic by Albert Nock. It was fairly early on in my attempt to understand conservatives that I heard about the book -- late 2002. It wasn't easy to find; it's out of print, deservedly so; I finally found a copy at the Brooklyn Pubic Library.

Coincidentally I was reading Henry Adams'truly classic "The Education of Henry Adams" at the time, and so saw the extent to which Nock, though claiming that he was inspired by "The Education of Henry Adams," was really doing a one-dimensional impersonation of Adams.

The roving pack of neo-, theo- and paleo-cons who swarm any negative reviews of their foundational texts on Amazon have slammed my review: currently, of the 73 ratings of my review as of today, 59 of them are negative. If you go to Amazon and read the other reviews, you'll see examples of what Lionel Triling called conservaives' "irritated mental gestures that seem like ideas."

MEMOIRS OF AN INSIDIOUS MAN
November 28, 2002
On the surface, MEMOIRS OF SUPERFLUOUS MAN, is an often charming, occasionally misanthropic remembrance of a vanished America by a self-admitted nearly vanished American type. Deploying a literary strategy similar to Henry Adams' THE EDUCATION OF HENRY ADAMS, Nock identifies himself, his beliefs, his elite classical education as superfluous in modern day America (circa 1900 to 1943). But the crucial difference between Nock and Adams is how they qualify themselves as superfluous. Adams is a man of subtle and ironic self-awarness who recognizes that he and the elite class he belongs to has apparently outlived its time, certainly its usefulness. That his family's his long chain of service has come to an end with him, suddenly snapped against a new America where the new men of power (such as his once good friend Teddy Roosevelt who turned his back on his class and remade himself as a man of the people), is deftly, self-effacingly and ironically told, and often contains real pathos. The same cannot be said of Nock's version of superfluity.

Though he attempts to use the sophisicated distancing techniques of Adams, Nock only manages to appear inveterately opposed to everything that might upset his elitist equlibrium. Through the lens of his classical education, Nock sees mankind as unchanging, steeped in sin, a species whose small attempts at building effective governments are destined to end in futility and folly. Where Adams sees that those in power in his time have lost their ardor for and dedication to the ideals of the revolutionary era implicitly criticizing the new technocratic class in government and business for its bloodless utilitarian and pecuniary values, Nock criticizes all modern liberal governments, and anything remotely else remotely Lockean. He absents himself from the social and political movements of his time, such as the women's movement, scorning its outcome as all too predetermined -- since the disruptive liberal ethos demands equality no matter how violently it rents the social fabric, there was nothing to be done for Nock but watch it happen with a certain measure of glee. Nock is as elliptical and implict as Adams, but where Adams employs the technique to chide society (and himself), what Nock leaves unstated is his hatred for liberalism. He leaves unstated his belief, for instance, that the social fabric that had held women so securely in their place for so long -- that conservative and sensible fabric mystically woven over the course of time -- should remain intact because it always had, and thus always should. Interestingly, like other intellectuals of his time and Adams and James before him, Nock fled the new pecuniary America. But unlike other intellectuals of his time who fled to Europe because it seemed to offer them a more humane and more traditional culture as a potential corrective to the grasping, greedy money culture of the second industrial revolution, Nock apparently fled America because he wanted to hobnob with the European artistocracy, no matter how faded and tattered it had become.

MEMOIRS OF A SUPERFLUOUS MAN has become one of the early canonical works of the neoconservative movement. It has all the earmarks of the Straussians -- the hatred of liberalism, the belief that only a few can be trusted with the disturbing truths of philosophy and that this elect should be entrusted with the political leadership by dint of this hard won wisdom. Nock also displays the parternalistic populism of the neocons as he waxes poetic about the common lumberjacks he lived with as a boy when his father took the family from Brooklyn to Michigan to head up a lumber operation. He portrays these commoners as hardy Americans untouched by the evils of cosmopolitan liberalism, brilliant and unspoiled, rugged individualists all. In a particularly vivid sketch, he describes a musical evening where these common men of toil sang better than any professional chorus he had ever heard. What he leaves unstated here is the neocon belief that the common run of mankind should be made content with entertainments and religions fashioned and promulgated by the elect to keep the commoners happy in their ignorance of the true nature of the world.

Nock asks his readers to accept that he knows the true nature of the world. Like most conservative arguments, it is the argument from authority, a form of argument which refuses to engage in the hurly burly of real debate. And that is why ultimately, Nock comes off as as dry and passionless as the technocrats he and Adams abhor.