Joseph Heath, a philosophy professor in Canada, writes in substack
Back when I was an undergraduate, during the final years of the cold war, by far the most exciting thing going on in political philosophy was the powerful resurgence of Marxism in the English-speaking world.
In 1979, my tutor at the LSE asked me to write an essay on the Marxist theory of history. I thought this was that Marx believed all countries would industrialize on the British pattern and this would bring about similar political and social changes. In other words, though Britain's rise as a capitalist industrial power may have been unplanned and the arrow of causation may have been from the economic substructure to the political superstructure, other countries might take the opposite approach- i.e. the superstructure might deliberately change the substructure. In Germany, this was the notion of the 'Sonderweg' or 'special path' imposed from above which would move the country to a Liberal type of Socialism before there was any 'pressure from below'.
An alternative, more Marixist path, might commence with a 'revolution from below' which deliberately chose a technocratic path to industrialization undertaken by giant state run enterprises. Indeed, this is what we thought Stalin had done- viz transform a backward, superstitious, mainly agricultural country into a ultra-modern 'worker's paradise' which might soon build colonies on the Moon and other planets. The attraction of Marxism was that it claimed to be a purely scientific discipline which could allocate resources efficiently and thus eliminate 'wasteful competition'. Planning would enable Man to take charge of his own Destiny. Soviet men would be as Gods. Once stupid, greedy, capitalists and feudalists and those addicted to Religion's opium had been gently but firmly told to fuck the fuck off, all of humanity would unite to claim its destiny amongst the stars. Scarcity, of course, would disappear. Till then, as Marx said we would have to pay workers according to their contribution. Indeed Soviet factories had a complicated system of working out how much each should be paid. Stakhonovites, who over fulfilled their quota, gained special perks- e.g. Gorbachev, a strong farm worker, got permission to study Law in Moscow. Sadly, he didn't understand that the Soviet economy would collapse if the Party released it from its control. There would be a 'scissors crisis'. The nomenklatura would figure out that the spot price of Russian commodities was higher than whatever 'shadow price' Kantorovich's kooks might calculate. Thus, if they could get 'control rights' over Russia's vast mineral wealth, they would be richer than the Tzars. That story is still unfolding. However, in China, the Party retained 'control rights' (though this was not obvious to optimistic Western observers) and thus it could continue to pursue the older Communist dream of my parent's generation. We don't know for certain if China can move beyond 'catch up growth' but it is certainly possible. What is certain, however, is that the West is too sclerotic to pull itself together and plan for a brighter future. That is the reason the Western Marxist is just a crotchety fellow similar to the crazier type of Feminist or more paranoid type of Religious or Racialist crank.
In my essay for my tutor, I focused on how a Marxist theory of history could accommodate a reversal of the arrow of causality from substructure to superstructure. Sadly, this involved ignoring the one decent thing about Marx's labor theory of value- viz. the stipulation that the labor numeraire could not fall below the social subsistence level. Obviously, as Stalin's Gulags proved, it could do so for long periods. In other words, Man could indeed take charge of his own Destiny provided a large section of the population was worked to death under horrible conditions.
A more benign possibility was that historically more literate and educated Societies could do Listian 'catch up growth' such that they more quickly gained economies of scope and scale in new technologies. In this case they might develop different 'Tiebout models' (i.e. tax/public good mixes) and this would be reflected in different ideologies and institutions of a more or less technocratic kind.
Reading my essay, my tutor quickly decided I was an imbecile. Apparently, what I should have been doing was engaging with G.A Cohen's defense of the Marxist theory of history which had come out the previous year. But, it was stupid shit. Marx's determinism had to do with the substructure as defined by relations of production not the technological production possibility frontier. After all, his Doctorate was in Law. In any case technological determinism was off the table because new tech is a 'hopeful monster'- i.e. it can't change the substructure as it is being built up. The superstructure could directly intervene, through Listian protectionism & state backed investment, to set off not just a 'catch up' revolution but also the creation of new industries which would ab ovo have 'acquired advantage'. The problem here is that the thing was stochastic. Some might succeed, many would fail.
It wasn't just that Cohen did not understand that Marxism is an economic theory. Philosophically, his enterprise was oxymoronic. You can't have an 'analytical' treatment of dialectical thought because the latter is comfortable with unstable extensions for intensional terms. The latter is founded on stable extensions. I was not then aware of Lawvere's attempt to give a category theoretical treatment of Hegel's dialectic but this would not have mattered. Cohen's error was to think that there is a functional relationship between production relations and the types of technology which can flourish. This was obviously not the case as Stalin's Russia had shown. The case of Japan was equally interesting. We were fortunate to have, at the LSE, Michio Morishima who represented the Japanese Marxist tradition in all its bizarre glory. He did drum the importance of 'duality' into us- i.e. we understood that a modern sector could coexist with a traditional sector- but we understood this as market segmentation or 'discrimination'. Only later on did I understand that there are regret minimizing reasons why coordination games or pooling equilibria would give rise to discoordination games. But this also means more path dependence. There is ergodicity at the global level but I doubt its dynamics could be captured at the local 'political' level. That's why there is little point being ideological.
Most of this work was being done under the banner of “analytical Marxism” (aka “no-bullshit Marxism”),
it was all bullshit and no fucking Marxism. Why not pretend that Karl Marx was actually Santa Claus and Engels was a flying reindeer?
following the publication of Gerald Cohen’s Karl Marx’s Theory of History: A Defence (and his subsequent elevation to the Chichele Professorship in Social and Political Philosophy at Oxford).
The current occupant is the even more cretinous Amia Srinivasan.
Meanwhile in Germany, Jürgen Habermas’s incredibly compact Legitimationsprobleme im Spätkapitalismus promised to reinvigorate Marx’s analysis of capitalist crises in the language of contemporary systems theory.
German pedants can't invigorate shit. 'State Capitalism' or a 'Mixed Economy' doesn't have a problem with legitimacy. It has a problem with incentive incompatibility. Bureaucrats and politicians have an incentive to yield to the most obstreperous bunch of nutters they are faced with. Allocative efficiency goes out of the window. Public sector enterprises- e.g. British Leyland- become loss making while Unionized workers are featherbedded. But this meant that the working class's own pocket was being picked by the tax-man so as to pay zombie enterprises to stay in business. The working-class rebelled against 'stagflation' and voted for Reagan and Thatcher.
It was an exciting time to be a young radical.
Not in England. Your pals who dropped out of skool at 16 to work in the City were driving Porsches while you could scarcely afford a pint of beer and a packet of pork scratchings.
One could say, without exaggeration, that many of the smartest and most important people working in political philosophy were Marxists of some description.
They weren't smart. They were stupid and boring. Marxism was cool when Castro and Che Guevara and Mao were kicking ass and taking names.
So what happened to all this ferment and excitement, all of the high-powered theory being done under the banner of Western Marxism? It’s the damndest thing, but all of those smart, important Marxists and neo-Marxists, doing all that high-powered work, became liberals.
The actual Marxists had been saying they were nothing else all along.
Every single one of the theorists at the core of the analytic Marxism movement – not just Cohen, but Philippe van Parijs,
universal basic income means our people won't take 'dirty' jobs. But voters won't want to extend this benefit to immigrants who do take those jobs. So, you end up with guest-workers. Congrats! You've just turned your country into Dubai! Why stop there? Why not insist our women not form sexual relationships with those dirty foreigners? How about a nice little system of apartheid?
John Roemer,
a mathsy guy. His Class Exploitation Correspondence Principle (CECP), states that individuals who optimize by hiring labor are necessarily exploiters, and those who optimize by selling labor are exploited. So retired people are 'exploiters'. Kick granny's head in!
His approach to 'compensation' falls down because it can be gamed and is likely to be adversely selective. It was probably a mistake to disguise unemployment as disability.
Allen Buchanan, and Jon Elster – as well as inheritors of the Frankfurt School like Habermas, wound up embracing some variant of the view that came to be known as “liberal egalitarianism.”
i.e. they wanted to be very liberal with other people's money. Still, I'm sure they set a good example by sharing their own salaries with the custodial staff.
Of course, this was not a capitulation to the old-fashioned “classical liberalism” of the 19th century, it was rather a defection to the style of modern liberalism that found its canonical expression in the work of John Rawls.
In other words, they were saying 'guys who vote for Reagan and Thatcher don't want lower taxes. They want everybody to get the same amount of money as the unemployed. Amartya Sen went the extra mile and said that they wanted less money than the unemployed person because the poor bloke might be a drug addict who could only get hard if two hooker urinated on him. Drugs aren't cheap you know. Also only Vassar graduates have the special skills necessary to pull off a double golden shower. They have to charge a lot of money because they are carrying a lot of student debt.
If one felt like putting the point polemically, one might say that the “no-bullshit” Marxists, after having removed all of the bullshit from Marxism, discovered that there was nothing left but liberalism.
The Chinese had already discovered that what Marx actually said was 'to each according to his contribution'. This meant that control rights over property should be aligned with entrepreneurial ability. However, since the Party (unlike in Gorby's USSR) retained control over everything, these control rights might disappear. But this led to capital flight.
This is not quite right though, because what they actually discovered was that the new, modernized, reinvigorated liberalism propounded by Rawls was both expressively and rhetorically superior to the reconstructed Marxism they had been trying to defend.
But it cashes out as saying 'be nice to the poor. There but for the grace of God & c'. That aint liberalism. It is Churchy pi-jaw. Not the cool Televangelist mega-churchy pi-jaw- which is about having had sex with a male prostitute and blown millions of dollars of Church money at Las Vegas but claiming to have been absolved of all sin by Lloyd Jesus who has washed you in the blood of some lambs. This is boring Episcopalian pi-jaw.
So they switched allegiances (sometimes with fanfare, more often without).
To be fair, there was a time when it was safer to appear on campus as a Lefty or a fellow traveler or a usefully useless idiot. Then, people realized that kids want to get laid and get high in Collidge. But they also want to get rich and thus give artsy-fartsy pi-jaw the go bye unless they are disabled Bleck Lesbians from some shithole country and hope to rise on the basis of affirmative action and a credential in Grievance Studies.
I sometimes teach a seminar course in which we read all three of the books that Rawls published during his lifetime.
Canadians still read books. They truly are the most boring people on the planet.
I always start by cautioning students that the biggest challenge in reading Rawls’s work is figuring out why it is so important – because it seems incredibly dull (normie, basic, etc.).
Rawls is very funny. The cunt didn't get that when faced with uncertainty you go in for risk-pooling- i.e. you buy insurance. You don't agree to share everything with homeless alkies or socioproctologists.
My best suggestion for overcoming this challenge, when reading A Theory of Justice, is to go into it thinking “this is the book that killed Western Marxism,”
did you know that Nixon was a Communist? Rawls's book led directly to his impeachment.
One might ask whether Blair and Brown had read Rawls. Was that why they abandoned Clause IV (which called for common ownership of industry)? The short answer is no. They just wanted to reassure voters who had bought their council houses and invested in shares in BT etc, that Nationalization was off the table.
and then focus on figuring out how it managed to do so. (The fact that Rawls never directly criticized Marx adds to the mystery.)
Capitalists won't hand over their property unless they are compelled to do so by Commissars with guns. However, we can pretend that if they were really rational, they would voluntarily agree to have the same income as a drunken hobo. This is like pretending that what all heterosexual men really want is to suck you off.
To make this long story short, one must start with the most important piece of bullshit in traditional Marxism. Marx always insisted that the major difference between his view and that of the “utopian socialists” was that he was not engaged in any sort of moral criticism of the capitalist system, nor was he claiming that capitalism was unjust. He was merely predicting the downfall of the capitalist system, based on his scientific understanding of the laws of historical development.
He wrongly believed that the rate of profit would fall to zero. The fact is, even if it is negative, there will still be entrepreneurs, with control rights, tapping into Society's fund of savings.
So, for example, his use of the term “exploitation” was not intended to imply any sort of moral condemnation, it was merely a technical term used to describe the extraction of surplus value from labour.
Morishima's fundamental theorem of Marxism states that so long as at least one enterprise makes a profit- exploitation exists. The Feminist version is, so long as even one dick enters a vagina, all women are incessantly being raped. Obviously, both these views are false. The fact is, so long as there is even one Iyengar, Iyers are being mercilessly persecuted- e.g. by Leo Varadkar's refusal to allow us to reclaim Iyerland from the fucking leprechauns.
This was obvious bullshit – indeed, at various points where Marx makes this claim, he sounds like he is, as the British like to say, “taking the piss.”
Not really. By the 1880s many large agricultural estates in England had become loss making. What if the same thing happened to industry? There might be a 'general glut' and 'deflation'- which would lead to what Keynes would later call a liquidity trap. Indeed, that's how the Great Depression was interpreted.
Nevertheless, early Marxists (and Marxist-Leninists) found it a useful claim to keep around, in order to avoid getting into certain arguments that they didn’t want to get into.
No. At that time, it looked obvious that Capitalism would begin to die if it stopped finding new markets. That's why many agreed that 'Imperialism is the final stage of Capitalism', but since Emperors were bound to fight each other to death, Bolshevism might soon overrun the world which might make everything sweet and nice.
Over the course of the 20th century, however, the claim became increasingly less useful, because the prospects for the collapse of capitalism came to seem increasingly remote.
No. What changed was that people kept running the fuck away from Communist countries. Also, guys who raved about the Worker's paradise seldom showed any burning desire to move there themselves.
Most importantly, workers did not become “immiserated,” as Marx predicted, but rather experienced robust wage growth, so that by the beginning of the 1970s it was really not obvious to anyone that workers had reasons of self-interest to support socialist revolution.
Nobody minds getting even richer or enjoying more leisure and better amenities.
By this time most Marxists had also realized that they needed a moral critique of capitalism, because the whole “predicting its downfall” angle had basically outlived its usefulness.
Also the capitalist was actually the worker's pension fund or insurance company. Institutional investment was like 'common ownership' except management had to stay on its toes
So the number one piece of bullshit that got purged, at the very first meeting of the no-bullshit Marxism group, was the claim that Marxism could get along without a normative critique of capitalism.
Kantorovich had got a Nobel prize. The hope was that a bunch of networked computers could allocate resources more efficiently than financial markets. Sadly, the incentive was lacking. By the end of the Seventies, the reverse game theory of 'mechanism design' had made 'incentive compatibility' central to economic thinking. People realized that the Social Contract must be 'incomplete' because of Knightian Uncertainty. Thus Rawls had been barking up the wrong tree.
One of the tasks that the group set itself was therefore to offer an analysis and defence of such a moral critique. The obvious place to start was with the concept of exploitation. So they set out to answer a series of questions: what is exploitation?
Unconscionable contracts. The law had already clarified what psilosophers had muddled.
why is it unjust?
monoposonistic employer's cartels were a 'restraint on trade' and per se illegal and hence unjust. The question was whether the countervailing power of Unions were enough as Galbraith suggested. The answer was- 'No! Don't be silly! Trade Union leaders can be self-aggrandizing nutters.'
does capitalism necessarily exploit workers? what would a non-exploitative economic system look like?
One where I was rich and good looking and had an above average sized dick.
Over time, however, it became clear that every attempt to answer these questions was running into massive problems. One could write an entire book explaining why, but suffice it to say that several of the greatest philosophical minds of their generation
had shit for brains because they had devoted themselves to a shitty discipline
took a crack at the problem, and none of them was able to generate a coherent critique of capitalism that took exploitation as its normative foundation. (For an accessible summary of these efforts, see van Parijs’s, “What (if anything) is intrinsically wrong with capitalism?”)
the answer was that people are offered money in return for working. Clearly, everybody should be paid for doing sweet fuck all.
For me, the watershed event was the publication of Roemer’s A General Theory of Exploitation and Class.
Suppose I promise to get you a place on a spaceship to the paradisal Planet K-Pax just before the Earth blows up provided you work for me for free for the next ten years. If I actually do fulfil my promise, you haven't been exploited. If there is no apocalypse and no spaceship, I have exploited you unless what you would have done with your time would have led to worse consequences for you. It turns out that exploitation is linked to opportunity cost. If expectations match reality and ex ante equals ex post- the equilibrium is not exploitative or intrinsically wrong. It just mightn't be something we find appealing because dicks haven't been banned even though dicks cause RAPE! Normatively, that's simply not acceptable.
For Cohen, by contrast, the problems were caused by Robert Nozick – and since Cohen’s story is the more entertaining one, I’ll focus on that.
The most natural way to specify the wrongness of exploitation is to say that workers are entitled to the fruits of their labour, and so if they receive something less than this, they are being treated unjustly. (This is why Marxists are wedded to the labour theory of value – because it makes this normative claim seem intuitively natural and compelling.)
The problem is Knightian uncertainty which promotes regret minimizing behavior rather than expected utility maximization. There's a reason some people prefer to be employees rather than independent contractors even if their expected earnings are much lower. Essentially, if your company goes bust, you are in the same boat as everybody else. Psychologically, this feels better than knowing you failed where others succeeded.
But as Nozick observed, if this is your view, then you can’t really complain about certain economic inequalities, such as those that arise when individuals with rare natural talents are able to command enormous economic rents for their performances (this is the famous “Wilt Chamberlain” argument in Anarchy, State and Utopia).
Marx explained that his theory only applied to goods not services.
Furthermore, taxing away any part of this income looks a lot like exploitation.
Taxing 'rent'- i.e. factors in inelastic supply- is more allocatively efficient provided the Government doesn't piss that money away. The problem is, no matter what economic regime we have, if people do stupid shit, the outcome will be shitty. But Alexander Pope had stated this obvious fact a long time ago.
This argument made Cohen extremely uncomfortable, because it constituted a direct challenge to the normative foundations of Marxism-as-critique-of-exploitation. He spent the better part of a decade agonizing, and wrote two entire books trying to work out a response to Nozick, none of it particularly persuasive. Then one day (as he tells the story) he decided to leave Oxford and spend some time at Harvard. Upon arriving in America, he discovered that none of his fellow left-wing political philosophers had been losing any sleep at all over Nozick’s arguments. Why? Because they were egalitarians. They didn’t care about either self-ownership or exploitation, so they simply rejected the premises of Nozick’s argument. (Unlike Cohen’s sprawling efforts, Rawls’s response to the Wilt Chamberlain argument is less than two pages long and quite persuasive.)
But a similar argument can be made for banning dicks. They are icky. Nobody should have one.
This created something of a “road to Damascus” moment for Cohen. It forced him to ask the basic question: what is it that I dislike most about capitalism? Is it that, according to some (increasingly arcane) formula, not everyone is getting paid the full value of what they produce?
If they were, they could easily pay for their own defense by buying an ICBM and installing it in their backyard.
Or is it that some people live in poverty, unable to afford the essentials of a dignified life, in the midst of a society overflowing with riches? What Nozick showed is that fixing the exploitation problem may not fix the inequality problem.
Also, fixing the exploitation problem may get your head kicked in. That's the reason political philosophers aren't rescuing sex-slaves from Mafia run brothels.
(Roemer actually proves the point more forcefully, constructing a model economy in which the poor systematically exploit the rich, and yet remain poor.)
drugs cost too much. Also hookers.
So one really is forced to choose which flaw in the system one cares about most.
Dicks. They are icky. Why is Biden not undergoing gender reassignment surgery? Is it because he is a Fascist?
Why were Cohen’s American colleagues so quick to embrace egalitarianism?
Because the pay gap between an academic and a guy who uses his edumication to some useful purpose is greater in the States. Also, students you sleep with expect to get top grades even if they are as thick as shit.
Because they were Rawlsians. What Rawls had provided, through his effort to “generalize and carry to a higher level of abstraction the familiar theory of the social contract,” was a natural way to derive the commitment to equality, as a normative principle governing the basic institutions of society.
By ignoring the fact that there is an insurance industry.
Rawlsianism therefore gave frustrated Marxists an opportunity to cut the Gordian knot, by providing them with a normative framework in which they could state directly their critique of capitalism, focusing on the parts that they found most objectionable, without requiring any entanglement in the complex apparatus of Marxist theory.
In other words, they could switch off their brain.
This led Cohen to the realization that, when push came to shove, he cared more about inequality than he did about exploitation, because how we relate to one another as human beings
especially human beings in starving shitholes
is fundamentally more important than our right to exercise ownership over every last bit of stuff that we make. So he switched foundations and became an egalitarian (and – though he would have hated the description – a liberal).
Cohen was notorious for sharing his pay-packet with millions of starving people in shithole countries.
So nowadays, when kids like Freddie deBoer come along insisting that “Marxism is not an egalitarian philosophy,”
It is also not an anti-racist or anti-misogynist philosophy. Did you know that many men inherit the trait of having dicks from Dad's who had dicks? Elites pretend things like intelligence and gender aren't heritable. Why do so few babies not grow up to be ducks?
I nod my head in agreement, but I want to respond “Yes! That’s why nobody is a Marxist any more.”
Canadians don't know about a country called China.
Again, I want to emphasize that several of the greatest minds in political philosophy of the 20th century
which is like saying 'many of the sexiest actuaries'
spent the better part of two decades working the salt mines of Marxist theory, trying to make the “exploitation” critique of capitalism work and every single one of them gave up and became an egalitarian.
But lawyers continued to work on unconscionability and what equal pay laws actually mean. Economists, too, plugged away at incomplete contract theory using ideas like the folk theorem of repeated games.
Surely that should count for something! Anyhow, there’s no need to take my word for it, the library is full of books.
It is, of course, a slight exaggeration to say that no one is a Marxist anymore. Some people have not yet received the memo. There are also the “left libertarians,” who are the rump of 20th century academic Marxism (these are people who cling to the self-ownership claim, while seeking to block the anti-egalitarian conclusions that Nozick derived from it). There is also a recent mini-trend of “neo-Republican” Marxists, but they are basically just liberals, who instead of appealing to Rawls’s egalitarianism, instead want to rely on Philip Pettit’s “non-domination” norm (which I take to be just another flavour of liberalism) to reconstruct Marxism.
Why not admit that what we are really speaking of is different flavors of shit?
But beyond this, the collapse of academic Marxism – as a body of normatively motivated social criticism – has been complete.
Meanwhile the Chinese Communist Party has lifted a billion people out of poverty. In purchasing power parity terms, its GNP is about 20 percent bigger than the US. It may become militarily stronger than the US in 15 years.
Hence the fundamental unseriousness of contemporary Marxism in public discourse. Popular Marxism (along with the sort of Gramscian or “cultural” Marxism one finds in critical studies departments) has become a religion without a theology.
It has manyPopes but no parishioners.
I can understand why some people might be reluctant to read serious Marxist theory, if the primary upshot is that it turns you into a liberal,
as opposed to a woke nutter
but if the alternative is the style of aggressive, in-your-face stupidity found in Jacobin magazine (i.e. “I’m going to talk like a Marxist, even though none of it makes any sense, because you can’t stop me!”), then it seems to me a price worth paying.
but that price involves tolerating dicks. That makes you complicit in RAPE!
Some people have failed to notice these trends, unfortunately, because there was no point at which any one person “refuted” Marxism.
Because they were too busy running away from it.
Serious thinkers, for the most part, just slowly drifted away from it, the way that guests at a party filter out of the living room into the kitchen, where the conversation is livelier.
or the way smart kids abandoned Philosophy.
In this case, the conversation that they drifted toward was Rawlsianism.
actually, Rawls was 'anything goes'. You can justify any arrangement whatsoever saying the worst off would be even more miserable under any other system.
That is how Rawls wound up triumphing over Marxism – by rendering it superfluous, making it so that no one needed to be a Marxist any more.
But, as Reagan pointed out, it was the L-word which dared not speak its name.
Rawlsians, by the way, are really bad at explaining any of this, which I why I thought I might try.
Sadly, Prof. Heath is still refusing to wipe the bottoms of those drooling cretins. Rawls would so not have approved.
A.P Vijayan, about whom I have posted before, teaches English. Sadly, he believes Dalits can't afford to learn English and thus is absolved from having to teach his own subject properly.
He writes in 'the Wire'-
When Dalits are hardened by daily experiences of humiliations and mortifications, both physical and mental, and witness horrendous atrocities committed against their fellow beings, even by top liberal university professors of Savarna origin,
top liberal professors sodomized AP Vijayan and cut off his dick.
perfecting their English is a luxury they cannot afford.
They also can't afford to get a job and make something of themselves because top University professors keep fucking them in the ass and chopping off their genitals.
The recent controversy involving Columbia University professor Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak
who frequently sodomizes Dalits
and Anshul Kumar, a student at Jawaharlal Nehru University, is an event in itself, generating a whole battery of figural excesses
equivalent to sodomizing vast numbers of Dalits and chopping off their dicks.
cutting across caste and gender.
Spivak may not have a dick but, figuratively speaking, she is using her non-existent dick to non-consensually sodomize billions of Bahishkrit people.
The turbulences of the day carve out many wounds.
Also they leave Vijayan's asshole very sore.
On the one hand, it has laid bare the structural violence built into the very edifice of postcoloniality on which many Savarna intellectuals have been comfortably placed.
He means some stupid upper caste Hindus got Professorships in postcolonial theory.
On the other, there was an individual attempt by a Dalit to employ verbal abuse as a strategy of counter-violence
there was no violence. Spivak hadn't really bent him over and sodomized him.
to meet this invisible structural violence, a gesture reminding us of the violence Frantz Fanon advocated for in his Wretched of the Earth as a political strategy enabling the subaltern to stand up straight and ask questions.
Fanon didn't think screaming abuse at an old woman was a 'political strategy'. He thought armed struggle was the remedy. Sadly, his own country decided it preferred to remain part of France.
At the risk of self-promotion,
the greater risk is that we will laugh at this cretin. Varadarajan is an American Brahmin. No doubt, he and his pals are laughing their heads off at Vijayan.
let me quote from the “Preface” of my book of poems, The Absent Color:
Violence has two dimensions.
One silences by chopping off the head, while the body remains in
its illusory appearance as skin.
The other gives you tongues where the body loses the skin.
Those tongues, I need hardly say, are in the anus which is dripping with Spivak's cum.
In my figural exegesis, Spivak’s and the violence her Savarna acolytes inflict is of the former kind, where their skin retains its illusory appearance,
Skin isn't illusory. It really exists. I suppose what Vijayan means is that when Spivak sodomizes him she does not bruise his skin. His wound is not visible. Yet his anus gives tongue to many a poetic lament or 'figurative exegesis'.
just as Rama retains his, as ‘maryadapurushothaman’, despite killing Shambuka to maintain the Vedic order.
Shambuk, too, retained his skin. What he lost was his life.
Anshul Kumar made use of the second kind of violence:
Shouting at an old woman isn't violence. It is low class behavior- that is all.
The act of questioning has given him a tongue, a voice,
He had both already
but he has lost his skin in the process.
Spivak skinned the fellow and sold his pelt to some other liberal professor. Martha Nussbaum, I'm looking at you!
He can be written off as yet another misogynist in a sea of misogynists who routinely abuse women. Nothing more, nothing less.
The fellow is a cretin. But he isn't studying a STEM subject so what more can you expect?
A naïve hermeneutic operation, typical of Savarna intellectual exercise, has already been set in motion to cancel out the two acts of violence, by finding symmetry at the level of microaggression.
Vijayan's hermeneutic operation isn't naive. It is very very funny.
However, those familiar with the nuances of structural violence
of a wholly imaginary kind.
cannot ignore the asymmetry of the effects this event will have on the two individuals.
It will have none. Spivak got into the news. That's a win for her. So did the other guy. Good for him.
While this incident may slightly tarnish the reputation of the esteemed professor, it will not end her career.
Death will. She is 81 years old
In contrast, overshadowed by this misogynistic excess, the student has all the possibility of facing a bleak future in an Indian academic system controlled by Savarna academic networking.
It will make no difference. The fact is, he managed to get into the papers. That's a win.
Only the future will reveal if shadowy deals, as some Savarnas seem to suggest, have been made to salvage his career.
If he can get into politics, he can make real money. Being an academic means having to teach kids as stupid and as ignorant as yourself.
At the moment, my concern is not the future. I want to ask why a Dalit student had to resort to this act of violence, fully aware that it could have serious consequences on his academic career, regardless of any potential shadowy deals.
There was no violence. He was rude. Spivak shut him down quickly enough. The fact is, not having a dick is a bigger grievance than being a Dalit.
The question demands a thorough historicization of our intuitions. The following is an attempt.
Vijayan will fail. He is too stupid.
First, let us agree bluntly: it is not due to the stupidity of the speakers of the English language that they end up with different pronunciations, but rather because of its writing system.
This is irrelevant. The Dalit pronounced Du Bois in the correct French manner because he had learned to do so at St. Xavier's Mumbai. Spivak ignorantly contradicted him by saying Haitians pronounced the name in the English manner because they were angry with France. This is like saying George Washington decided to call himself Jorge because he was miffed with Mad King George.
Everybody knows English is not a phonetic language. The Irish writer Bernard Shaw,
among other things, a spelling reformer
perhaps a century ago and in the style of a subaltern’s rogue laugh over the English colonizer,
Shaw's family was English. They had indeed colonized Ireland.
demonstrated how funny the English language is. He did this with the example that the word ‘fish’ could be spelled as ‘ghoti’: with ‘gh’ pronounced as in ‘enough’, ‘o’ as in ‘women’, and ‘ti’ as in ‘nation’.
Shaw made a lot of money writing in English. But, that's because he could be quite funny. Still, on the subject of spelling reform, everybody thought he was a boring cunt.
When such a funny language, having no consistency in matters of spelling and pronunciation, is learned in the postcolonial context of India, where most institutions of learning operate on casteist logic, language can wreak havoc with the lives of people, especially the first- or second-generation learners from the Dalit community.
Please don't teach English to Dalits. Also, support Modi's attempt to make vernacular language instruction for Doctors etc. compulsory.
Most Dalit students learn English from teachers whose command of the language is suspect.
Presumably, Vijayan is speaking for himself here.
This is where students from marginalized segments first taste the language. They have no access to how a so-called ‘native’ speaker uses the language.
Because they don't have smart phones.
They do not possess the cultural capital to access the English language in other ways, through movies or music.
See above.
They have no way to shadow-practice the language. All they have is what the teacher provides. Barring a few, most of the Savarna teachers are no better than Spivak
i.e. people who teach non-STEM subjects are as stupid and ignorant as their students.
when it comes to marginalizing and silencing Dalit students in a classroom.
Why not let the noisiest Dalit student teach the class?
What Spivak did is no exception;
Did you know that most Columbia students are very poor Dalits who don't know English?
it is the everyday life of the Dalits in India. Her actions possibly triggered the memories of such harrowing and humiliating moments in the minds of thousands of Dalits.
How? They don't know English and, even if they did, have no access to newspapers or Televisions.
They learn English in this stifling, crippling environment.
such as that Vijayan finds at his place of work.
They don’t simply learn English; the process is far more complicated. English is just one of the means through which Dalits learn about themselves, not merely as students but as second-class citizens, as less meritorious, as nothing.
Vijayan tells his Dalit students they don't have the luxury of learning English because they are being invisibly sodomized by top liberal Professors. Thankfully, they don't understand what he is saying.
This early stifling leaves many with permanent scars: mutilated tongues, choked throats,
prolapsed rectums
and unending self-doubt. Those Dalits who escape this condition learn English as written text, not auditory signs—all this Anshul Kumar has himself written about
But Kumar spoke in English to Spivak.
in a response published on a Dalit platform. Their early sense of the language is visual and textual rather than performative.
Whereas the Bihari Brahmin, in his village, confers only in English with his cows.
Consequently, they pronounce unfamiliar words based on their written form. For example, ‘recipe’ is read as ‘risaip’, influenced by words like ‘recite’ and ‘reside’.
Plenty of English peepul have atrocious spelling. Indeed, my own spelling is surprisingly poor by desi standards.
By the time they learn the correct pronunciation, often from cookery shows or Hollywood movies, the mispronunciation is already ingrained.
Modi, is not Dalit. That is why, when he speaks English, people mistake him for King Charles.
To unshackle oneself from this self-imposed/system-imposed Platonic cave to the bright sunlight of a native speaker’s fluency is a daunting task for many Dalits.
So far, this cretin has merely made Modi's point- viz. all Indians should be educated in the vernacular language.
They are trapped
like all Indians who didn't grow up with English as their first language
in manifold universes: the language of the family, of the community, of the region; the English, learned, unlearned, pronounced, mispronounced; the rhythm of native languages inflecting a second or third acquired language, pointing to the limits of the languages one is given. From this cacophony of internal flows, directing oneself to the ideal perfection of the native speaker demands a consciousness that kills you from within.
That's why Modi and Shah and Manmohan and Sonia Madam are all dead from within.
Within a universe fabricated by an other demanding perfection, the Dalit soul is forever reminded of her imperfection: becoming conscious of this pressure renders her already drafted imperfection more imperfect.
Which is why we shouldn't employ such people. Give them charity by all means, but do please ensure they don't get confused and try to bite off their own heads.
This struggle is something many pronunciation-purists from the Savarna community fail to understand.
There are none such. In India, as in Yukay/Amrika, money talks. If you are rich, nobody gives a shit about your pronunciation.
They often ask, ‘Why can’t you self-correct once you learn to pronounce properly?’ This well-meaning question stems from their own experiences;
Savarnas can self-correct. Dalits can't. That is the gravamen of this article. No wonder an American Brahmin published it.
even the best of the Savarnas had to consciously work on her language and pronunciation to reach proficiency. The question seeks a mirror image: if I can, why can’t you?
Vijayan explains that it is because Dalits have been too mentally traumatized by incessant sodomization by Spivak and Romila Thapar to be able to do anything for themselves. Also it is simply cruel to try to force them to learn, or teach, English. Take the dude who shouted at Spivak. His teacher at school made fun of him because he recited 'Lady of Shalott' at an elocution competition. I should explain Shalott is as gay as fuck. Boys should recite 'Charge of the Light Brigade'.
The simple answer to the question is that I am not the mirror image you are desperately seeking.
Nobody wants to look like Vijayan.
I am not a blank surface reflecting your self-conceived image of perfection.
Because you are ugly.
I am not a void to be filled with your perfection.
Spivak should kindly desist from using Vijayan's anus as her own personal cum-bucket.
As Fanon put it half a century ago: ‘I am not a potentiality of something;
Fanon had the potential to study a more useful type of medicine. He was bright.
I am fully what I am.’
Then he stopped being so because he had leukemia.
If my language contains mispronunciations, cracks, silences, stubbornness, wounds, and scars that you cannot fathom, that is not my fault.
Unless you are a Professor of that language.
That is your problem. It reflects the complexity of the world I inhabit, a world from which you have always kept a safe, untouchable distance.
perhaps Vijayan has b.o. I don't. It is because of my flatulence that people give me a wide berth.
Had you cared to touch this world, you would have realised that perfecting language is not my priority, nor could it ever be, even if I wished it.
Which is why this guy shouldn't be teaching English or writing in it.
In India, if you have observed closely, perfecting language is the business of the class or caste of people who enjoy conspicuous leisure, to use Thorstein Veblen’s phrase.
No. If you work hard at perfecting your usage of a language you are likely to be in high demand as a writer or a speaker. Thus you will enjoy higher income and status, but will have less leisure.
For instance, most speakers of Malayalam use either ‘Baratam’ or ‘Faratam’ instead of the Sanskrit word ‘Bharatam’, because un-Sanskritized Malayalam, like Tamil, does not possess the voiced plosive ‘bh’. When a Malayali uses this voiced plosive at the beginning of a word, you are in the presence of someone who is educated
virtually everybody is educated to some degree in 'God's own country'.
and who has consciously chosen to distance themselves from the ways of most Malayalis, who has Sanskritised himself/herself.
I think 'manipravalay' enrichment of Tamil with Sanskrit occurred mainly for aesthetic reasons. Since Kerala has a lot of Christians and Muslims, Religion can't have been the deciding factor.
This is achieved through intense training from an early age, focusing consciously on the texture of the language. Most Malayalis today consider this excessive focus on Sanskritized pronunciation a triviality that living Malayalam can ignore.
In other words, most Malayalis are more sensible than this cretin.
When Dalits are hardened by daily experiences of humiliations and mortifications, both physical and mental, and witness horrendous atrocities committed against their fellow beings, even by top liberal university professors of Savarna origin, perfecting their English is a luxury they cannot afford. It is a triviality they know only the Savarna can indulge in.
Few Indians bother to perfect their English. Still, those who teach English may feel a professional obligation to do so.
To paraphrase Malcolm X’s famous jibe at Martin Luther King’s dream: We Dalits were having a nightmare while the Savarnas were practicing an English that would assimilate them into the American dream.
That was functional English. America wanted brainy people with higher qualifications in STEM subjects. They didn't want blokes who could recite 'the Lady of Shalott' in the accents of Queen fucking Victoria.
On a personal note, one thing I invariably do in my class these days is inform students in advance that I may pronounce the same names and words differently within the same session, and I ask them to excuse my horrifying inability to pronounce them correctly.
Why not just tell them that you are shit at English and that they are wasting their time?
I then theoretically back this personal failing by invoking Jacques Derrida’s idea of ‘différance’, insisting that there is no original sense or pronunciation, but only endless enunciation of difference, which play havoc with our lives.
These kids just want to learn functional English. This nutter starts ranting about Derrida who had taken pains to acquire a Parisian accent.
Most students accept my incapacity as philosophically certified.
They accept that the standard of English instruction in a Government College is bound to be shit.
But the truth is, if I try to focus on correct pronunciation, I get jittery knowing I will never get it right, which makes me more nervous and forces me to abandon the stream of thought I am pursuing in the moment.
Does he also shit himself? I should check Tik Tok for videos of Vijayan shitting himself.
When correct pronunciation is dictated by the Savarna, it serves as an entry token to the citadels of knowledge for people like Dalits, who inhabit the outermost ambit of the Savarna universe.
In which case, Savarnas can't be inflicting very much mortification and humiliation on them.
The Savarnas not only close the door but also strip Dalits of their right to freely navigate a language that is unique in its spelling and pronunciation, a language notable for its fluidity.
Vijayan is getting mixed up. The Dalit complaint was that the Brahmins refused to teach them Sanskrit. He has got it into his head that English is some sort of Sanskrit probably because it has 'plosives' and Malayalam doesn't.
This fluidity allows for the formation of new identities, distinct from the languages and spaces in India that are overdetermined by casteist and feudal practices and phrases.
The best new identity an Indian can get is that of a non fucking resident. English can help in that department but so can learning Japanese.
The deterritorialization of the English language into feudal complacency may benefit you, but, as Ambedkar reminded us through Thucydides, it won’t help Dalits: ‘It may be in your interest to be our [pronunciation] masters, but how can it be ours to be your slaves?’
The answer was obvious. The slave owner has an interest in keeping his slaves alive.
The choice before the student was whether to maintain fidelity to a Du Bois, whom he had internalized through his commitments, struggles, and existential angst or to temporarily accept a Du Bois whose ‘real’ identity was mediated through the Brahmin expert.
Spivak isn't an expert. Her English is poor. But she had chutzpah and pretended to know French and Marxism and thus French Marxism.
This expert’s knowledge of Haitian sounds was deemed more authentic, more real than the questions that haunt his mind.
Du Bois did pronounce his name in the English fashion because his Haitian daddy deserted the family when he was a baby.
The student showed fidelity to his own convictions, which Du Bois or Ambedkar,
who married a Brahmin lady
if alive, would undoubtedly understand,
No. They were high IQ dudes.
as it was, more than anything, a fight for human dignity in an amphitheatre of arrogance and casteist giggles.
But lacking a dick is a bigger grievance than being Dalit. Spivak was bound to win.
Two typical oddities stand out in Spivak’s response to the controversy in The Hindu: First, ‘Anshul Kumar had not identified himself as a Dalit.’
She thought he was a Brahmin- perhaps a BJP type- who was a Professor of 'Brahmin Studies'.
An odd expectation, to begin with. Does she mean that if she had understood his Dalit identity in advance, she would have shown epistemological charity by being benign and humane, excusing his natural ignorance?
Yes. She would have started pretending that her own ancestors were Dalits. Also none of the men in her family had a dick. They all hanged themselves while menstruating. This proves they were secretly Revolutionary assassins involved in plots to kill the Viceroy.
Or, in the same vein, was she arrogant toward a Brahmin (mistakenly construed) simply because he did not exhibit the kind of knowledge perfection an ideal Brahmin should possess?
Spivak has always been stupid and ignorant. She didn't get that Du Bois mispronounced his own name because his daddy ran away. That's why he only warmed to Haiti towards the end of his life.
I don’t quite get it. Second, a condescending gesture: ‘The upwardly class-mobile Dalit person … should … work … for the entire Dalit community, especially the subaltern Dalits who do not get into elite universities.’
Stop shouting at old ladies and get a proper job you stupid cunt.
She is asking: Why waste time asking big questions? Why are you not on the ground working for the subaltern Dalits to uplift them? Meanwhile, the Savarna can live with no moral compunction in pursuing their dream of perfecting her pronunciation and her understanding of Du Bois.
The sensible savarna fucks off to the US to do scientific research. Her daughter gets to be come POTUS.
Reading Spivak’s condescending remark, a friend M.N. Parasuraman texted me this: ‘The most annoying thing is how ad infinitum, ad nauseam, Savarnas remind privileged Dalits about their duty to uplift their less fortunate fellows! At a Clubhouse discussion in 2020 one Dalit girl burst this pious balloon saying, “Okay, will a well-to-do Nair or Brahmin who gets into IIT or Central University give up his seat for a poorer caste-mate of his and go to a self-financing institution?”’
No. Nor would a Dalit. Kharge Sahib, on the other hand, generously shares his wealth with night-soil carriers.
Postscript
A long time ago, as a 22-year-old loner, spiritually devastated and torn between thoughts of suicide and visions of extreme darkness,
his thoughts of suicide were gay and carefree
I stumbled upon the works of Emmanuel Levinas in my teacher C.B. Mohandas’s library. Levinas’s philosophy of fundamental ethical obligation towards the Other
unless the other was Palestinian
—because the Other is infinitely different and transcendental, a Judaic theme—
which is why it doesn't apply to Palestinians
resonated deeply with me. In my youthful immaturity, I interpreted the Other as ‘the other’ and imagined a world where the infinite, transcendental otherness of the Untouchable, the invisible, and the nomadic (Habiru) would evoke ethical obligation from the Varna other.
This is just Gandhi & Co. gassing on about 'Daridra Narayan'. But it is easy enough to get rid of poverty by raising productivity.
For me, Derrida via Levinas and Spivak via Derrida formed a seamless continuum until I encountered a disgusting phrase in Levinas: ‘yellow peril’.
Levinas was simply ignorant. The Jesuits in China had translated and commented on a number of texts which influenced important philosophers like Leibniz and Boscovich.
This phrase revealed my place in the universe of infinite other-concerns: no place at all.
What your essay claims is that Dalits are simply too traumatized to learn anything at all.
This disturbing realization inspired me to write a poem reflecting my troubling encounter with Levinas, Derrida, and Spivak. I used Levinas’s phrase against Heidegger for his Nazi past, against Levinas and his followers themselves for their high-sounding ethical jabber.
His own 'ethical jabber' is hysterically funny. I suppose that's why Varadarajan publishes the cunt.
Entre Nous
In alterity we can find an enemy
That’s cool, perfect, yet difficult
As if consenting to horror
One can forgive many people
But there are some people it is difficult to forgive
It is difficult to forgive you
It may be difficult to forgive imaginary crimes, but there is psychiatric medication you can take which tackles the root of the problem- i.e. paranoid schizophrenia.
Is Dalit 'ipseity' inferior in any respect to that of other Indians? No. The author of this may be Dalit and it is true that he is as stupid as shit, but plenty of 'top liberal professors'- like Spivak & Homo Baba- are just as stupid. Still, the English instruction they received in India was of a higher quality than this cretin is capable of imparting. Sad.
Sixty years ago, Habermas's Encyclopedia article on 'the Public Sphere' came out. It was ignorant shit. The word public refers to the population as a whole. Public officials exercise authority over that population. The word private refers to withdrawal from public life and came to mean those without public office or function or, as in the army, those of lowest rank. It was in China, not Europe, that this distinction was most marked. Incidentally, the Chinese Emperors monitored 'public opinion' from a very early period by ordering that the songs on the lips of the common people even in distant provinces be reported back to the Imperial Capital
In law and custom had always been a distinction between public, that is social, and private, that is domestic, life and as to what could be safely expressed or enjoined in the former, without violating the sanctity of the latter. Equally, those discharging public duties were expected to ignore private considerations or urgings.
Nevertheless, within the Public sphere, certain personages or collectives had a privilege with respect to the private realm. This fundamental fact did not change with the growth of mass politics or mass media. Rather both adapted themselves to previously obtaining norms and to the evolving tastes or interests of various stakeholders.
The Concept. By "the public sphere" we mean first of all a realm of our social life in which something approaching public opinion can be formed.
There is no such realm. Even when taking a shit in the public toilet, we are exposed to graffiti which may shape our opinion on political or other public matters.
Access is guaranteed to all citizens.
There is no 'realm of our social life' where any and every citizen is welcome. It is a different matter that some public goods- e.g. TV or Radio broadcasts- are 'non-rival' and 'non-excludable' save by some more or less costly enforcement mechanism. Yet such mechanisms do exist. Also, Habermas may have noticed we have prisons in which some of our citizens are incarcerated.
A portion of the public sphere comes into being in every conversation in which private individuals assemble to form a public body.
Only if that is the intention of those individuals and what they are doing is worthy of wider public interest. But neither condition may be met. In Britain, the Railway company had set up a 'trainspotters' club but it was laughed out of existence after a novel, and then a film, of that name came out.
They then behave neither like business or professional people transacting private affairs, nor like members of a constitutional order subject to the legal constraints of a state bureaucracy.
There speaks the true Teuton! Habermas had been in the Hitler Youth.
Citizens behave as a public body when they confer in an unrestricted fashion-
about what? Muslim immigrants? I suppose a lynch mob was a 'public body' in some parts of the world. Certainly, a posse comitatus might function like such a mob.
that is, with the guarantee of freedom of assembly and association and the freedom to express and publish their opinions-about matters of general interest.
Habermas was fortunate that Allied Armies were based on German soil to prevent too free an assembly of this sort.
In a large public body this kind of communication requires specific means for transmitting information and influencing those who receive it.
Talking rather than farting? Why? Farting can be more effective.
Today newspapers and magazines, radio and television are the media of the public sphere.
Some magazines served a very private sphere. Sadly, back then, you had to be over 18 to buy them.
We speak of the political public sphere in contrast, for instance, to the literary one, when public discussion deals with objects connected to the activity of the state.
Literature may do so to better effect. 'Uncle Tom's Cabin' may have done more for the Abolitionist cause then lengthy speeches delivered by learned lawyers to other learned lawyers.
Although state authority is so to speak the executor of the political public sphere, it is not a part of it.
The Executive branch of a State may or may not say it is executing the will of the public. It is not itself a part of the public and enjoys qualified immunity or executive privilege.
To be sure, state authority is usually considered "public" authority,
it is authority over the public
but it derives its task of caring for the well-being of all citizens
it has no such task. When the State conscripts you and send you to die in the trenches, or arrests you and sends you to rot in jail, it is not in fact showing a tender care for your well-being as a citizen.
primarily from this aspect of the public sphere.
Nonsense! The State is like a Nanny who must sternly oppose the public opinion of the nursery that only cake should be served for supper and nobody should be made to go to bed without any of that commodity. ---
Only when the exercise of political control is effectively subordinated to the democratic demand that information be accessible to the public, does the political public sphere win an institutionalized influence over the government through the instrument of law-making bodies.
Rubbish! Legislatures developed so as to raise taxes with minimal coercion so that collective action problems could be solved. 'Democratic demands', like 'oligarchic' or 'monarchic' demands have to moderate themselves on the basis of how much money is flowing into the exchequer. Only if more is paid in, can bigger demands be met in a sustainable manner.
The expression "public opinion" refers to the tasks of criticism and control which a public body of citizens informally-and, in periodic elections, formally as wellpractices vis-a-vis the ruling structure organized in the form of a state.
Fuck off! British visitors to despotic countries took note of 'public opinion'. If it grew too intense, there might be riots which the Cossacks or Janissaries or other such savage militias might put down in a brutal fashion. But this would affect tax revenue. The Brits understood that it was a virtue of their own system that as a class rose in opulence, it could pay to get a seat at the table and then keep that seat by yielding more and more in tax revenue if the more sensible of its demands were met and thus its own productivity rose more than proportionately.
Regulations demanding that certain proceedings be public (Publizitatsvorschriften), for example those providing for open court hearings, are also related to this function of public opinion.
Not if there are reporting restrictions. The plain fact is both Judges and officials are empowered to put 'the Public interest' ahead of 'Public opinion' or even the interests of the public. Habermas didn't understand Anglo-Saxon jurisprudence. He was ignorantly trying to prove himself a good little schoolboy of the occupying powers. But, like Hannah's Aunt, he got carried away and over-egged the cake in a typically Teutonic, i.e. stupid, manner.
The public sphere as a sphere which mediates between society and state,
It doesn't. It is like the public toilet which interposes itself between the public restaurant and your own toilet at home. If public toilets are clean, you may use them instead of hurrying home to drop your load.
in which the public organizes itself
under the direction of the Fuhrer!
as the bearer or public opinion,
because the Fuhrer has commanded the public to have an opinion!
accords with the principle of the public sphere
thanks to the Fuhrer who can be very cordial though, to be on the safe side, let us just accord with his Will lest we find out otherwise.
- that principle of public information which once had to be fought for against the arcane policies of monarchies
Britain was and is a monarchy as are Holland and Belgium and Sweden and Denmark and Norway. Sadly, 'arcane policies' prevented those Nordic countries gaining a Fuhrer.
and which since that time has made possible the democratic control of state activities.
The Weimar Republic was democratic. It didn't control the activities of the General Staff. Ultimately it couldn't control even its own bowels and shat itself very publicly.
It is no coincidence that these concepts of the public sphere and public opinion arose for the first time only in the eighteenth century.
Not in Germany. Otherwise there would have been no fucking Reformation. But, even prior to that, there was 'public opinion'- which is why you had crazy shit like Crusades and Pogroms.
They acquire their specific meaning from a concrete historical situation.
German pedants attributed specific meanings to their own loose motions.
It was at that time that the distinction of "opinion" from "opinion publique" and "public opinion" came about.
Fuck off! The phrase 'opinion publique' was first used in 1588 by Michel de Montaigne. True, he was speaking of the dead weight of custom but, the truth is, he lived in an age, a milieu, of extravagant fads and fancies which crossed seas and rivers as quickly as rumor. It was the Seventeenth Century which saw 'public opinion'- more particularly on religious matters- fucking up most disastrously. The Eighteenth Century, on the other hand, was more devoted to Reason- or, at least, money.
Though mere opinions (cultural assumptions, normative attitudes, collective prejudices and values) seem to persist unchanged in their natural form as a kind of sediment of history, public opinion can by definition only come into existence when a reasoning public is presupposed.
Says a guy who had been in the Hitler Youth! The plain fact is, from the time of Plato, reason is what is opposed to opinion- more particularly that of the great unwashed. Still, I suppose Habermas needed to show the occupying powers that he was a diligent, but reassuringly stupid, pupil of theirs.
Public discussions about the exercise of political power which are both critical in intent and institutionally guaranteed have not always existed-
They existed, Herodotus tells us, even in Persia when, after the slaughter of the Magi, the virtuous people of that nation deliberated on what form of Government would best serve the commonweal. Habermas must have known this. German paideia was thorough enough. I suppose he was pretending to be stupid so as not to make a target of himself. After all, back in 1964, none could be certain a Fourth Reich might not rise.
they grew out of a specific phase of bourgeois society
Habermas's supervisor was a Leftist who, however, had the sense to run the fuck away from East Germany. Still, it must be said, however stupid Habermas may have been, he must have realized that bourgeois society in different European cities was pretty much at the same phase. Yet only Germany had fucked up so monumentally- not once, but twice. Their bildungsburgertum and beamtenliberalismus were totally and utterly shite- the more so because they had so many ghastly pedants banging on in the most illiterate manner possible about Politics and Economics and Jurisprudence and other stuff the Teutons were rubbish at.
and could enter into the order of the bourgeois constitutional state only as a result of a particular constellation of interests.
Fuck off! It is obvious that public opinion had shifted against absolute monarchs and towards the burgher who paid taxes and wanted a portion of those taxes to be spent on providing 'club goods' which would raise productivity and thus create a virtuous circle of rising incomes leading to rising tax revenues leading to 'positive externality' type public spending. I may mention, the creation of Consols- i.e. riskless assets- was a great boon for 'chrematistics' or the 'financialization' of industrial capitalism. Interestingly, the reparations which France had to pay twice in the nineteenth century helped their thrifty middle class. Germany's refusal to pay reparations (or rather their 'extend and pretend') was very damaging for their mittelstand.
History. There is no indication European society of the high middle ages possessed a public sphere
the Church, though strongly linked with the Court, was public enough and, springing from its Universities, the 'goliard' or, in Holland and Germany, the poets of romantic chivalry writing in the vernacular, catered to a widening audience. The stage was thus set for the Humanism of Ulrich von Hutten and the type of public opinion which supported the Reformation. In Germany, this had to do with the downgrading of the poorer members of the knightly caste.
as a unique realm distinct from the private sphere.
Fuck off! If there was no public sphere, how could there have been Crusades or a Reformation? I suppose, what Habermas is getting at is that there was no independent, purse-proud, bourgeoisie. Consider the great merchant Jacques de Coeur. His father-in-law had been the valet of the Duke before rising up in commerce. His daughter married into the aristocracy while his son became an arch-bishop. Yet, he fell. A Lombard family with greater luck was that of the Princes of Thurn und Taxis. It took them three centuries to be ennobled but a mere century and half to rise Princely rank. But they have remained very rich for at least eight centuries. As couriers and postmasters, they served a widening public and, I suppose, since their trade was not considered vulgar, public opinion supported their rise into first the aristocratic, and then the Princely, caste.
Nevertheless, it was not coincidental that during that period symbols of sovereignty, for instance the princely seal, were deemed "public."
Because princes ruled over the public. A knight may have a coat of arms but, in some countries, that was a private matter. Thurn und Taxis is an example of a knightly family which had to forge a genealogy to make the leap into the upper ranks of European Society. As I have said, the fact that they served the public for centuries, meant public opinion changed in their favor.
At that time there existed a public representation of power. The status of the feudal lord,
I think Thurn und Taxis only gained actual feudal powers quite late in the eighteenth century only to be 'mediatized' by Napoleon shortly thereafter. But their postal business continued to thrive.
at whatever level of the feudal pyramid, was oblivious to the categories "public" and "private," but the holder of the position represented it publicly: he showed himself, presented himself as the embodiment of an ever present "higher" power.
Not in France where noble status was stripped from those without the economic means to keep up an appropriate style of life. The situation in Germany was more complex.
The concept of this representation has been maintained up to the most recent constitutional history.
Habermas was mistaken. The Weimar Constitution abolished Princely titles along with their political role. Previously, the Kaiser was styled German Emperor not Emperor of Germany and, in constitutional law, other German Kings had a representative function.
Regardless of the degree to which it has loosed itself from the old base, the authority of political power today still demands a representation at the highest level by a head of state.
No. A particular State may, for diplomatic purposes, have a Head of State but this has nothing to do with political authority. The nominal head of government may serve, in fact, not legal fiction, at the pleasure of a Gaddaffi- who was a mere 'Brotherly leader and Guide' till he was killed and his corpse was sodomized.
Such elements, however, derive from a pre-bourgeois social structure.
No. There were cities and there were merchants (burghers) in cities before there were Kings. Representation was required for the signing of contracts. This could be delegated. Thus, the owner of a property may appoint a representative to make a particular contract. But a King, too, might send a representative to take and hold the crown on his behalf.
Representation in the sense of a bourgeois public sphere, for instance the representation of the nation or of particular mandates, has nothing to do with the medieval representative public sphere--a public sphere directly linked to the concrete existence of a ruler.
No. Both spring from the same notion of power to contract or power to discharge the terms of a contract. Incidentally, in the private sphere, though there could be 'marriage by proxy', still, sooner or later a dick and a vagina had to actually physically represent the two contracting parties failing which the marriage might be dissolved.
As long as the prince and the estates of the realm still "are" the land, instead of merely functioning as deputies for it, they are able to "re-present"; they represent their power "before" the people, instead of for the people.
Rubbish! The American or Swiss President isn't 'the land'. He or she is a Head of State with the power to sign treaties on behalf of his or her country. Habermas may have thought, in 1964, there was some big big difference between Ceylon, which retained the Queen as head of state till 1972, and India, which had become a Republic. But this wasn't the case.
The feudal authorities (church, princes and nobility), to which the representative public sphere was first linked, disintegrated during a long process of polarization.
Nonsense! Britain retains a monarch and an established Church to this day. The House of Lords still consisted of mainly hereditary peers in 1964. Some of the Channel isles still had feudal lords. But this made no fucking difference to anything.
By the end of the eighteenth century they had broken apart into private elements on the one hand, and into public on the other.
No. Had Queen Victoria had a dick, Hanover would have remained in personal union with the UK. Because it was 'Salic' this ceased to be the case on her accession. It was the Great War which, in Europe, caused great magnates to lose multiple nationality and allegiance. A Prince had to choose one nationality and stick to it.
The position of the church changed with the reformation: the link to divine authority which the church represented, that is, religion, became a private matter.
It still isn't in Germany. Unless you declare yourself an atheist, a portion of your tax payment is handed over to the Religion of your birth. Habermas was as ignorant of his own country as he was of every other. No wonder, the Germans considered him a leading savant. Even Max Weber was less stupid.
So-called religious freedom came to insure what was historically the first area of private autonomy.
Fuck off! Europe killed 'pagans' or Muslims or Jews (unless they were too useful). There was no such autonomy. The good thing about Western and most of Central Europe was that 'exit' was permitted. Thus, you could change your religion though you might have to run the fuck away to save your skin once you had done so. True, the need for this declined in the eighteenth century.
The church itself continued its existence as one public and legal body among others.
Unless it was the Established Church. On the other hand, in 1905, France turned on the Catholic Church and imposed various restrictions upon it. Ireland, after 1922, went in the opposite direction.
The corresponding polarization within princely authority was visibly manifested in the separation of the public budget from the private household expenses of a ruler.
This still hasn't happened in England though we may say that the ball was set rolling by Henry I.
The institutions of public authority, along with the bureaucracy and the military, and in part also with the legal institutions, asserted their independence from the privatized sphere of the princely court.
It wasn't 'privatized' initially, though it became so save where particular feudal revenues- e.g. the Duchy of Lancaster which, since 1461, has been separated from the Crown Estate, so as to provide an independent income to the Monarch or his eldest son.
Finally, the feudal estates were transformed as well: the nobility became the organs of public authority,
In some places, not others. Wealthy feudal magnates might engage in a ruinous 'game of Thrones'. One way or another, they were brought to heel- else chaos prevailed.
parliament and the legal institutions;
which, at the end of the day, were about raising money. For them to flourish, the money they raised had to raise productivity. Otherwise, they were disintermediated.
while those occupied in trades and professions, insofar as they had already established urban corporations and territorial organizations, developed into a sphere of bourgeois society which would stand apart from the state as a genuine area of private autonomy.
This cretin was of a middle class background. What fucking private autonomy did his family enjoy during either of the two world wars?
The middle order can, it is true, sell up and fuck off to a safer country. But, if it fails to do so, it is as much a hostage to fortune as the proles or the aristos.
The representative public sphere yielded to that new sphere of "public authority" which came into being with national and territorial states.
This cretin did not understand that people exercising 'public authority' do so as representatives of the sovereign. In England, after the Norman invasion, the Sheriff or 'vicomes' represented the King and undercut the traditional power of the Earls. If the King was weak, then the Earl or Marcher land really did represent particular territories. But, in that case, the King might represent nothing at all and anarchy might prevail.
Continuous state activity (permanent administration, standing army)
e.g. in China
now corresponded to the permanence of the relationships which with the stock exchange
which dates from 1666 for Frankfurt- a sovereign City State. But there was no unified German State- the Holy Roman Empire being neither Holy, nor Roman, nor an actual Empire. Still, at least the 30 year war was over.
and the press had developed within the exchange of commodities and information.
The first German newspaper predated the chaos of the 30 year war. The exchange of commodities and information during that period led some parts of Germany to lose half their population.
Public authority consolidated into a concrete opposition for those who were merely subject to it and who at first found only a negative definition of themselves within it. These were the "private individuals" who were excluded from public authority because they held no office.
Actually there had always been 'novo homini', raised up by the King- though it may have been the Church which gave them their start- whom he used to bring the Barons to heel. In some Empires- e.g. Tzarist Russia, Manchu China, Noble rank was linked to public service. Failure or inability to serve meant degradation by one rank per generation. But, 'new men' were able to rise into the nobility though Government service. Lenin, it will be remembered was a 'titular nobleman' because his Dad had been Director of Schools in some province.
Public no longer referred to the "representative" court of a prince endowed with authority, but rather to an institution regulated according to competence, to an apparatus endowed with a monopoly on the legal exertion of authority.
Whether it did or did not, didn't matter in the slightest.
Private individuals subsumed in the state at whom public authority was directed now made up the public body.
Fuck off! Nobody is 'subsumed in the State'. The public is just whoever bothers to show up. Generally, these are crazy people- unless economic interests are involved.
Society, now a private realm occupying a position in opposition to the state,
Very true. High Society is actually an anarchist collective scheming to topple the King and sodomize the Cabinet. When the Duchess of Westminster meets Victoria Beckham, they exchange tips on how to blow up Parliament.
stood on the one hand as if in clear contrast to the state. On the other hand, that society had become a concern of public interest to the degree that the reproduction of life in the wake of the developing market economy had grown beyond the bounds of private domestic authority.
In Germany, der Fuhrer orders you to go cuddle your wife and make babies. But Habermas forgot that the fucking Fuhrer poisoned his dog and ate a bullet.
The bourgeois public sphere could be understood as the sphere of private individuals assembled into a public body, which almost immediately laid claim to the officially regulated "intellectual newspapers" for use against the public authority itself.
Nope. Publishing was a business. People wrote pamphlets or set up newspapers so as to make a bit of money. Sometimes this was subsidized by various vested interest groups. Some influential writers gained power and influence.
In those newspapers, and in moralistic and critical journals, they debated that public authority on the general rules of social intercourse in their fundamentally privatized yet publically relevant sphere of labor and commodity exchange.
No. They debated how fucking horrible or nice the administration was. They didn't question the rule that you have to pay money in order to buy stuff.
The Liberal Model of the Public Sphere. The medium of this debate/public discussion-was unique and without historical precedent
Not to people who actually knew some history. St. Paul's Epistles changed 'public opinion' and continue to change opinion. But Emperor Ashoka had already done so. When new Religions spread, it is because public opinion has changed.
Hitherto the estates had negotiated agreements with their princes,
or killed and replaced them
settling their claims to power from case to case.
Bitter wars were waged from time to time. Habermas was entirely ignorant of History. He didn't understand that the Reformation was about a change in public opinion. Some people didn't believe that giving money to the Pope would cut down their time in Purgatory.
This development took a different course in England, where the parliament limited royal power, than it did on the continent, where the monarchies mediatized the estates.
No. In Germany some Princes and Archbishops were mediatized- i.e. down graded in rank. Estates were not 'mediatized'. The Church was brought under the control of the Monarch (unless the Monarch changed religion and, like James II was thrown out) or lost influence as people stopped believing that excommunication was a big deal. In some countries, Parliament gained the upper hand but, in others, it was downgraded or rendered subservient. Poland is an interesting case where the Crown was elective and held little power. The problem was nobody did and thus the country became vulnerable.
The third estate then broke with this form of power arrangement since it could no longer establish itself as a ruling group.
'No longer'? I suppose one could say the English 'Long Parliament' was a 'ruling group' which ceased to be so. In America, after the Revolution, there was only one Estate. In Russia, there was autocracy. The nobility and the Church were firmly subordinated to the Tzar. In other words, different countries went in different directions.
A division of power by means of the delineation of the rights of the nobility was no longer possible within an exchange economy-private authority over capitalist property is, after all, unpolitical.
Nonsense! The Electors of Brandenburg were sovereign in all but name. They were accorded the title 'King in Prussia' on the basis that a portion of their territory was outside the Holy Roman Empire and they no longer held it as vassals of the Polish King. It was only under Fredrick the Great that the title 'King of Prussia' was accorded to the Hohenzollerns. Bavaria only became a Kingdom in 1805 and remained so till 1919. Hanover only became a Kingdom in 1814 but was annexed by Prussia in 1866.
Bourgeois individuals are private individuals.
They may hold public office but everybody has a private life.
As such, they do not "rule."
Louis Phillipe was, famously, a bourgeois King. By that stage the Queen of England reigned but did not rule. After the death of her husband, there was a long period when she her life was largely private.
Their claims to power vis-d-vis public authority were thus directed not against the concentration of power, which was to be "shared."
The common people, too, had claims against 'authority'. Sometimes, these had to be conceded or there was a bloody insurrection. Don't forget, a goodly portion of the bourgeoisie sprang from the working or peasant class. Speaking generally, Parliament demanded power over the raising of taxes and some aspects of government spending. It did not necessarily demand power over diplomacy, the Church or the conduct of military operations. The doctrine of Parliamentary supremacy was slow to evolve and developed differently in different countries.
Instead, their ideas infiltrated the very principle on which the existing power is based. To the principle of the existing power, the bourgeois public opposed the principle of supervision-that very principle which demands that proceedings be made public (Publizitat).
Yet, there were still plenty of secret treaties in the Twenties and Thirties even though President Wilson had claimed that there would be no such things after the Allies won.
The principle of supervision is thus a means of transforming the nature of power, not merely one basis of legitimation exchanged for another.
No. The sovereign appointed supervisors to ensure he wasn't being cheated. So did Parliament once it became supreme. Dictators and autocrats have plenty of auditors and inspectors and also secret policemen keeping tabs on their subordinates.
In the first modern constitutions
the Swedish constitution of 1634 is generally considered the first modern constitution though it was not considered as such at that time. However from 1809 onward one could say that Parliament had the upper hand.
the catalogues of fundamental rights were a perfect image of the liberal model of the public sphere:
America gained independence by waging war. It expelled loyalists. There were no fucking 'fundamental rights' for the indigenous people or African Americans.
they guaranteed the society as a sphere of private autonomy and the restriction of public authority to a few functions.
No. Presidents and Senators were part of Society. The government had unlimited powers when it came- including the right to conscript soldiers- which it used from time to time. It could also restrict commerce and property ownership in any manner it pleased. When Habermas was writing this, Americans were not allowed to own gold. Also homosexuals could be arrested and sent to jail even if they were having consensual sex behind locked doors and closed curtains. Now, of course, American men copulate with each other in the streets while indulging in golden showers. My own sister told me this when I threatened to visit her in New York. True, this also happens in Hendon, where my cousin lives, but I did hope that Obama could persuade his people to adopt more hygienic practices.
Between these two spheres, the constitutions further insured the existence of a realm of private individuals assembled into a public body who as citizens transmit the needs of bourgeois society to the state, in order, ideally, to transform political into "rational" authority within the medium of this public sphere.
In Tzarist Russia and Ottoman Turkey and Ming Dynasty China, there existed 'a realm of private individuals etc.' This was also true of the Cannibals of Cheltenham- where another cousin of mine used to live. I wonder why all my relatives chose to live in places where an elderly Tambram myself would be at risk of being sodomized or eaten if I showed my face.
The general interest, which was the measure of such a rationality,
Monarchs and Dictators are perfectly capable of pursuing 'the general interest'.
was then guaranteed, according to the presuppositions of a society of free commodity exchange,
free commodity exchange existed even in the Stone Age. But, Capitalist countries, under exigent circumstances, may establish total state control over all of the country's resources.
when the activities of private individuals in the marketplace were freed from social compulsion
they never have been. This is why I am obliged to wear clothes when I appear in the streets.
and from political pressure in the public sphere.
Political pressure does mean I no can't buy certain things which, to be frank, would be very bad for me.
At the same time, daily political newspapers assumed an important role.
But a largely illiterate population- e.g. the India of Mahatma Gandhi- could develop a powerful enough 'public opinion' to compel constitutional change- not always for the better.
In the second half of the eighteenth century literary journalism created serious competition for the earlier news sheets which were mere compilations of notices.
Peter the Great established Russia's first newspaper. It was later taken over by the Academy of Sciences. But the country moved in an autocratic direction. Indeed, after the Bolsheviks came to power, autocracy intensified. No Tzar possessed the power of Stalin.
Karl Biicher characterized this great development as follows: "Newspapers changed from mere institutions for the publication of news into bearers and leaders of public opinion-weapons of party politics.
In some countries, not others.
This transformed the newspaper business. A new element emerged between the gathering and the publication of news: the editorial staff.
All newspapers were edited. As circulation and advertising revenue grew, more staff could be employed.
But for the newspaper publisher it meant that he changed from a vendor of recent news to a dealer in public opinion."
Peter the Great wrote most of his newspaper himself. He changed 'public opinion' and killed those who resisted such changes. The first German newspaper publisher explained in 1605, that previously news circulated to subscribers through hand copied letters, henceforth they would be printed. A woman established the first daily newspaper in the English language around 1702.
The publishers insured the newspapers a commercial basis, yet without commercializing them as such.
In Western Europe, most newspapers and magazines were always commercial ventures.
The press remained an institution of the public itself, effective in the manner of a mediator and intensifier of public discussion, no longer a mere organ for the spreading of news but not yet the medium of a consumer culture.
Nonsense! Advertisements appeared in the Daily Courant from the start.
This type of journalism can be observed above all during periods of revolution when newspapers of the smallest political groups and organizations spring up, for instance in Paris in 1789. Even in the Paris of 1848 every half-way eminent politician organized his club, every other his journal: 450 clubs and over 200 journals were established there between February and May alone.
So what? In countries where printing hadn't taken off, letters circulated and were read aloud to the common people.
Until the permanent legalization of a politically functional public sphere, the appearance of a political newspaper meant joining the struggle for freedom and public opinion, and thus for the public sphere as a principle.
Banned newspapers circulated just as banned pamphlets or epistles had circulated.
Only with the establishment of the bourgeois constitutional state was the intellectual press relieved of the pressure of its convictions.
Nonsense! Newspapers and magazines became more 'intellectual' as education and opulence increased. But this was also true in some autocratic countries.
Since then it has been able to abandon its polemical position and take advantage of the earning possibilities of a commercial undertaking.
If there is a demand for polemics, newspapers will be happy to supply it.
In England, France, and the United States the transformation from a journalism of conviction to one of commerce began in the 1830s at approximately the same time.
Nonsense! The American press was highly partisan in the eighteenth century. It was only after 1830 that they sought to increase their circulation by carrying more 'news' than 'views'. In England, people like Daniel Defore, Addison and Steele, were highly political.
In the transition from the literary journalism of private individuals to the public services of the mass media
Daniel Defoe and Benjamin Franklin had bridged that gap in the eighteenth century.
the public sphere was transformed by the influx of private interests, which received special prominence in the mass media.
Habermas says that the mass media gave special prominence to the mass media. By the standards of German pedagogues, the guy was a freakin' genius.
The Public Sphere in the Social Welfare State Mass Democracy. Although the liberal model of the public sphere is still instructive today with respect to the normative claim that information be accessible to the public,
In the Middle Ages the public was not allowed to know who was King. Also, nobody told them whether it was raining which is why they often got very wet.
it cannot be applied to the actual conditions of an industrially advanced mass democracy organized in the form of the social welfare state.
Sure it can. Nothing has changed. Some newspapers were partisan others less so.
In part the liberal model had always included ideological components, but it is also in part true that the social pre-conditions, to which the ideological elements could at one time at least be linked, had been fundamentally transformed.
Social pre-conditions don't matter. That's why India could be a democracy in 1964 whereas East Germany couldn't. Ideology is independent of the economic 'sub-structure'. Albania was Communist though much more agrarian than Italy.
The very forms in which the public sphere manifested itself, to which supporters of the liberal model could appeal for evidence, began to change with the Chartist movement in England
which had zero effect. As Gen. Napier explained to the 'physical force' Chartists, it was the guys with canons who had the physical force.
and the February revolution in France.
Which changed little. An Emperor replaced a King. History, as Marx remarked, repeated itself as farce.
Because of the diffusion of press and propaganda, the public body expanded beyond the bounds of the bourgeoisie.
It was always much larger. As Victor Hugo put it, 'fex urbis lex orbis'- i.e. the scum of the City- or poor Christians lurking in the catacombs- ended up giving laws to the world. But that happened long before there were printing presses or radios or televisions.
The public body lost not only its social exclusivity;
This nutter didn't know that guys like Martin Luther weren't born into the aristocracy. Yet they changed history.
it lost in addition the coherence created by bourgeois social institutions and a relatively high standard of education. Conflicts hitherto restricted to the private sphere now intrude into the public sphere.
Intense enough private conflicts become either through violence or law suits or the attempt to change laws and regulations. This is true in any type of society at any age in human history.
Group needs which can expect no satisfaction from a selfregulating market now tend towards a regulation by the state.
This was always the case. Even where there was a 'self-organizing' Law Merchant, merchants themselves wanted it codified and amended by the State. Furthermore, the demand for protection from foreign competition existed even in ancient times. This was sometimes linked to sumptuary laws. The paradox was that the very merchants who clamored for mercantilist policies, might also turn a profit by dealing in contraband.
The public sphere, which must now mediate these demands,
e.g. the demand of a guy whose neighbor stole his cow. But that had been happening since the time of the cavemen.
becomes a field for the competition of interests, competitions which assume the form of violent conflict.
There were conflicts between pastoralists and farmers etc. before there was
Laws which obviously have come about under the "pressure of the' street" can scarcely still be understood as arising from the consensus of private individuals engaged in public discussion.
Sure they can. Private individuals have conversations and then take to the streets. The King then orders a pogrom. Hitler, of course, was something of a 'self-starter' in that respect.
They correspond in a more or less unconcealed manner to the compromise of conflicting private interests.
As private individuals we still have public concerns or want the State, or the local community, to do certain things or not do them. But this has been true throughout human history
Social organizations which deal with the state act in the political public sphere,
They may bring pressure to bear behind the scenes. A lot of lobbying is far from transparent.
whether through the agency of political parties or directly in connection with the public administration. With the interweaving of the public and private realm, not only do the political authorities assume certain functions in the sphere of commodity exchange and social labor, but conversely social powers now assume political functions.
When was this not the case? The tribe had its own hierarchy and internal politics. It promoted some times of trade and taxed or forbade other sorts.
This leads to a kind of "refeudalization" of the public sphere.
NO! It led to the Spanish Inquisition taking those parts of the public sphere which had not been over-run by Atilla the Hun.
Large organizations strive for political compromises with the state and with each other, excluding the public sphere whenever possible.
Also, when you apply for a driving license, you exclude the public sphere because nobody wants to be harangued by nutters from Extinction Rebellion who think cars are very evil.
But at the same time the large organizations must assure themselves of at least plebiscitary support from the mass of the population through an apparent display of openness (demonstrative Publizitat).
Fuck off! Big Trade Union leaders enjoy holding the country to ransom.
The political public sphere of the social welfare state is characterized by a peculiar weakening of its critical functions.
No. Advances in economic theory and statistics tended to create better 'Cost Benefit analysis'. Over the course of the Sixties and Seventies, politicians, administrators and media commentators began using an increasingly technocratic language. The style of debate changed. In England 'Butskillism' prevailed as all major parties sought to occupy the middle ground. They competed with each other by portraying themselves as better managers of the business of the nation.
At one time the process of making proceedings public (Publizitat) was intended to subject persons or affairs to public reason, and to make political decisions subject to appeal before the court of public opinion.
It was argued that 'delegated legislation'- a big feature of the post-war industrial State- meant less transparency and oversight. This was one reason Ombudsmen, independent of the Executive, were increasingly appointed.
But often enough today the process of making public simply serves the arcane policies of special interests;
e.g. where a Regulatory Agency is 'captured' by those it is meant to police.
in the form of "publicity" it wins public prestige for people or affairs, thus making them worthy of acclamation in a climate of non-public opinion. The very words "public relations work" (Oeffentlichkeitsarbeit) betray the fact that a public sphere must first be arduously constructed case by case,
No. It suggests that public opinion already existed and that it mattered a great deal. But monarchs and dictators, as well as elected politicians, had always known that popularity matters a great deal. That is why they took a lot of time and trouble to cultivate a particular image. So did commercial enterprises as they grew in scale and scope.
a public sphere which earlier grew out of the social structure.
Everything grows out of 'the social structure'. Mummy and Daddy were able to get married and have babies and bring up those babies because they were part of a society which had a lot of structure.
Even the central relationship of the public, the parties and the parliament is affected by this change in function.
There was no change in function. States have been providing pretty much the same types of services from their first inception.
Yet this trend towards the weakening of the public sphere as a principle
Habermas's conception of a 'public sphere' was weak as shit. This is because he had shit for brains. I suppose one might say 'over the course of the Sixties and Seventies, the private sphere became more autonomous with regard to sexual and some financial matters. Thus, when I was born, it was illegal in England for one man to have sex with another. There were also restrictions on your ability to buy and to hold foreign exchange.
is opposed by the extension of fundamental rights in the social welfare state.
But those 'fundamental rights' were often provided for by the public sector- e.g. Council houses and the NHS in England.
The demand that information be accessible to the public is extended from organs of the state to all organizations dealing with the state.
No. Nobody expects the Mafia to provide information even if it deals a lot with the Police and the Judiciary. It is a separate matter that if an organization- e.g. a Housing Trust- is mainly discharging a public (i.e. Government) function, then it may have to abide by rules concerning government activity.
To the degree that this is realized, a public body of organized private individuals would take the place of the now-defunct public body of private individuals
there was no such 'public body'. The moment a guy becomes a public official, he ceases to be a private citizen at least in connection with anything to do with the workings of that body.
who relate individually to each other.
Individuals relate to each other directly- more particularly when they are having sex. Frau Habermas may have told her hubby differently but she was lying. It isn't the case that the postman- as a representative of the Public- must be present at the conception of a baby.
Only these organized individuals could participate effectively in the process of public communication; only they could use the channels of the public sphere which exist within parties and associations and the process of making proceedings public (Publizitat) which was established to facilitate the dealings of organizations with the state.
This cretin probably thought that the German Secret Service published all its files.
Political compromises would have to be legitimized through this process of public communication.
No. There was never any such rule. If one guy says to the other- 'I'll support your bid to become Chancellor in return for your supporting my bid to become Mayor'- he is not obliged to report this to anybody.
The idea of the public sphere, preserved in the social welfare state mass democracy, an idea which calls for a rationalization of power through the medium of public discussion among private individuals, threatens to disintegrate with the structural transformation of the public sphere itself.
The public sector expanded because of two world-wars and then an expensive Cold War. One may say the private sphere expanded as affluent Societies became more permissive.
It could only be realized today, on an altered basis, as a rational
this stupid cunt wouldn't have recognized rationality if it bit him in the bum.
reorganization of social and political power under the mutual control of rival organizations
rivals don't mutually control shit.
committed to the public sphere
There are plenty of rival Churches. They are committed to God, not the public sphere.
in their internal structure
some organizations have little internal structure. By Contrast the Institute of Socioproctology has a very intricate system of hierarchy. I am currently the Chief Acting Deputy Assistant Director of Enrollment. I used to be the President but had to resign because of allegations of sexual abuse. The same thing happened when I was made Director of Enrollment. I need hardly say that the allegations of self-abuse I made against me were wholly false. Shit. Just been fired again. I am not Acting Deputy Chief Assistant Director.
as well as in their relations with the state and each other.
or themselves. Sexual self-abuse is a widespread problem in modern society due to public opinion is causing me to watch Mia Khalifa on Pornhub. I think I now understand why Mahatma Gandhi backed the Khilafat movement.
