Rolling Political Philosophy Thread

And domestic social interference? Doesn't seem like a good fit for unbridled capitalism

one wants ones workers well-behaved, sober and fit for duty.

otoh tho we see US corporations more-or-less lining up behind a progressive social agenda vis-a-vis diversity issues

to some extents tho these are facts of history - 18th century capitalism was not necessarily the friend of free markets for example

there's a distinct split in right wing parties across the West between a libertarian and a paternalist wing now

I don't really know about history in US, but in Denmark, the main right-wing party is called Venstre, which means 'The Left'. They were the lefties, the radicals, the freedom-demanding bourgeoisie, against the conservative monarchist right, called simply Konservative. Of course, with the workers party, Socialdemokraterne, everything switched left.

But back then, it kinda alligned: The Left, the bourgeoisie, was for free markets, and were against censorship, religion, etc. The Right was monarchistic, clerical, national, etc.

that alignment makes more natural sense to me - it's more internally consistent

similar situation in England, made slightly more fraught by having a constitutional monarch, which meant both original parties supported a version of royalty

today's right wing economic orthodoxy is a fairly recent development compared to the parties that have adopted it

there's an obvious power bloc in Western democracies whose interests align with having as little as possible government interference in the economy and regulation of business - the source of their wealth and power is directly tied up with the development of government by representative democracy.

why do poor people vote for right wing parties then? plz don't say false consciousness

false consciousness

lol

maybe bc wealth is a requirement for becoming cosmopolitan - affording rent/ownership in a big city, trips to other parts of the world, engagement w/ business in other countries, etc - whereas there is no similar mechanism for the poor to move from tribal/nationalism/protectionism?

i don't like simple false consciousness arguments, but i think there are complex arguments to account for people failing to act in their own best interests

also i think the best interests argument is often very limited? it generally means best economic interests but there's no reason to think that humans are always more motivated by economic success than by religious beliefs. like when obama made the famous "clinging to arms + bible" comment, he was suggesting that they only find value in those things bc they aren't finding value from participation in the economy. but i think there are lots of reasons to believe that ppl are motivated by more than how much money they're making.

sure, but even in the economic sphere there's plenty of examples of "i will spend this money on having fun tonight even tho i know i'm going to need it to get thru the rest of the month"

long term thinking and big picture thinking are probly not natural human skills on the whole

It has a lot to do with social standing, I think. It has a lot to do with cultural identity, with group identity. It's like that old joke, which I witnessed in person once: When a holocaust survivor, a German-American university teacher, was asked if he wanted to be called German, American or Jewish, he answered: 'Professor.' He had a professional identity, which trumped his cultural one.

Of course, the nobility, the old Right, never had professional identities, that was the entire point, that they had their power from their personal, familial, historical identities. For the bourgeoisie, professional identity can take over. For the working classes, it becomes much harder, especially once the value of labor becomes so immensely devalued as it has been over the last decades.

So yeah, cultural, 'moral' values is important to old money and no money alike.

interesting question which i've thought about but don't have good answer to
do think political/ideological constellations (& their relationship to parties) change, reorganize, & are to significant extent historically contingent (e.g. affected by events)

but it's dense, many-stranded historical contingency, which makes those constellations, looked at synchronically, seem overdetermined (when genealogical investigation wd show it's not)
elements diverging & coalescing for different reasons at different times
interesting to trace, for example, what happened over time to constellation 'classical liberal'

btw not sure yr (admittedly superficial) characterization of current left/right in america (of course diff in diff countries) is quite accurate, in particular re less/more government involvement in 'social' affairs

e.g. an nra supporter, concerned about religious liberty, who wants option of home-schooling kids, is (in significant respect) not for more but less government involvement in 'social' sphere
maybe as over time mainstream culture & gov't has become more 'progressive'; so social conservatives wd seek or feel more of an alliance with libertarians (though of course it's uneasy tense relationship)

alliances/coalitions seem more like products of 2 party systems where there's little mileage in forming a breakaway party than in more plural proprortionally representative systems

well... except I think parliamentary systems see a lot of the same alliances. At least, I think so. UK ILXORs, am I wrong?

I don't think the left/right wing formulation is that universal globally or historically, it is v clearly contingent

good old habermas

http://www.theguardian.com/business/2015/jul/16/merkel-gambling-away-germanys-reputation-over-greece-says-habermas

http://www.politique-actu.com/dossier/different-story-what-shaped-america-gordon-wood/1399328/

(link doesn't work but found article)
v interesting, thx
just the kind of thing i was thinking of re complicated & contingent divergings & coalescings
tangentially related, reminded of this interesting episode in american history: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whiskey_Rebellion

http://queenmobs.com/2015/11/looking-for-optimism-finding-pessimism-on-salons-recent-interview-of-slavoj-zizek-and-his-turn-to-harsh-realism/

The world is hell. My vision, basically, in religious terms — though I’m atheist, of course — is some kind of Protestant view of the fallen world. It’s all one big horror. I despise Leftists who think, you know, violence is just an effect of social alienation, blah, blah, blah; once we will get communism, people will live in harmony. No, human nature is absolutely evil and maybe with a better organization of society we could control it a little bit.

a very gloomy, dystopian view of the future of europe from niall ferguson:
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/opinion/paris-attacks-fall-of-rome-should-be-a-warning-to-the-west/story-e6frg6zo-1227609985667

melodramatic nonsense?

violence is just an effect of social alienation, blah, blah, blah

i love how u can see this and just KNOW who it's coming from

xp he's been writing the same article for a while http://www.vanityfair.com/news/2006/10/empire200610

Misanthropy's one of those luxuries the ruling class get to enjoy

http://sethfrantzman.com/2015/11/17/excusing-terror-paris-beirut-and-shingal/

The excuses and explanations are a deceptive explanation. When you ask deeper questions, such as how it is possible that “poverty” leads people to massacre poor students in Garissa, or kids in Peshawar, the awful nature of the excuses are revealed. The men who killed kids in Pakistan, or bomb Shia mosques or Ahmadi minorities, they are not “alienated”, they are killing the alienated minorities and harming the weakest members of society.

I think that piece is wrong in assuming ISIS attacks in Beirut don't relate to Lebanon foreign politics, poverty, demography etc but am NO expert. But p sure that the rise of ISIS is closely linked to Iraqi infrastructure, demography, etc etc. But maybe I'm missing some point, just skimmed the article (not because I'm not interested but because at work so limited time).

I agree that "excusing" does not seem a great idea in itself, but "understanding" maybe crucial to addressing the issue (to whatever extent it's possible to address it)

this part seems a bit radical, but again I'm no expert:

Terrorists aren’t “alienated”, they are empowered, and they are the wealthier ones who want to take the life of others. Their sense of entitlement and privilege causes them to want to commit wonton murder. It was the same with the Red Brigades and Beider-Meinhof and going all the way back to the 19th century Anarchists.

there has been some research to suggest that terrorists are better educated, wealthier:
https://newrepublic.com/article/91841/does-poverty-cause-terrorism

Enough evidence is accumulating that it is fruitful to begin to conjecture why participation in terrorism and political violence is apparently unrelated--or positively related--to individuals' income and education. The standard economic model of crime suggests that those with the lowest value of time should engage in criminal activity. But we would hypothesize that in most cases terrorism is less like property crime and more like a violent form of political engagement. More-educated people from privileged backgrounds are more likely to participate in politics, probably in part because political involvement requires some minimum level of interest, expertise, commitment to issues, and effort, all of which are more likely if people are educated enough and prosperous enough to concern themselves with more than economic subsistence. These factors could outweigh the effect of opportunity cost on individuals' decisions to become involved in terrorism.

I should probably have included the next paragraph as well:

The demand side for terrorists must be considered as well as the supply side. Terrorist organizations may prefer highly educated individuals over less-educated ones, even for suicide bomb attacks. In addition, educated middle-class or upper-class individuals are better suited to carry out acts of international terrorism than are impoverished illiterates, because the terrorists must fit into a foreign environment to be successful. This consideration suggests that terrorists who threaten economically developed countries will disproportionately be drawn from the ranks of the relatively well off and highly educated.

Good points, never thought abt that

Hm, it seems mostly just speculation to me? Most western countries have enough impoverished foreigners for anyone to fit in... I also think for the first point, we might be confusing religion and politics again. Yeah, the middle class will be most political, but the poorer classes will be more likely to go with religious fanaticism (I think).

For me it's not really about the immigrants in France being 'poor', and therefore choosing terror, but they're clearly marginalized. And this is not just about marginalization leading to terror, of even more importance seems to me to be that they are so marginalized, so shuffled off to the side and left alone, that the security agency's have lost control of them.

I've started to notice right-wing nativists using the language of "indigenous studies." My question is: If switching the X in "We are the indigenous people of X" turns it from a liberation statement to a racist statement, maybe the entire paradigm is of little value outside political expediency?

I haven't really reviewed the studies on whether suicide bombers mostly come from the poor or middle class or whatever, but I do think it's worth considering whether the "disaffected" people who might join terrorist groups could be disaffected on account of something other than pure material conditions.

ISIS, for example, provides a very tidy answer to the question "what is my life for?" as well as the promise of adventure and the potential for a glorious death.

Sorry those two posts were a little more disjointed from each other than I thought when I wrote them.

i think generally the left is less sympathetic to existential disaffection than material alienation

mordy, i think you're right re: identity politics and political expediency. not sure i've ever found that particular faustian bargain worth making but the alternative is a total deconstruction of "race" that just doesn't seem to get any purchase outside of academics and high brow philosophy.

see also derrida on the "assinity" of "the animal" as a category that in effect erases the near infinite differences among living beings.

Mordy, maybe that's true of the American left, but elsewhere one finds other preoccupations (e.g. Sartre)

the academic left? i mean sartre was not very popular among activists when i was in school - moreso among lit ppl

been wanting to read this forever:
http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/41Vxte4wdtL._SX322_BO1,204,203,200_.jpg

I don't know about activists in the USA, I'm just observing that there's a left elsewhere and that existential concerns remain important there, even when the participants are largely atheist (though cf. e.g. Lévinas and Ricoeur)

i think material deprivation in the US has become the primary focus though obv these other concerns aren't inconsequential. from my perspective the problem w. existential alienation is that there is no fundamental justice to be readdressed - the wealthy and the poor alike can fret over their eternal soul, their alienation from society and family, their sense of meaninglessness + worthlessness. in fact it seems to me that the most unsympathetic crimes in contemporary society (like hate crimes) are also products of existential alienation. but what is the action to be taken? what injustices can be readdressed? it's much simpler to focus on areas of observable inequality. imho.

the problem of drawing the line between the shitty things we have to live with and the shitty things we don't (because we made them shitty) is a problem because we have to draw that line from within culture, social construction, etc and thus it's always a contingent boundary. which is not the same thing as saying that the boundary doesn't exist.