Professional Documents
Culture Documents
The isms were the central focus of MMW 5, but in the 19th Century all of the
isms were in their nascent state. It is in the 20th Century that we see all of
the isms come to a state of maturity. And as a result of this they come into
conflict with each other. In the 20th century we will focus a lot on the
struggles between each of these movements.
We will look this week on the relationship between Liberalism and World War
1
World War 1 was a cataclysmic event that utterly shocked the world. The war
was different from anything which people had seen. It shocked cultures and
societies to their very foundation, and in many ways represents the first test
of liberalism. Im the face of such horror, liberalism was still able to sustain
itself as a viable ideology. The war could also be seen as an implosion of
liberalism itself. The war was the final outcome of all of the contradictions
which define the liberal ideology.
There are many contradictions within enlightenment: talk of rights and
liberty, simultaneously with exclusion through different forms of repression
Liberalism’s, Liberal Ideal:
Politically liberalism stands for:
Individual rights of citizens. The idea of inherent rights (declaration of
independence).
Secondly the self determination of nation states. Each state should have the
right of self-determination.
3rd a gonvernment based on social contract.
4th, trust in the rule of Law.
5th some form of representative government.
He was not a lone assassin, he was supported by the Serbian state. So the
Austrians wanted to seek a punitive expedition against Serbia, and in order
to do so they needed to make sure they had the backing of Germany. On the
other hand Serbia had its own backing of the Russians. So it created a
situation with two large alliances pitted against each other. Germany and
Austro-Hungarian Empire, with the Tripple Entant on the other side,
consisting of Brittan, France and Russia.
The German Chancellor urged the Austrians to act quickly, before anyone
could respond, making it a settled issue. But the Austrians were too slow in
acting. They could not mobilize forces until 6 weeks after that assassination.
During that 6 weeks a lot of war mongering talk happened, which lead to the
mobilization of the great powers before Austria could do anything. So both
Germany and Russian forces had mobilized.
The German Schlaefen plan was to outflank the French defenses, going
through Belgium (which was neutral), to move in very quickly, overwhelm
the French, and then go face the Russians in the east. For the most part it
worked in the beginning, but because of German hesitation it ended up
becoming a two front war instead of a one front war as they had hoped.
2) We have to look closely at the role of mass media (the free media), which
was something new at this time. And for the first time the free press would
play a very important role in shaping the course of the war. The relationship
between the free press and liberalism, is the existence of a free press in a
state. Except in this case, the free press played a very important role in
inciting pro-war sentiments. It created the same kind of nationalistic fervor
that the soccer games between different European countries involve today,
but of course a lot worse. A lot of nationalistic passion and saber rattling,
which was fueled by the presence of the media. A lot of citizens were
following current events with passion and interest
They were able to raise the pitch of the fervor to such a level, that even
when governments started to pull back when they realized how dangerous a
war would be, it was too late. Because the very same propaganda that the
press used to incite war, could not be reversed. So even when the German
chancellor decided to kind of hesitant, he incited the outrage of his own
people, who were incensed that he was not acting faster.
This created a naive and blasé attitude about war. There was even jubilation
at the outset of war, because most people felt that it would merely be a
limited and short localized conflict. Nobody had anticipated that it would take
4 torturous years to reach an end. Most believed that war was in fact
necessary, that it was a necessary casarsis which would allow Europe to self
adjust, to restructure Europe in a way which would give it more long term
stability, and that it would improve society. Kind of like a cleansing process.
Not too costly, and necessary.
Many felt that it would be the best way to secure and perhaps expand each
countries imperialistic interests.
Some historians argue that what World War 1 really represents is the
struggles of imperialism coming home. The struggles over colonies and
empire reached the home front, and the Europeans needed to settle it, at
home. The assumption was that they could do that in a short and localized
war. They would fight, and each side would get some kind of concessions.
It also came from the fact that not since the days of Napoleon had Europe
experienced war on the home continent. So the public was ignorant of the
nature of modern warfare. The public really had no idea about the
devastating nature of the machine gun, trench warfare and poison gas. The
nature of a protracted war. Human nature has a short term memory. We
very easily forget the horrors that existed even 50 years ago and we tend to
make the same mistakes. For Europe at the time the last major war on the
continent was 100 years ago, so people became complacent and were
blinded.
So there was very little sense of urgency in the summer of 1914 to stop the
conflict from escalating. Everyone believed that the rationale of liberalism
would prevent the war from becoming too costly. So we see tremendous
idealism at the outset of war.
The poem by Rupert Brooke captures this sense of idealism. If one did
have to die, it was for a noble cause. The self becomes identical to the
nation. The sacrifice that an Englishman would make, to bring civilization to
the rest of the world. If he dies in a far corner of the world, it was a noble
sacrifice that he was making. Anglocentric Paternalism: This feeling that
I am bringing civilization as an Englishman to the far corners of the world.
“If I should die, think only this of me, that there is a corner of some foreign
field, that is forever England…” What we see here is the connection
between war and extreme idealism. Part of the civilizing mission that
Europeans thought they would bring to other parts of the world. But of
course the realities of war soon exposed how naive that idealism was.
War often has a paradoxical power to not only produce illusion, but also
disillusionment. At the outset of war there is usually a lot of very inflated
hope for triumph, or some naïve expectation for a quick victory. But war
also brings dissillisionment about conflicts, especially if you have a
protracted war, such as the first World War, or the Iraq war. What the
dissilusionment leads to is a very profound sense of futility, that there is not
much meaning, not only to the war, but global relations in general. The
sense of futility is really profoundly captured in Wilfred Owen’s poem
(Dolce Et Decorum Est, written in 1917 in the bloodiest period of the war).
He beginnings with putting you in the setting of the war with the gas attack
that is happening, then he talks about a dead soldier “if you could hear at
every jolt the blood come frothing from every ruptured lung…. My friend you
would not tell with such high jest, the old lie Dolce Et Decorum Est…(it is
sweet and noble to die for one’s country)” Contains no glorification of
sacrifice. The reality is very different from the idealism we saw in Rupert
Brooke’s poem. The sense of the loss of meaning at what they are doing is
conveyed by Wilfred Owen’s poem. Owen was killed in battle on Nov. 4th
1918, 7 days before the war ended.
Images can have a profound impact for or against wars.
For the most part the war was mired with a stalemate, particularly the
stalemate that took place on the Western Front. There was a stalemate in
which neither side could win. Which resulted in the meaningless loss of 10
million soldiers, 20 million wounded. The destruction of an entire generation.
The famous battle of Verdun, took 10 months and accounted for 1 million
casualties. Britain lost half a million men under the age of 30. Not only the
loss of an army, but the loss of a generation. Why such high casualties?
Much of it had to do with the new advances in weaponry, particularly the
machine gun, a new weapon which could mole down a whole platoon. A
weapon that the Europeans had first used in the quest for empire, first used
against Zulu warriors as the Gatling gun, which evolved into a machine gun
of incredible destructive capacity.
Also steam ships, another innovation that the western world first used
against its colonies, but now the technology came back to haunt Europe.
The technology which had first been used against colonies to subjugate
colonial peoples, came back to haunt Europe itself. Resulted in immense loss
of human life and natural resources.
Given all this destruction, why was there no concerted effort to stop the
madness. Why did the traditional rules of engagement not kick in
(diplomacy, compromise, concessions). Hoppsson offers a theory: “That by
this point war had really become a zero sum game” Where the only option
for either side was total victory. Partial victory was simply not enough. He
says that in the 19th century, there was all the imperialistic frenzy to carve
up the world and garner as much economic concessions as possible. Which
made a fusion of economics and politics (with economics the pursuit for
profit is unending, so political aims also became infinite). For all the
contending sides it then became an either or equation for all sides. For
example, Germany felt it could not back down, or else it would concede
naval supremacy to Britain. Britain on the other hand also felt it could not
back down, or else it would be granting German hegemony over all of
mainland Europe. While the French also in spite of their weakness also felt
they could not back down, or else they would always live in the shadow of
Germany. It meant either total victory or decline. This is why the war
persisted despite of the stalemate. Only when the US entered the war did
the stalemate start to move. The US entered because of a threat to its
shipping. It wanted to continue the profitable economy of supplying war torn
Britain, and the Germans were using submarines to knock out the US
merchant ships. By 1917 Germany had already been exhausted, it had been
stretched too thin. Had to fight a two front war, as apposed to a one front
war, and Germany was on its last gasp. They made a last offensive, failed,
and then it was pretty much over.
For a country like Britain, it also lost the best of its Generation. ¼ of all
Oxford and Cambridge men died in the conflict. The social impact created
an aversion to war. People really felt “we cannot face war ever again”. And
that sense of complacency became quite debilitating when we see the
emergence of Nazism. Instead of nipping Nazism in the bud, when it first
showed its head, people were reluctant to get involved. Also a strong sense
of Nilism: there no meaning in the world. People were in a state of shock
that a civilization that had prided itself in rationality, and in progress, and in
a sense of humanity, could succumb to such barbarism. And this shock is
really well captured in the poem from William Budley Yates, The Second
Coming written in 1920 two years after the war.
MMW 6 – Edmond Chang 30/09/2009 06:36:00
MMW 6 – Edmond Chang
07.04.08
Are humans naturally inclined towards war and violence? If so, how can war
be avoided?
Niche says this is a conflict between instinct and reason. Also between the
herd mentality vs. the individual conscience
In Freudian terms, the conflict between the Love instinct and the
Destructive instinct
Niche: born in 1844 and died in 1900, doesn’t fall within our period, so why
do we discuss him? Because in many ways his thinking, his ideas would gain
prominence and find resonance with people after WW1
While he was alive his ideas were on the fringes of European philosophy.
Which was a scene more dominated by optimistic positivist thinking along
the lines of John Locke and Rousseau
Niche was too dark and morbid for people’s tastes at the time. But after the
war because of the shock and horror of World War 1, we see Niche’s ideas
moving more towards the center stage of the European consciousness (for
intellectuals and arists)
His radical skepticism found great appeal especially amongst intellectuals
and artists.
His assumptions were that he was openly anti-democratic. All of the illusions
about democracy had been shattered by the war, so Niche’s ideas seemed
more attractive. Unlike the liberal thinkers he rejected the rule of law, also
rejected peace, and saw all of those things not as progress, but the as the
demise of Western Civilization, these were signs of degeneration.
“A society that definitively and instinctively gives up war and conquest is in
decline, it is … democracy and the rule of shopkeepers. In most cases to be
assure, assurances of peace are nearly narcotics to delude the masses.”
He celebrates the “will to power” which is a creative, vital and dynamic
force.
No wonder, that Niche would become so attractive to totalitarianism in the
20th Century.
First proposition: Niche also rejected the assumption of progress in society.
He also challenges the notion of progress that’s inherent, even in Darwin’s
theory of evolution.
Niche says no, that is false, species evolution does not equal progress.
The second proposition he makes: is that the complex higher forms actually
perish more easily. Its better to be protazoa or planktin, because those
things are more prone for survival. Their simplicity is more conducive to
survival. He talks about this in terms of the herd instinct
Following the herd, he believes, is actually a better way to assure survival.
You may be strong as an individual, but it also makes you more vulnerable
His third proposition: refined or complex culture is actually a sign of
degeneration, not a sign of progress
You can kind of see why after the war his ideas became so attractives
He goes further to tackle the meta-naratives in Western Culture
He devides aesthetics (art) into two catagories:
The apolonian impulse (that art follows this romantic belief, that for anything
to be beautiful it must be rational, must be sensible and must appeal to the
moral conscience), a romantic notion about art
He says that is not true art, but that true art follows the Dyonesian impulse,
that art is a-moral, and lacking rationality. That art is inherently irrational
So in music he begins to talk about dissonance as true art, not harmony
In poetry he says that it is the parody of myth, that prevails over the lyrical
impulse
In painting he says that its more about multiple perspectivism rather than
the idea of linear perspective (perfectly rational reflecting their view of the
world order) he says perfect symmetry is true illusion, and that true art tries
to capture multiple perspectives
When we consider someone like Picasso, cubist paintings trying to play with
perspective.
Niche categorizes three major traditions that he refers to as the great
deception on life:
The Platonic Tradition with its emphasis on the idea of absolute truth, logos.
The second is Christianity with its promise of Universal Salvation
The Enlightenment Project itself, preaching the dictatorship of reason:
everything is about rationality
Niche says that all of these traditions that really mad eup Western
Civilization were all lies, the opiate for the masses
These three things together mask the true nature of humanity, its creative,
violent and irrational impulse
For a Civilization that had almost devoured itself, and for a cultural spirit
exhausted by crisis, someone like Niche was incredibly appealing. So his
ideas found tremendous resonance especially amongst intellectuals and
artists.
One of those people would be a foremost psycho analyst: Sigmund Freud
He picks up some of Niches ideas. Tries to tap into the very impulses which
Niche had mentioned
The primitive instincts have not vanished in any individual, they are there
and repressed, but wait for opportunities to display their activity
Showed us that our intellect is a feeble thing.
Time Space Compression article: look for examples, illustrations of what the
author is getting at, in terms of the idea of the time space compression in
the modern consciousness. Examples of art and literature and even in
technology. Because there is something which fundamentally changes about
our perception of time and space.
Page 79-80 in the From book. A passage which is really succinct on this topic
Modern man is alienated from himself, from his fellow man and from nature
Lecture 5 Week 2
Throughout art we see a shift from metaphor to metonymy. We can now only
perceive reality in terms of parts. The sense of holistic understanding is
gone.
Impotence that governs European consciousness (Prufrock is an example):
fear of sexual impotence. Also is incredibly uneasy about female sexuality.
He thinks about the skirts that trail along the floor. These images of female
sensuality or sexuality, really stress him out. He is in a very interesting way
simultaneously aroused and revolted by these things. “the arms that are
white and braceleted and bare, but in the lamp light covered in light brown
hair (yuck)”
The most familiar of the surrealists is Salvidor Dali: Like many of the
surrealists he was trying to capture the shock value of art, anything
marvelous or extrodinary he would be interested in.
The danger is to read too much into the paintings symbolism, don’t want to
overdo it
Magrid wants us to think about the very relationship between reality and art
(his painting with a see through canvas with what looks like a scene out the
window behind it). He is stabilizing that very assumption that art has to be
mimetic (art has to mirror reality), he wants us to get out of that box and to
understand art as a construction, not just as a mirror of reality. Art can
construct whatever it wants to present as reality. Magrid’s work removes us
three times from reality, because it’s a painting of something which looks like
a painting of a scene outside the window.
They all had different goals, and different temperaments But what they all
had in common was an almost messianic zeal about art, and how art can
recuperate meaning. Art has the power to save humanity, to save western
civilization from some of the very problems that we discussed:
fragmentation, alienation, impotence. Maybe art can help us better
understand the human condition. All of these movements in spite of their
differences shared that.
This week we will look at reponses to modernity from outside of the Western
Civilization
Key questions:
To what extent were democratic or nationalists movements inspired by
Western influences. What impact did Western institutions have on these
movements. It would be ridiculous to say no role at all, but at the same
time not every nationalist movement follows in the pattern of Western
models. There are also very strong indigenous and context specific aspects
to these responses.
What solutions, what determinations were made about the colonized world
at the Treaty of Versailles? One of the key changes is the implementation of
the Mandate System which divided the colonized world into three categories,
three classes. The colonies were divided into these classes according to how
the West felt about their proximity to independence: the class A colonies
were ripe for independence, with the implication that in a few years they will
be granted independence. This is what the Western powers at Versailles
decided.
Lecture 5 Week 2
The truth is that for 20 years, that whole period between the first and
second world war, not a single class A colonized country was granted
independence. Makes you really question the settlement of this mandate
system. Was it really a process towards decolonization, or was it an insidious
way of extending the lifespan of imperialism. In many ways it really just
came down to a change in what you call it, instead of calling them colonies
they were called Mandates. More a change in nomenclature rather than
substance. After Versailles imperialism was still very alive.
However, in the colonized world, with the rising intellectual class, this truth
did not escape them.
In 1911 the revolution took place under the inspiration of Sun Yet Sen,
overthrowing the last of the Chinese Dynasties, the Chin dynasty (who were
Manchu, so the revolutionaries made it clear that was a foreign power)
June 4th 1989, 70 years later students were massacred in Tiananmen Square
1937-1945 Sino-Japanese war. For China and Japan the second world war
began a lot earlier.
Dr. Sung Jet Seng and the founding of the Chinese Republic:
Lecture 5 Week 2
He spent much of his life over seas as an expatriate at first, and then in
exile.
Was raised in Hawaii
Earned a medical degree in Hong Kong, which at the time was under the
control of the British.
Because of that experience as an expatriate and an exile, he gained
tremendous exposure to Western models of government. So in that sense
his background suited him well to someone that would bring about political
reform.
In 1895 he stages the first cue against the Manchus, and he was forced into
exile for 16 years.
What he was very successful at during that 16 years was gaining the support
of Chinese expatriates, there were Chinese communities all throughout the
world, and many of them were quite well off as small businessmen, and he
was able to gain their financial support. So surprisingly the Chinese
expatriate population was pivotal in the funding and support of the
revolutionary movement.
In 1911 there was an uprising in southern China and that was the last straw
for the Chin dynasty. And that was the beginning of the Chinese Republic.
He says the very idea of revolution was also traditionally Chinese, that the
Chinese had their own concept of revolution. He refers back to Manches, 4th
Century B.C. Chinese philosopher, who talks about Go Min, which means
revoking the mandate. Go Min gave people the right to overthrow an
emperor who did not fulfill the needs of the people. So Sun-Yet-Sen says
revolution is intrinsically Chinese
Nationalism:
Lecture 5 Week 2
The second thing he talks about is Democracy, which he says is also not a
purely Western idea. He says the Chinese had concepts which were quite
democratic in spirit. The old idea of San Yung, according to legend the sage
kinds instead of passing the throne to their family, they selected those who
were most capable. The idea of meritocracy is also inherently democratic.
Even though China had these ideals, it did not have the physical material
institutions to implement these ideals, and for that, China had to turn for the
West. And for most of the reformers around the world, they looked to places
like France and also the Parliamentary System in Britain.
There was Judicial, Executive and Legislative, and then he combined this
with two traditional Chinese institutions, the Examination System, and the
Censoring System for choosing representatives. He saw that these systems
could provide representatives to the national assembly.
The third principle of the people that he talks about is called Livelihood
He sees an essential flaw in Western society, coming from Western
Capitalism. He saw so much social and economic disparity in Western
societies. So ambitions with their democratic aspirations, but tremendous
disparity between the rich and the poor, which he attributes to capitalism
and private industry which seeks to exploit the workers. He does not want
China to follow in that same pattern.
So how do you assure the Livelihood of all of your citizens, rather than
allowing the rich to exploit the poor. He recommended that large industries
should be under state ownership and not be privately owned. Industries such
as salt and railroads should all be controlled by the state.
A lot of things change with this call for anti-imperialism, which also brings a
call for gender equality and social economic reforms. A marriage of anti-
imperialism, nationalism and democracy, all combined into one thing. Each
one building off of the momentum of the other.
The also called for social-economic reform, because they saw an implicit
connection between imperialism and old-feudal structures. Feudal landlords
were supported by foreign capital and power. To attack imperialism meant
you also had to attack the old feudal structure, so there was a really
dramatic revolutionary movement that really touched on every aspect of
Chinese society.
All of these changes that we see, the West represented both the source
of these ideas, but at the same time the target.
MMW 6 – Edmond Chang 30/09/2009 06:36:00
Incindent in 1919 in a place called Amritsar in India (Northwest corner of
India). It started out as a peaceful demonstration against a series of bills
that the British Raj had passed. These bills basically denied Indian Citizens of
very basic civil liberties, such as freedom of expression, freedom to gather,
freedom to voice protest of any kind. Striping them of all civil and political
liberties. So this crowed in Amritsar gathered in a square as a way of
protesting the Wrolatt bills. With these bills the British had the right to arrest
and try any individual they considered to be involved in sidicious acts against
the British Raj (colonial Government in India). The British response to this
peaceful demonstration: Excerpt from police report “within 30 seconds of his
arrival at the demonstration, brigadeer general Dyer ordered his troops to
open fire, and Dyer continued firing even after people tried to run away” The
square was a very enclosed space. “some women dove into a well, the only
refuge, and children ran terrified into the courtyard… not until his troops ran
short of ammunition, did Dyer give the order to stop. Over 1000 bullets were
fired, and almost every bullet hit a target.”
This all at the same time that ideas of democracy and self determination are
being thrown out in Europe. This shows the contradiction.
The colonizer often resorts to savagery. Civilization and its tendency to use
savagery in maintaining its imperial interests.
This contradiction was not lost on many of the young nationalists in the
colonized world. Gandhi in the aftermath of Amritsar “The impossible man of
India shall rise to liberate their motherland, because cooperation in any
shape or form with a satanic government is sinful”
Some of the legacies of the British Raj, 1848 to 1947, period of direct British
control of India. During this time the British occupation absorbed almost a
full third of all of the revenue that came out of India. Went to the cost of the
British occupation of India and the cost of the British administration of India.
The revenues that the colonized people are used by the forces that are
colonizing them. While the British were in India during this time, they did
not implement any reforms or changes which would allow India or its
economy to grow, prevented industrialization on every level. Instead, as with
most colonies, the British took advantage of the raw materials in India,
keeping it as a raw material based economy. Colonized power takes raw
materials from the colonies and returns manufactured goods to the colonies,
and profits from this. Because of the civil war in the US, the British lost a
supply of cotton, so they shifted the agricultural production of India to
cotton. This undermined local industries, as when you have an economy that
is primarily based on raw materials, there is very little prospect of economic
of industrial growth. Because of that shift from food production to cotton
production, the society was much more prone to famine. The British also did
the same thing with Opium. Britain forced the Opium trade on China. So
much of the wealth of the British empire came from the export of Opium to
China. The poppies were grown in India, processed into Opium and sold to
China. Again food production was shifted to the cultivation of poppy.
In this case we had the full force of the British government behind this drug
trade, leaving devastating consequences for the economy of India.
Third World countries today have problems getting out of poverty because of
some of the lingering legacies of colonialism
Viceroy of India the Marquee of Repon did try to assimilate some Indians
into the local courts, but he met with so much resistance from his peers.
Lecture 5 Week 2
The dhoti would become a very powerful symbol for India’s self reliance and
self empowerment.
The very important concept of the Satyagraha movement, which can best be
understood as “truth force”, ones firmness in the truth, the power the
strength that you gain from persistent quest for the truth. This comes with
a code of conduct, one must always exhibit civility without fear. Cannot come
across as uncivilized barbarian, but at the same time show no fear. Exhibit
the inborn gentleness. Gandhi was very conscious of himself as the perfect
embodiment of Satyagraha. It must also include this willingness for
personal sacrifice, and most importantly the idea of non violent civil
disobedience. This comes from a mixture of sources, indigenous and
Western. Indigenous in that it reflects Gandhi’s own Hindu background,
particularly the ethic of non-killing and doing no harm to all living things.
Why was it so important to him? Because for Gandhi and a lot of people who
believed in the ethic, it was that there was a very fine line between the
killing of an animal, and the killing of a human being. Because as humans
we are experts at rationalizing the killing of other human beings, and usually
how we rationalize it is seeing other human beings as animals, as sub-
humans.
Lecture 5 Week 2
The first that Gandhi talks about is the Ahmendabad strike: the paternalism
of imperialism, the workers are like children to us, we are here to take care
of the natives, they are like our children, don’t question us on our intentions
and actions. So Gandhi calls for the mill workers to strike, he makes
conditions clear, that no one must ever resort to violence, also, every
individual must maintain dignity, cannot beg for alms, cannot rely on other
peoples charity, while striking need to find a way to support yourself. Also,
never call off the strike until what was sought was gained.
As time passes Gandhi notices that the resolve on the part of the mill
workers is beginning to wane, so as a very spontaneous idea he decides to
being a personal fast. Using his own soul force as a way of resolving the
situation. He said that his intent of the fast was the strengthen the resolve
of the workers, but was actually putting moral pressure on the mill owners.
He fast for 3 days and a settlement was reached.
Another case: the Kheda Satyagraha, peasants refused to pay unfair tax, so
Gandhi game to empower the people, show them that the government was
supposed to be civil servants, not masters of the people.
He also says that there has to be total solidarity among all of the
participants of Satyagraha, even if someone can afford to pay the tax, we
cannot have anyone cross the lines.
Its not about just sitting back and doing nothing, must actively provoke the
authorities. Civil disobedience is very proactive
Forcing the government to react or look bad, and by reacting they look bad
Lecture 5 Week 2
A Satyagrahi obeys the laws of society intelligently, and of his own will,
because he considers it to be his sacred duty to do so.
Gandhi is also one of the most self critical leaders in the 20th century, he
says that he made a huge mistake with some of the early movements. He
calls it a Himalayan miscalculation, he called these protests before he had a
chance to really educate the participants in the principles of civil
disobedience, he points that out as his mistake.
George Orwell says that in many ways Gandhi was incredibly important, but
that his failure was that so many of these changes centered around himself
as an individual. All these changes really came down to the charisma and the
discipline of one man, the shortcomings is that he didn’t leave behind any
institutional reforms. It was too much based on his own personal charisma.
When you have such a charismatic leader that brings about change through
the pure force of his personality, and yet is unable to establish permanent
institutional changes.
The other article that we read had to do with post-independence India. This
is where the professor hopes we can see the links between India’s colonial
legacy and some of the challenges that modern India faces.
The first one is malnutrition, a contradiction between India being one of the
fastest growing economies in the developing world, and yet still having a
lingering problem of malnutrition and hunger in the lower classes.
Lecture 5 Week 2
In 1982 one third of the population was regularly going to bed at night
hungry and malnourished. And yet there was not much government or world
response to this. This is because persistent malnutrition does not have the
same dramatic effect as a famine or an outbreak of starvation. It happens
quietly on a daily basis, so that people pretty much can ignore it. Persistent
orderly hunger does not upset the system. The system goes on in spite of
the trends.
Headline conscience: not only in the elite India, but all around the world, we
can tolerate the quiet bellow the radar inequalities all around the world. We
can tolerate malnutrition and poverty, even in some cases genocide, as long
as those things do not reach our living rooms as headlines. Things that
happen quietly, bellow the radar, the elite or the Western world can tolerate.
Because they do not affect the headline conscience. Our conscience only
seems to come into play when we see something as part of a headline.
When it doesn’t shove itself in our face, we can, and we will look the other
way.
MMW 6 – Edmond Chang 30/09/2009 06:36:00
Idea of self empowerment as it applies to the third world.
San Yet Sen was a physician trained in Hong Kong, Ghandi was a British
trained Lawer, Co-Chi-Ming was a French and Russian trained political
organizer. In the 1920s he joined the French Communist party in Paris, in
1943 he went to Moscow and learned the intricacies of politics. There were
hundreds of others in a similar situation. Exposure to Western Culture
certaintly played a key role in these independence movements. The great
irony is that they use that to turn against the west. Many of these people
fought against Japan and Germany in World War 2 as colonial subjects. That
participation in World War 2 left a very profound affect on some of these
nationalists. It made them feel more empowered, their participation made
them feel that they also had a stake in shaping the new world order.
Lecture 5 Week 2
Education and participation in World War 2 were very important factors for
inspiring these nationalists to assert themselves in the fight for their own
autonomy.
Even in the fight for independence, there were several cases where the
transition was quite bloody. One example is French Indo-China (Laos,
Cambodia and Vietnam)
The great hypocrisy was that even though they did not resist the Japanese,
after the war the French stepped back onto the scene and wanted to have
control back. This was incredibly irritating to the Vietnamese nationalist. Ho-
Chi-Men says that besides this spine-less betrayal by the French, the
administration in Vietnam made sure that a middle class would never rise up
or prosper. This was done by denying any form of universal education. They
kept the population illiterate, in 1949 illiteracy was at 80 percent. The French
also made sure that they supported a very small elite, about 3 percent of the
population which controlled almost half the land in Vietnam. All of these
factors would come back to haunt them. This institutionalized inequality
would come back to haunt them.
The very bloody war of independence lasted for 8 years. (that was before
the Vietnam War)
French defeat came in 1954, that was the end of the French presence in
Indo-China. The defeat of the French led to independence and to the
creation of North and South Vietnam. The North under Ho-Chi-Min with its
communist government, and the south more aligned to the West. The US
gave their support to the more traditional and conservative South Vietnam
government (an aspect of the Cold War)
Lecture 5 Week 2
You would think that after this disaster in Vietnam, they French would realize
that the age of imperialism was at an end. But apparently the lesion of
Vietnam did not hit home hard enough. They shoed the same kind of
intransience in Algeria. This is where the first call for the Intifada took place
in Algeria against the French imperialists. Much if this intransience was due
to the stubborn will of one man, Charles de Gaul, who now insisted that
France could not afford to lose another colony. So they fought a very
protracted quagmire of a war. It was also fueled by a group of French
settlers, who were notorious for their racism towards the native Arabs. They
were kind of like the Afrikaners in South Africa. They had a vested interest in
staying in Algeria and remaining the Elite there. This made France continue
to suppress the nationalist movement. As this conflict progresses, one
colonial subject, Frantz Fanon, could not help but notice the contradictions of
French civilization. Here you have a civilization which had in fact been
responsible for the modern sense of revolution, the battle cry of democracy,
the chant of Fraternity, Equality and Liberty. The contradiction between that
claim and yet right before Franz Fanon’s eyes the brutal realities of
suppression. He was appointed head of a psychiatric ward in Algeria. His job
was to treat all of these mental cases that came before him. He saw that
these cases did not reflect personal psychosis, but instead reflected a
systematic dehumanization, cases of madness and schizophrenia where the
products of imperialism. That’s why he writes his very famous letter of
resignation, because he can no longer stomach the hierocracy of the French.
His book “Wretched of the Earth” which he wrote while he was dying.
Lecture 5 Week 2
Fanon was convinced by several truths, one was that he believed that there
was an absolute necessity for violence in fighting against the oppression of
imperialism. He says that a system founded on violence (like imperialism)
can only be confronted with violence. He says all these Western ideas about
humanity, and tolerance and love for ones fellow man, and individualism.
These are all ideas hammered into the heads of colonized people as a way of
disempowering them. All these lofty ideals that imperialists use to basically
disempower the colonized people.
P. 103 in the reader (left hand side second paragraph) “We must leave our
dreams and abandon our old beliefs and friendships from the time before life
began. Let us waste no time in…”
Fanon also believed that decolonization is not about looking at the past and
getting the white man to compensate for the past, its rather about looking
towards the future.
P. 100 of the reader, left hand side middle of the page “I as a man of color
do not have the right to see to know to what respect my race is superior or
inferior to another race…” I have neither the right nor the duty to claim
restitution for the sufferings of my ancestors, true liberation comes form
looking ahead.
By the same token decolonization cannot look to the colonial past for
answers. The decolonized state cannot just simply try to mimic the West as
a solution, because he says that’s futile. And at best it can just be an
obscene caricature of the West. Mimicry is not the way to go, nor is trying to
play catch-up with the West (because neo-colonialism tries everything in its
power to prevent that). For Fanon decolonization has little to do with the
past or the West. It is self-empowerment on one’s own terms.
Lecture 5 Week 2
Independence and empowerment are easier said than done. There are all
kinds of subtle obstacles in the way.
Financial leverage from afar rather than political administration that is right
on site.
Lecture 5 Week 2
Much of this leverage comes in the form of “aid”. And this is the key idea
after World War 2, foreign aid. It is not solely about altruism, for the most
part it is not about altruism. Much of this leverage is administered through
agencies like the IMF or the World Bank. What they do is provide huge
loans to the so-called third world. The question is where do these loans go?
What is the agenda behind these loans? They do not come with no strings
attached. Usually these loans are aimed for investment in raw material
industries. This is to further exploitation, but does not lead to development
or a self-sufficient economy. Instead they maintain small dependant still
non-diversified economies. Often they are cash-crop or single raw material
economies.
Economies that are not meant to ever really thrive on their own. This
assures that the price for raw materials from the non-western world remains
low. This assures that the developing world cannot compete against the
manufacturing capabilities of Europe. It keeps systems of inequality intact.
Now there are low-paying manufacturing jobs in the third world, while high
tech and services are supplied in the West.
There is very little investment in education from these loans, because of the
fear of an educated class. Because when people are educated they point out
the injustices and inequality. Safer to keep people uneducated. In most
cases the trick is just to assimilate a very small minority elite. With 70-80
% illiteracy.
Much of the aid also comes in the form of military aid, helping to keep in
power the puppet rulers who will help to protect neo-colonialist interests.
Dictators which the western world will support, so that they can keep some
of these systems of inequality in place, at the expense of the masses.
Lecture 5 Week 2
No wonder when you have 2/3 of the world population living with constant
chronic hunger and starvation while the rest of the world lives their
comfortable suburban lives, while the world is clearly shaped by this
disparity between the haves and have nots. So many states look for an
alternative, and in many cases that alternative is socialism, an attempt at
self empowerment.
During the Cold War they saw the spread of communism, but didn’t
understand why.
MMW 6 – Edmond Chang 30/09/2009 06:36:00
Phenomenon called Mass Society: one of the defining markers of the 20th
Century
In the traditional world (19th century and earlier) people had other forms of
affiliation, they drew their identity from many different sources: domestically
there was the extended family (clans, maybe even a tribal basis). There
were elders who you could turn to for guidance. Socially, especially in
Europe, people were divided into the three estates: the clergy, the nobles,
and the commoners. People drew their social identity from that, and also
from Religion from their faith, from what parish you belonged to or what
church you attended. All of these being sources of communal identity.
In many ways consent, free will, individualism, autonomy: these are true in
theory but questionable in substance.
In the reading from John Maynard King’s peace, talking about another
historian named Commons who broke European Civilization down to three
epics:
The first is the epic of scarcity, from begning up till around the 15th Cenutry.
IN this time period there is a minimum of individual liberty. With a maximum
of communalistic, feudalistic, and monarchic control (maximum political
control)
The second epic is the epic of abundance, from the 16th to the 19th century.
With the Renaissance, Humanism in Europe, also the age of exploration.
Europe expanding and bringing back tons of wealth into society. In this
period you begin to see an increase in individual civil liberties, and a
decrease in coercive control. There is a democratization of society in this
period of abundance. As this period climaxes in the 19th century we see the
triumph of systems like Laissez-fair, and the triumph of liberalism.
Lecture 5 Week 2
The third epic is the epic of stablization, where liberalism and laissez-fair
are all debunct, they are concepts which will end up being discredited.
You begin to see some degrease in individual liberty, the sense that you
cannot let individualism and democracy just run wild. A sense that you have
to restrain it somehow by curbing peoples civil liberties somehow. The way
this is achieved in this third epic of civilization is not by going back to the
political coercion, but more through different types of economic measures.
Using economic incentives and pressures to ensure greater conformity,
which assures greater stabilization. Conformity is also something which
requires collective identification, but in the modern world, those traditional
sources of identification are gone. So what do you use in its place? In many
ways its things like consumption, and different types of leisure, making sure
people are enjoying the same things. We get the sense of that from the
poem by Audin “The Unknown Citizen”: references to the things he does.
Its not through political coercion that society achieves conformity, but its
things like leisure and consumption which achieve a mass society. There is
not some dictator telling us what to do, but its in more subtle ways that we
become homogenous, with our individualism being curtailed.
In this model one of the key goals for capitalism democracy is to find a
viable balance between social stability and economic equality. This is in fact
the main point of Keynes short little essay “Am I A Liberal” he is trying to
point out that there has to be a new direction for liberalism. A new direction
which tries to find this middle ground between social justice and stability. In
some ways he is trying to revamp liberalism, giving it a new kind of
orientation. This kind of challenge is most evident in the piece by Eleanor
Roosevelt. She was very committed to justice and global understanding.
Lecture 5 Week 2
In her piece, Eleanor argues that her husband left a legacy which included
taking certain risks in order to preserve democracy. There is almost a
defensive tone in her piece, against people are saying that what FDR did was
just like socialism. People who thought it was socialism creeping into the
capitalist democracy. Roosevelt says these were risks which had to be taken
in order to preserve our system. Things like the New Deal and Social
Security. Giving benefits to the handicapped and the elderly. These things
are about taking certain measures to preserve democracy. You can no longer
have capitalism operate in its traditional ways, there needs to be a new
consciousness, otherwise the alternative is some form of totalitarianism,
either extreme left or extreme right. In order for democracy to survive, it
needs to be modified, even if it means applying some programs which look
socialist. Eleanor Roosevelt’s view is that its about empowering and
rewarding the individual. Her vision is one of a kinder and gentler capitalism,
one that is not callous to the needs to the majority. Capitalism which uses
economic justice as a means of assuring social stability.
These are gestures of philanthropy, but are also pressure valves to release
the pressure which is inherent to capitalism. If a leader is able to make
these kind of modifications, its very hard for revolution to take place in a
liberal democracy.
This is where Walter Lipmann comes in, he says that as long as democratic
leaders can maintain some level of social moral. Keeping the moral so that it
is not so low that it compels us to take to the streets. If the leaders can
maintain some level of social moral, some semblance that they are taking
initiatives to solve the problems, it buys them time.
Even from the ancient Athenian times, there has always been tremendous
anxiety about a pure democracy.
This harps back to Plato and Socrates, who did not really trust the majority.
These anxieties are built into the very constitution of our country. Something
like the electoral collage, that’s what its all about, safeguards against the
danger of the majority.
In the modern era we see certain mechanisms which create the manufacture
of consent.
Consent does not come from within each individual, but it is manufactured
and shaped.
Lecture 5 Week 2
Walter Lipmann was one of the first in the US to begin to use this
perspective to look at mass society. Many of his ideas are about the notion of
manufacturing consent. He distinguishes public opinion from public affairs.
He is talking about a notion of a group mind. An ideology that absorbs a
large group of people. Public opinion that is derived from different forms of
manipulation, outside manipulation, not something which comes from within
individuals. “Public affairs” is the realities of global affairs. He says there is a
very serious disconnect between public opinion, and our understanding of
public affairs. He argues that in a democracy you cannot be guaranteed that
every individual represents a realistic self sufficient and self governing
individual, we are all to some extent or another manipulated by the media,
by our education, and by propaganda.
These are some of the things which prevent us from a true understanding of
global or public affairs. Lipmann mentions several constraints to that:
The political manipulation of public opinion, talking primarily about the use
of symbols (in a very broad sense). One very obvious symbol that political
leaders exploit is the concept of patriotism, the flag. What it means to be
patriotic, and what it means to be “un-American”. Political leaders can also
use social scapegoats. They can point to greedy landlords when there is a
housing problem, instead of looking to the problem of the whole system.
They can point to lobbyists, but yet lobbyists still have the most power in our
government. Other convenient scapegoats: illegal immigrants. Instead of
tackling the problem of unemployment as a systemic problem, you can
easily point to immigrants as a scapegoat, stealing your jobs. People on
welfare “they are sucking up our wealth” instead of looking at the systemic
problem which produces poverty and unemployment.
Lipmann says that we don’t have to see this as some form of sinister
conspiracy, it doesn’t have to be that. Instead we can see this as simply a
natural phenomenon of a capitalist democracy.
MMW 6 – Edmond Chang 30/09/2009 06:36:00
Unlike communism (Marxism), Fascism was not born out of ideology, rather
the ideology was born out of a movement. Marxism was an ideology which
the movement of communism was based on.
Fascist’s rather than appealing to the proletariat, saw small business owners
and small property owners as its power base.
In who they draw their support from, fascism and communism are different.
Another aspect of Fascism is its emphasis on the use of brute force as a way
of gaining power. Many of Mussolini’s fascist followers were refered to as the
men in black, they were local militias, paramilitary groups, which dressed in
black.
What Mussolini was able to do with these men in black in 1922, was to use
force as a source of intimidation, he forced the king to appoint him as prime
minister. Once he came to power, he dissolved all of the other political
parties.
In respect to the idea of individual freedom, Mussolini made it very clear that
individuals can have some liberties, but that the state has every right to
deprive people of useless and harmful freedom. He believes there are many
civil liberties which jeopardize the security of the state.
Lecture 5 Week 2
Instead, he very bluntly claims that the nation has a need for authority, for
direction and order.
An excerpt from Mussolini has to say about this “the truth evident now to all
who are not warped by liberal dogmatism, is that men have tired of liberty.
They have made an orgy of it, liberty is today no longer the chasete and
austere virgin for whom the generations of the first half of the last century
fought and died…” Order, hierarchy and discipline
“fascism stepping on the corpse of the goddess of liberty” shows how facism
sees itself in relation to liberalism.
Both Stalinist Russia, and Fascist Italy both rely on the notion of grabbing
consent, or the compulsion of consent through power. Rather than
manufacturing it.
How another war broke out a mere 20 years after the first World War.
Was this war inevitable? Was it something that had to happen? (There are
historians who argue that the Second World War was a continuation of the
unfinished business of the First World War)
Lecture 5 Week 2
The Weimar Republic, a system which basically accepted the terms of the
Treaty of Versailles. A group of German liberals, social democrats who came
together. They accepted the terms of Versailles, because they felt they had
to. They established a new constitution for Weimar Germany.
There were essential flaws with the system they set up:
One is that it was a constitution which invited instability. They allowed even
very small parties to hold seats in the parliament. Prevented a stable and
reliable majority from being had by any party. All of the coalitions did not
inspire trust in the government.
They gave the president the power to appoint and remove the chancellor,
which was meant to balance the previous problem.
For the most part the Weimar Republic was interested in restoring domestic
stability and economic recovery.
General mood was of reconciliation and compromise. But this euphoric mood
on the diplomatic front did not at all correspond to the public sentiment on
the ground. This was especially true in Germany. Most historians agree that
the key event that tipped the balance between compromise and nationalism
was the Great Depression. With the Great Depression all of the antipathy
towards Versailles was able to dominant the thinking of the Germans. Its
precisely in this climate that Hitler begins to enter the scene.
Hitler enters the scene around 1923, in the wake of the French occupation of
the Ruhr Valley. Because of the financial crisis which ensued, Hitler pointed a
finger at the Weimar Republic, that they were betraying the German people.
Hey slowly rose to prominence on what was known as the 25 point platform.
They called for replacing all large department stores (they were knocking off
the small businesses), part of the Nazi platform was to restore small
businesses. (the powerbase of the Nazis was small property owners)
In 1923, Hitler saw the momentum and initiated the Bier Hall Putsch, it
failed, but gave him celebrity status.
People wanted to believe that just because Hitler reminds them that a
dormouse can only mate with a dormouse, that a blonde haired Arian male
can only mate with a blonde haired Arian female.
Not allowed propagation of the weaker races. Not let them have the
opportunity to propagate their race. He sees it as an insult to nature itself
--
Hitler believed that true genius was inborn, and that the German people had
that
What is missing is any talk about rationality or intellect. Hitler brushes those
things aside, instead wants to make a rustic appeal. He is always appealing
to the lowest common denominator. He is not trying to appeal to intellectuals
or well educated people.
He says that the Nazi party should appeal to the Volk instinct that slumbers
or lives in the heart of god knows how many Germans. This instinct that
millions of Germans have.
Lecture 5 Week 2
Not only does he appeal to the lowest common denominator, but he appeals
to the basic instincts of humanity.
A good leader must be able to take into account, both the weakness, and
bestiality into account. A good leader should be able to exploit that which
makes us beasts.
Hitler sees himself, or sees a great leader not as someone with heroic virtues
or high intellect, but he sees the great leader as someone who is a
psychologist. A good leader is a good psychologist, who is able to tap into
what people are thinking or feeling. A good leader is also an agitator. One
who can move the masses, not through persuasion, but through agitation.
A good leader who is going to agitate the masses, must be skilled in using
radical inflammatory rhetoric.
He wants to keep membership in the Nazi party very exclusive, only the
diehard racists can remain. Anyone who’s conscience may get in the way of
this, he doesn’t want them to be part of it.
Hitler was effective in his time in Germany, this kind of talk appealed to a
tremendous amount of people. He knew what to tap into, that’s the most
scary lesion we need to understand for our own times, we need to be aware
of demagogues who are equally skilled in exploiting peoples fears. These
people become more prominent when there is a crisis.
In the late 20s early 30s we begin to see Germany really crumbling, when
the Great Depression hit, it destroyed whatever remnant of civilization and
rationality there was left.
Lecture 5 Week 2
Once Hitler comes to power in 1933, he had so much popular support that
the aging president Hindenburg had no choice but to appoint Hitler as
Chancellor. Hitler then combined the power of the president and Chancellor
to himself.
He used article 48, the clause that gave the president dictatorial powers, he
immediately exercised that. He used the attempted burning of the Reichstag
to use article 48.
Several important precedents for totalitarian expansion were set in the early
30s, one was the Japanese invasion in Manchuria. Japanese established a
colony in Manchuria. They tried to use it as a base for their future conquest
in Asia. The League of Nations ignored the Chinese appeal to do something
about this, that sent messages around the world to the totalitarians about
how the League would react. Then Mussolini invaded Ethiopia, and the
League still didn’t react. This gave confidence to the totalitarians, that the
League wouldn’t react to their actions.
The darkest and most tragic episode throughout the 20th Cenutry, and
perhaps in the whole history of humanity.
The technology at our disposal combined with the instinct to kill made the
events so horrible
From that northern base they embarked on a fullscale invasion of the rest of
China, began in 1937, they swept south very quickly, and by December of
1937 they were able to enter the Chinese wartime capital of Nanjing.
Prior to Iris Chang’s book The Rape of Nanchang this was an issue that few
people knew about outside of China. Still in Japan today there is resistance
to acknowledging this issue in their textbooks. Iris Chang committed suicide,
spending 10 years researching this pushed her to the edge of despair
Was there any purpose behind these atrocities? What was it all for? What it
involved was on both sides the idea of crossing the threshold of humanity,
on the side of the victim it meant dehumanizing them so that it doesn’t
matter, because in your mind they have been effectively dehumanized, they
are no longer human, equivalent to smashing an ant. It dehumanizes the
perpetrator as well, desensitizes them from the killing itself. From both ends
we see this idea of humanity being compromised in extreme ways.
What we see here is that such acts of violence and atrocity creates a
rationale of its own, a cult of cruelty, a self perpetuating phenomenon, there
is no end necessary, no end has to justify the means, because the means
themselves become justification. Its almost irrelevant to ask why they did it,
they did it because it was part of the mentality that was developed. There
was no concrete objective behind such acts.
Lecture 5 Week 2
It’s a fine line between killing a fly and killing a human, as Gandhi talked
about all life being sacred. You can rationalize killing in any form if you want
to.
Competition among officers for how many beheadings they could commit in
a day.
The goal was to eliminate close to 30 million Slavs to make room for
Germans in Eastern Europe. To either kill them or move them. Hitler’s plan
was to relocate all the surviving Slavs to Siberia.
Even though this policy was never implemented, over 6 million Russians
(estimated) died at the hands of Hitler
Other target groups of the Nazi ideology were Gypsies, Poles, and
Communists. They had many many target groups.
Of course the most concerted effort was in creating a Europe free of Jews
Lecture 5 Week 2
In January 1942 there was a conference for the German high command at
Wannsee. This is where the earliest plans for what to do with the Jews were
established. The Germans estimated that around 11 million Jews were in
Europe. At one point the plan was to deport them all to Madagascar. But that
was an impractical solution, so they made concentration camps the solution.
They used the healthy ones for labor first. The plan here was for all the
Jewish communities to pay for the cost of transportation themselves; either
through labor, or the wealthier Jews would pay for everyone else.
In the minutes from the Wannsee conference, there was concern for the
mixed lineage group; those who have some Jewish blood in them. For them,
depending on how much Jewish blood they had in them, they would use the
strategy of sterilization, making sure they would wipe out any traces of
Jewish blood in the population. The ones who had more Jewish blood would
be immediately sterilized.
The minutes from the meeting at Wannsee are horrible enough, but after
Wannsee Hitler decides to change the policy himself, and to seek the final
solution: the elimination of all Jews. As a result of this policy, 6 million Jews
were killed on concentration camps from 1943 to 1945. From the
concentration camps, only 1 million survived.
Elie Wiesel’s book Night : does not focus as much on the psychology of the
perpetrators. Rather, he takes us through the process through which the
victim themselves becomes dehumanized, through no fault of their own, but
when you undergo such gruesome suffering, you lose any sense of yourself
as a human. A living death worse than death itself. He takes us through his
own journey, the year 1943 where Jews in Hungary were still living under an
illusion of normalcy. There were already accounts of Jews being relocated to
camps, never being heard from again, but yet in his town and in many towns
in Hungary, people still clung on to this illusion of normalcy. He talks about
his father still being preoccupied with community affairs, his mother
worrying about matchmaking for his older sister. People going on with their
lives, not wanting to face the realities taking place not far away. Even when
they Jews were confined to the Ghettos, most of them clung to the hope that
human reason, human decency would prevail.
Lecture 5 Week 2
Even in the Ghettos, neither the German nor the Jews ruled the Ghetto, it
was illusion. We are all susceptible to the power of illusion. When we do act
it can be too late.
This illusion is shattered when they are gathered in the trains and taken to
Auschwitz. A rude awakening for everyone. What they feared the most
became reality. One of the most powerful moments in this account is when
he is separated from his mother and his sisters.
Wiesel is so terse in the way he talks about this, eight words that separated
me from my mother, men to the left, women to the right, form that point on,
he would never see his mother and his sisters again. The horror of course
would not end with that, the most poignant moment is when he sees the
children lining up outside the furnace. “Never shall I forget that night, the
first night in camp, which has turned my life into one long night, seven times
cursed, seven times sealed, never shall I forget that smoke, never shall I
forget the faces of the Children who’s bodies were turned into smoke against
a clear blue sky…” “it murdered my god and soul”
Even in the midst of this hell, he gives us some glimpses of humanity. When
he talks about the Cappo (those in charge of the barracks), trying to console
him when he thought his father would be selected. One moment is as they
are being forced to march through the snow (45 miles or more), he
describes this very graphic scene of the dead and the dying lying in the
snow, and people suffocating each other because of the weight of the
bodies. He describes a friend he knew who was a violin player, and the
image of music from Beethoven rising up form the pile of dead bodies.
Lecture 5 Week 2
For the most part, not withstanding some of these brief glimpses of hope, we
see victims completely losing their faith and their sense of humanity. One of
the themes he comes back to again and again is how humans are forced to
violate the most sacred bond in life, that between child and parent. He talks
about examples were sons beat up their fathers for a simple morsel of
bread, or sons abandoning their fathers in the snow because they couldn’t
keep up. His own situation where his father is pummeled to death in the
bunk bellow while he was above him doing nothing. This is not an account
where he sees himself as heroic, he survived but he failed the one that he
loved the most, because he saw his father being pummeled to death and did
absolutely nothing. He is also not saying that he was exceptional, he said
this is what the horrors did to people. His father’s last words were his name
being called out.
What we want to look at is: why so many people who seem perfectly sane
and potentially compassionate were able to cross this threshold of humanity,
to follow Hitler and his distorted vision of racial purity.
MMW 6 – Edmond Chang 30/09/2009 06:36:00
If we point to larger forces, forces of conformity, its easier to avoid individual
responsibility
--------
The symbolic significance of Berlin - the fate of Berlin was intertwined with
the shaping of the Cold War itself
Berlin really highlights the important role that perception played in the Cold
War: the idea that if the enemy perceives you as being weak, or lacking
resolve, then they are more likely to attack. So against any rationality, the
US decided to stand firm in defending Berlin. Strategically it was almost an
impossibility to succeed if the Russians had attacked, but symbolically it was
important to hold that stand.
---
Imagined scenario of the life we would all have if the Russians had over-run
us. It sounds playful, but at that point it was serious. But was it realistic?
Was it plausible that such a thing could have happened? In retrospect when
we look at the nature and potential of the Soviet Bloc, the answer to that is
no.
Such a scenario was not possible, the Soviet Union was weak from within
and could not assert itself in such a way.
Lecture 5 Week 2
It also points to that everything about the Cold War had to do with
perception, and little to do with the reality of how strong each side was.
What was most important was the perception that each side had of the
other. That is what shaped the reality of the Cold War.
The Soviet Union imagined itself as the champion of proletariats all around
the world: wishful thinking and a highly inflated sense of its important. Also
saw itself as the vanguard of anti-colonial movements in the Third World
(equally self deceiving) It saw itself as the most potent challenge to the
West. Given that the Soviet Union had advanced so quickly from being a
backwards country to a heavily industrialized country. Some countries looked
to the Soviet Union as a model of shedding the shackles of their colonial
past. The Soviet Union regarded US Capitalism as a global virus, exploiting
weakness.
The enemy was inflated beyond belief. The danger and threat of the enemy
is often over-inflated
In the same way that the Cold War was all consuming in the 50s 60s 70s,
the ideology of the War on Terror has the same impact on our policies and
society today
Lecture 5 Week 2
In 1950 America saw itself now as the necessary leader of the Free World.
Many Americans did not want a war so soon after WW2, but the argument in
NSC42 was that if we acquiesce in anyway, it will only lead to greater
consequences, so America had to assume this role, even if reluctantly. This
is where we see the policy of containment. What did containment entail
according to NSC42?:
1) First of all, massive aid to Western Europe, the best way to contain
capitalism is to build up Western Europe.
At this time there was still a strong argument from the isolationist side:
people asked, why should the US bear this financial and military burden?
Why should the US sacrifice so much to protect other countries?
This was a question of lively debate until the Korean War broke out. The
Korean War changed everything, as the Secretary of State at the time said
“The Korean War came along and saved us”. The Korean war was the pivotal
factor which changed public opinion to support this new role by the US.
Galvanized congress to fund massive defense spending and foreign aid.
Sent the role to Americans that communism was on the move towards world
domination
More and more credence given to the so called domino affect: the idea that
a defeat of free institutions anywhere, is a defeat everywhere. Anywhere
that communism makes an advance, becomes a defeat for Western
Civilization and democratic free states everywhere.
At the same time there is a strong belief that the Americans need to contain
the communist threat not on the battlefield, but on the ideological front: to
win an ideological victory. Everyone knew that an actual military conflict
would be catastrophic. At all costs avoid a total war with the Russians.
If conflict was necessary, it was important to keep them local and self
contained. Never allowing them to expand or explode beyond their particular
region
Even when the opportunity came for the Chinese nationalists on Taiwan to
retake mainland China, the US made sure that that would not be allowed to
happen. There was a lot of debate about why the US positioned the 7th
Fleet in the Taiwan Strait at the time. The conventional idea was that they
were there to prevent the Communists from attacking Taiwan, but now
people think they were really there to prevent the nationalists from retaking
China. Because if the Korean war was able to explode into an east Asian war,
it would be a much bigger conflict, not something the US wanted to see.
The policy was to try to contain the Russians first ideology, and then if there
are conflicts, keep them local and self contained
The war was not so cold for soviet satellites, or third world countries
struggling.
The Cold War was a long peace for the Soviets and Americans, but it
contributed to bloody and costly conflicts all over the world
----
Lecture 5 Week 2
----
The Korean War created the 4th largest casualty count in any war for
Americans, 142,000 casualties. Not even counting the casualties on the
Korean side, which were in the millions
Part of the Problem with the Vietnam war, was that the US confused a
national liberation movement, with the global expansion of communism.
Because of the conflict of ideology, the US had a tendency of viewing every
conflict struggle as an expansion of communism. Foremost the Vietnam war
was a national liberation movement. They were getting support from the
Soviets, but they had no one else to turn to really. This war had more to do
with national liberation, than of the actual Cold War ideological conflict.
This miscalculation becomes much more prevalent in the Western
Hemisphere, in America’s backyard. The most well known example is the
case of Cuba.
--
Why is there this pattern? The whole fear of a domino effect explains this
pattern, but also the support of the elites in these countries
Lecture 5 Week 2
MMW 6 – Edmond Chang 30/09/2009 06:36:00
Existentialism: god has become obsolete
“there is no human nature, since there is no god to conceive it, not only is
man what he conceives himself to be, but he is also what he wills himself ot
be after this thrust towards existence” everything is about personal will and
choice.
Sartre says that for existentialism, individual subjectivity is only the starting
point, its not the end, its just the starting point. If you start form individual
subjectivity, then you understand that each perosns actions will always affect
others. Its not about each individual being an island, but if you start from
individual accountabilitiy, then you are more prone to realizing that what
ever action you take or don’t take has an impact on others. For him
individual accountability becomes a form of collective accountability and
responsibility.
Once you realize this, and individual is less likely to rationalize his or her
transgressions by saying something like this “maybe at least not everyone
else is doing what I do”.. Rationalizing an action that we commit by thinking
“maybe not everyone else is doing what I choose to do”.. An example of how
many people rationalize driving a Hummer, they have an inner consolation
that most people do not drive Hummers too.. Or people who out of lazyness
through trash out of the window of their cars. Inside they are glad that they
think not everyone does that.
Lecture 5 Week 2
“not everyone is doing this, so its ok if I do it, just my doing it wont make a
big difference”
Especially when we step back and realize that this philosophy and the
philosophers who espouse it, always tended to be these western
philosophers living in pretty comfortable settings. So is this philosophy
existentialism inherently a philosophy of the privileged. If we through in
things like poverty, and issues of race, class, gender, conflict, etc. IN some
ways these realities limit the kinds of choices we can make
These existential choices that Sartre is talking about, separated from the
reality of the world is kind of a blindness. The situation you are in will
inevitably limit the choices you can make.
----
Lecture 5 Week 2
What Fromm has to say about this: he says that humanity has this age old
need for connection. There are several ways we try to come out of our
seperateness and our aloneness. The first way he talks about is people who
rely on drugs or alcohol as a way of putting them in some kind of trance,
almost a state of oblivion, where they no longer recognize the seperation
between themselves and others. in the ancient world the relied on orgies to
create this effect.
In the mass society we try to fit in with the herd so that we dont feel so
alone.
There are two ways in which this works, one is a kind of massocistic
love, where you present yourself as a martyr for love, you sacrifice
yourself to the other, forfeiting your own identity in order to win over or
keep a loved one. The way Fromm says it, its as if someone who says
“she is everything to me, I am nothing”. Basically an individual follows
a pattern of self erasure. The second form he talks about that is
dangerous is sadistic love, a person who is consuming the other.
Instead of giving oneself completely to the other, a sadistic lover will
consume the other by controlling, exploiting and even humiliating the
other. The basic idea behind sadistic love is that you try to change the
other person according to your own terms, what you desire. Both
these forms represent this idea of falling in love. Eaither you allow
yourself ot fall, or you expect the other person to fall. This is where
Fromm and existentialism come together.
If we apply this idea to not just human relationships, but also how we relate
to a belief, a religion, a system of some kind. If we can remember to stand
in our relationship with all these things, then that is the existentialist
approach.
His overall point: he says that if we can all adhere to this existentialist
approach to love in dealing with those who are immediately around us, then
perhaps it can also shape our relationship with our community and the
world.
(to what extent can grassroots music bring about lasting social change?)
The decade of the 50s was an affluent society, America emerged as the
undisputed superpower. TV shows such as Leave it to Beaver or Father
Knows Best, depicted the livestyle of a comfortable upwardly mobile and
suburban middle class. They tended to be white, educated (thanks to the GI
Bill, a way to help the veterans of WW2 get an education when they came
back) This mainstream society was fearcely anti-communist in the 50s, but
for the most part apathetic about everything else. Many of the social
problems that were already quite evident in the 50s, this mainstream society
pretty much ignored, because much of the focus was on the threat of the
spread of communism. At the same time this mainstream middleclass was
fully invested in the Status Quo.
The affect of this politically was a very pervaisive sense of political apathy.
People were for the most part content to defer the making of public policy to
the politicians. Their own craving for material goods superceded the need for
direct political participation. They were quite willing to just let the politicians
take care of things.
Overall the 50s have a sense of contentment and apathy as a result of the
economic prosperity that some people enjoyed, but definitely not all
Globally and domestically there were large groups exluced from this so
called American Dream.
Global inequalities were quite conspicuous at the time, in the 50s while
America was this incredibly affluent society, other parts of the world were
starving. World Hunger resulted from decoloization problems as well as bad
leadership in the third world.
Lecture 5 Week 2
-----
1) the virulent racial discrimination and the racial violence that became quite
apparent to everyone (to this educated class too), to the point that no one
could really ignore it anymore. Racial discrimination and violence in the
south was one of the realities that galvanized people into protest, it was an
important catylist for social protest.
2) the growing threat of nuclear annihilation as a result of the cold war arms
race. People became much more conscious of how each day we live on the
brink of extinction if something awful were to happen.
These three factors pointed to the stark contrasts within the American
system. A system which had professed to be a champion for individual
freedom and rights, as well as for peace and justice. But it became apparent
that there were stark contrasts and hypocriticism.
----
He talks a lot about Bob Dylan as a pioneer of this new movement. He was
someone who very importantly took poetry out of the classroom into the
streets. His born name was Robert Zimmerman, but he took on the name of
the Welsh poet Dylan Thomas, of who’s poetry he was inspired by.
Gleason makes an interesting point about why the music industry would take
on someone who was so radical, who’s lyrics were so anti-mainstream. There
was a marketing incentive behind it, they thought that they were just
marketing a new baby folk singer, someone who would just entertain, but
they did not realize that they were in fact cultivating a tiny demon of a poet
who would inspire a whole generation of musicians who would become the
prophets of this counter cultural movement.
Today a lot of the social protest is embedded in popular music, which has
pros and cons to it.
Amongst this new group of prophets of counter culture was the group The
Beatles. They offered anti-establishment of a non-political kind.
What made The Beatles very different from some of the other groups of the
time, is that they celebrated this spirit without at the same time trying to be
black. At this time there was a lot of assimilation, black groups who end up
assimilated, their style their music, into mainstream culture. The music
industry is packaging them in a way so that they appeal to the mainstream.
Then you have the problem of racial appropriation, where white singers
begin to sing in a way so that they sound black, they imitate the African
American music tradition. The Beatles avoided that, they resisted that, their
authenticity made them much more influential.
(same thing going on with Rap music today, started out as protest music,
but has been assimilated to be mainstream)
Lecture 5 Week 2
-------
Whats really interesting is what he has to say about the role of the college
campus:
Hayden in this peace argues that this is kind of a utopian vision of the
university. That such an institution does not exist in reality, there is no such
thing as this protected sanctuary. He says the reason for that is: all you have
to do is look at the huge influx of government and corporate funding for
universities, so that the campus can no longer be a disinterested site, no
longer objective site for academic inquiry. Because of how intimately
connected universities are connected with industry corporations and the
government.
Lecture 5 Week 2
He also says that the institution itself, rather than encouraging intellectual
inquiry actually encourages social conformity. It engenders a concern for
one’s economic status. The campus is a place where you do a lot of
networking for your future considerations, you come to the university to
meet the people for your personal and professional future. (meet your wife
or husband at university, and also make networking connections for your
career).
In the 60s there was a very provocative controversial essay written by Jerry
Farver. The essay was called “The Student as a Niger”.. describing the
student teacher relationship as akin to the master-slave relationship.
This piece really shook a lot of peoples minds: “the general timidity that
causes teachers to make niggers of their students, causes a more specific
tendency, the fear that the teachers have of their students” Being a
professor is being in a very vulnerable position, so they must flaunt their
authority, they have to overcompensate for their insecurity by asserting their
authority on their students. It’s a very very harsh crititique of the teaching
profession in the University. His point is that this kind of relationship, even if
its true to some extent, does not really engender true learning, because the
teacher does not treat his or her students as equals. It’s a relationship based
on hierarchy and domination.
-----
What this is, is the new university policy towards non-affiliates (people not
associated with the university) being allowed to talk or project their ideas on
library walk. It’s a very interesting, complex and controversial issue. The
Universities position is that students don’t want to be disturbed. A professor
rationalizing why this policy is important “personally I don’t want to hear the
Jesus Freaks ranting all the time, people want to enjoy their lunch in peace
and not to be harangued”
On the other hand, the same person says “if Bush decides to bomb iran,
there should be the free spontaneous… its not about the depth of disruption,
but how long it goes on, is this going to be going on all day, or once and a
while”
MMW 6 – Edmond Chang 30/09/2009 06:36:00
Civil Rights movement for Racial Equality:
The Civil Rights movement was really born in 1954 with the landmark
supreme court decision: Brown vs. Board of Education
The supreme court ordered all schools at all levels to immediately de-
seggregate
Even though this was a supreme court ruling, many states in the south
continued to resist this ruling. There were many schools in the south that
basically ignored this ruling. At one point President Eisenhower had to send
in the national guard to enforce this ruling.
There was this major landmark law passed, but at the same time many
states and local regions continued to resist.
Historians of the Civil Rights movement refer to this ruling in 1954 as the
event that rocked the boat, really shook the nation.
It forced America to confront the elephant in its cosy living room. The issue
was there but was until then largely un-aknowledged.1955 Mont
From 1954 on there was a momentum that built up in the civil rights
movement.
1955 Montgomery Bus Boycott – Rosa Parks (she made the choice very
consciously, and she had prepared for it, she had already participated in
other civil rights activities, and had educated herself on some of the legal
matters, she knew exactly what she was doing, it speaks not just to her
courage, but her rationality in making the decision)
-Voting Rights Act in 1965 (not talked about as much, but equally as
important) up to this point certain regions had imposed a poll tax on
anyone who wanted to vote. This effectively kept out many poor blacks in
the south who could not afford to pay the poll tax. Many regions had also
imposed a literacy requirement for voting. Not to speak of the sometimes
subtle and sometimes very overt threats that blacks had to face
whenever they even entertained the notion of voting. What the voting
rights act did was to categorically make all of these things illegal.
The strategy of civil disobedience was used, which is now used more and
more by disenfranchised groups (this formula was used by Ghandi in
India)
2) Negotiation (it was important to always work within the system, not to
topple it, he did not want to get rid of the system but to work within it.
Use civil protest to force the local authorities to come to the
negotiation table)
3) Self-purification
- Ghandi’s Satyagraha (“truth force”)
4) Direct action
- The problem with the white moderates (a white majority that is often
silent on these issues, its much harder to gauge where exactly they stand,
and when you can count on their support. King calls this the appalling
silence of good respectable society.
What does this discrepancy translate to. How does it affect the actual
education. Because of how much we invest in each student, it creates
schools of despair rather than hope
One condition of this is the very dilapidated condition of a lot of the public
schools in poor areas
Lecture 5 Week 2
One administrator pointed out to him that such decay and disrepair would
never happen to white children. Much of this reflects our neglect of the black
and Hispanic students that make up the majority of these schools. The
schools breed a daily sense of frustration futility and despair.
Not only is the infrastructure in disrepair, but the curriculum in the schools is
also disempowering. How is it disempowering, he points to two things: 1) for
the most part the schools have become institutions which emphasize
discipline and control, its really just about managing the students so that
there is almost no tolerance for spontaneity, personality or their own
individual imagination. Everything is about managing order, creating future
citizens that will conform to order in whatever way necessary. That is a long
term, debilitating disempowerment. The second way is the focus on
standardized testing, to test them to the point of absolute boredom. The No
Child Left Behind Act was a disaster, because it promoted standardized
testing as the only means of measuring success.
When students reach the age where critical thinking becomes a necessity,
then the students are totally unprepared for this.
That is why the dropout rates at these inner city public schools is often
above 50 %
After 50 years, what he points out is that our schools are still separate, and
still unequal.
MMW 6 – Edmond Chang 30/09/2009 06:36:00
On the same day that the Chinese sent tanks into Tianemen Square, Poland
had its first free elections since before the The first breach in the communist
block is referred to as a breach that occurred in Poland. Pope John Paul the
2nd returned to his native country, Poland. This visit had a very powerful
affect on many levels. After this visit we see for the first time the first
broadcasts of a catholic service on Polish radio.
Now we can look back at 1989 and think that the transition was inevitable,
but it could have very easily gone the other way, it could have gone the way
it did in China in Tiennamen square, but fortunately that did not happen, and
the reason that did not happen were mostly as a result of the changes that
had been put in place by Gorbachev (the leader of the USSR in the 80s), but
1989 many of his reforms were already in place. Two that would stand out
were his idea of Parastroika, the idea of restructuring the Soviet Economy to
allow for some free enterprise within the system, because everyone
accepted that it wasn’t working. He also initiated a reform called Glassnos,
the idea of the government for the first time being open to debate and even
criticism of the party. All of these very major changes. Gorbachev made it
very clear that everyone can voice their views, particularly their dissent
about previous communist mistakes. These internal reforms that Gorbachev
had started to initiate in the Soviet Union certainly had reverberations all
around eastern Europe.
As for the Soviet foreign policy, it was referred to as the Sinatra doctrine
(like the song my way). What this meant, was that the Soviets, for the first
time after creating this Warsaw Pact, for the first time would allow its
eastern European satellites to go their own way and to determine their own
future. They made it very explicit and publicly announced that the Soviet
Union would not under any circumstances intervene in the domestic affairs
of these satellite states. The made it quite clear that they would not do that
again as they had in 1969, etc.
Gorbachev was quite intent on reform within the Soviet Union itself. But
there was also another argument that perhaps the Soviets felt they were
willing to give up their external empire, as a means of assuring the
possession of their internal empire (the Soviet Republics such as Ukraine and
so on). Later declassified evidence points to the fact that the Soviet Union
had become so weak that it simply could not mount a sustained suppression
of these movements.. The whole system was financially insolvent. They
simply could not afford to get involved.
These are some of the major changes that lead to the collapse of
Communism in Eastern Europe, and very soon after that in the Soviet Union
itself.
The text by Alperovitz and Bird, they are looking at some of the
implications of the collapse of communism. They look back and point to the
Cold War as a source of major distraction. It kind of kept, particularly
America, distracted from some of the real domestic problems in this country.
They point to the increase in child poverty rates in the US, which by the late
80s was 2 to 3 times higher than the rate, proportionally, of other Western
Democracies. At the same time there was astronomical disparity in wealth in
this country. They give some interesting figures which have only gotten
worse. As they are writing in 1990, the census shows that the top 5 % of the
society, earned as much as the bottom 60 % combined. The top 5 %
possessed nearly half of the total assets in the country (The US).
From generation to generation the top wealthy group is a group that is not
easily penetrated. They have insulated themselves through relying more on
private education, and these very exclusive social clubs. Also, social
demarcation, such as the interesting ritual of the debutant party. The
Debutant party is a huge indulgence, what all these things do, is to create
the barriers which insulate this upper class. This class has become a very
entrenched, very insulated and incredibly powerful segment of our society.
That this American dream of upward mobility is only true in a very limited
extent when you look at the higher echelons of the social ladder.
Lecture 5 Week 2
In terms of foreign policy, the media was also quite distracted from real
problems. During the 80s there was a very high increase in the social
economic gap between social classes in the Third World too.
The main argument that Alperovity and Bird are making, is that with all
these signs of turmoil and decay in America itself, what this points to is that
the collapse of communism, does not necessarily imply the triumph of
capitalism. The collapse of communism does not necessarily point to the
triumph of capitalism, because it is fraught with problems and issues. Not
only does it not point to triumph, but also does not point to validation.
Now the question is what is the most equitable way of distributing wealth.
In many ways, at least with the most successful economies, we see the
combination or hybridization of both capitalist and socialist methods.
Most of all we can point to the Scandinavian countries, which in many ways
are model societies.
In this system, an index of 0 would mean that there was total equality. A
score of 1 would mean total inequality. Another way of understanding it, is
that if a country has a Gini coefficient of 0.5, that means that if half of the
population had 0 income, the other half would have all of the income.
Japan has the most equitable distribution for a very populated country
The US has a very unequal distribution of wealth for such a wealthy country
Japan, is the leader in terms of equitable distribution of wealth, but also has
the largest trade surplus of any country, 112 billion, which is double the
figure of the next highest exporter, which is the EU. Japan has the second
largest economic output, second only to the US. There is a tremendous
difference in terms of how the wealth of the US and Japan is distributed.
How did Japan do this? How did a losing side after WW2, in the matter of
half a century do this?
One of the things initiated in Japan in the 1960s was a ten year plan to
double Japan’s GDP. The way it did this was through tarrif protection.
Having high enough taxes on imports, so as to control imports, to limit them
to protect local manufacturers. Secondly, the government working hard to
create a favorable foreign exchange, sometimes driving down the value of its
own currency in order to make its exports more appealing. Third by
developing high tech industries through concerted government support and
subsidies. The government doing everything it can to make sure that this
economic growth would take place. This lead to what some people call
Japan Inc. The country itself acts like a conglomerate corporation. The state
itself became intimately involved in economic development. Did not take a
laissez fair stance, instead did everything in its power to catch up with the
West.
Lecture 5 Week 2
The government recruited the best and the brightest, and gave these
technocrats the power to dictate economic policy. Experts who knew what
they were doing were in charge of policy, rather than politicians.
There is this distinction that Dori makes between Allocative efficiency vs.
Production efficiency.
In Japan its very different there is the Production efficiency model, which
plans for long term development, and cultivates a work place focusing on
fairness in social economic arrangements. Making sure that the salary for the
people working on the assembly lines are not THAT different from people
working in the board rooms. Putting the emphasis on fairness in social and
economic arrangements. In this model, instead of constantly hiring and firing
depending on where the market is going, it focuses on training and
retraining its lifetime employees. The company invests in the individual,
and in tern the individual invests himself back in the company. This
cultivates company loyalty. And allows for leaders to make better and more
efficient decisions, because of the emphasis on making decision in a
collective manner. Not just people in the boardrooms talking on their own, or
managers talking on their own. But rather creating a quality assurance
circle, where the assembly line worker would sit down with the top managers
and together come up with the best plan. So that management and labor are
working in a concerted fashion, without a cap in communication.
Critics of Japan say it’s a very homogenous boring system which doesn’t
allow much room for individuality. But the reality is that Japan has the
lowest infant mortality rate, the highest life expectancy, and the most
equitable income distribution rate.
-----
-----
Now lets look at the flip side the other side of this, poverty in the third
world:
Lecture 5 Week 2
The SAP initiative, had a direct impact on the spike in poverty in the third
world in the 80s. SAP: IMF, and the World Bank mandated conditions that
they imposed on third world countries. The reason they could impose this on
these countries was the deep debt the countries were in to dictate what they
would do in their economies. It was a means of forcing a globalized
capitalism on these third world countries. It coincides perfectly with the
economic ideology that we now refer to as Reagonomics. The trickle down
effect of wealth. That if you allow the rich to get as rich as possible, there
will eventually be a trickle down effect of wealth. Its about laissez fair,
privatization and free trade. All of this was imposed on the third world
countries in Africa and in Latin America. These countries were asked to
abandon their state directed developments. They were also asked to devalue
currency so that it would be more favorable to American imports. Also asked
to remove all of the protective tariffs on western imports. They were asked
to cut back subsidies on local farms. The IMF through these SAPs said to
trust in privatization, don’t trust in government initiated support. They were
also asked to scale back social programs such as healthcare and education,
and overall there was a general downsizing of the public sector.
MMW 6 – Edmond Chang 30/09/2009 06:36:00