According to the BBC, sales of Marx’s Das Kapital are up more than 300% in Germany since the onset of the credit crunch, and have been on the rise since 2005. Even the Times is asking whether Marx was on to something. Could we be seeing the end of the popular embargo on Marxist thought?
Filed under: Editorial, Events, News, Politics, Uncategorized | Tags: Andrew Lahde, Finance, Lahde, Money
This is a copy of the resignation letter of Andrew Lehade, manager of a small California hedge fund, who has decided to call it a day after making a killing betting against the sub-prime mortgage market. Lehade rails against what he calls the ‘aristocracy’ of financial and government institutions in a week where Wall Street bankers award themselves $70 billion bonuses just days after the $700 dollar bailout. Who benefits from keeping the banks afloat, again?
Dear Investor:
Today I write not to gloat. Given the pain that nearly everyone is experiencing, that would be entirely inappropriate. Nor am I writing to make further predictions, as most of my forecasts in previous letters have unfolded or are in the process of unfolding. Instead, I am writing to say goodbye.
Recently, on the front page of Section C of the Wall Street Journal, a hedge fund manager who was also closing up shop (a $300 million fund), was quoted as saying, “What I have learned about the hedge fund business is that I hate it.” I could not agree more with that statement. I was in this game for the money. The low hanging fruit, i.e. idiots whose parents paid for prep school, Yale, and then the Harvard MBA, was there for the taking. These people who were (often) truly not worthy of the education they received (or supposedly received) rose to the top of companies such as AIG, Bear Stearns and Lehman Brothers and all levels of our government. All of this behavior supporting the Aristocracy, only ended up making it easier for me to find people stupid enough to take the other side of my trades. God bless America.
There are far too many people for me to sincerely thank for my success. However, I do not want to sound like a Hollywood actor accepting an award. The money was reward enough. Furthermore, the endless list those deserving thanks know who they are.
I will no longer manage money for other people or institutions. I have enough of my own wealth to manage. Some people, who think they have arrived at a reasonable estimate of my net worth, might be surprised that I would call it quits with such a small war chest. That is fine; I am content with my rewards. Moreover, I will let others try to amass nine, ten or eleven figure net worths. Meanwhile, their lives suck. Appointments back to back, booked solid for the next three months, they look forward to their two week vacation in January during which they will likely be glued to their Blackberries or other such devices. What is the point? They will all be forgotten in fifty years anyway. Steve Balmer, Steven Cohen, and Larry Ellison will all be forgotten. I do not understand the legacy thing. Nearly everyone will be forgotten. Give up on leaving your mark. Throw the Blackberry away and enjoy life.
So this is it. With all due respect, I am dropping out. Please do not expect any type of reply to emails or voicemails within normal time frames or at all. Andy Springer and his company will be handling the dissolution of the fund. And don’t worry about my employees, they were always employed by Mr. Springer’s company and only one (who has been well-rewarded) will lose his job.
I have no interest in any deals in which anyone would like me to participate. I truly do not have a strong opinion about any market right now, other than to say that things will continue to get worse for some time, probably years. I am content sitting on the sidelines and waiting. After all, sitting and waiting is how we made money from the subprime debacle. I now have time to repair my health, which was destroyed by the stress I layered onto myself over the past two years, as well as my entire life — where I had to compete for spaces in universities and graduate schools, jobs and assets under management — with those who had all the advantages (rich parents) that I did not. May meritocracy be part of a new form of government, which needs to be established.
On the issue of the U.S. Government, I would like to make a modest proposal. First, I point out the obvious flaws, whereby legislation was repeatedly brought forth to Congress over the past eight years, which would have reigned in the predatory lending practices of now mostly defunct institutions. These institutions regularly filled the coffers of both parties in return for voting down all of this legislation designed to protect the common citizen. This is an outrage, yet no one seems to know or care about it. Since Thomas Jefferson and Adam Smith passed, I would argue that there has been a dearth of worthy philosophers in this country, at least ones focused on improving government. Capitalism worked for two hundred years, but times change, and systems become corrupt. George Soros, a man of staggering wealth, has stated that he would like to be remembered as a philosopher. My suggestion is that this great man start and sponsor a forum for great minds to come together to create a new system of government that truly represents the common man’s interest, while at the same time creating rewards great enough to attract the best and brightest minds to serve in government roles without having to rely on corruption to further their interests or lifestyles. This forum could be similar to the one used to create the operating system, Linux, which competes with Microsoft’s near monopoly. I believe there is an answer, but for now the system is clearly broken.
Lastly, while I still have an audience, I would like to bring attention to an alternative food and energy source. You won’t see it included in BP’s, “Feel good. We are working on sustainable solutions,” television commercials, nor is it mentioned in ADM’s similar commercials. But hemp has been used for at least 5,000 years for cloth and food, as well as just about everything that is produced from petroleum products. Hemp is not marijuana and vice versa. Hemp is the male plant and it grows like a weed, hence the slang term. The original American flag was made of hemp fiber and our Constitution was printed on paper made of hemp. It was used as recently as World War II by the U.S. Government, and then promptly made illegal after the war was won. At a time when rhetoric is flying about becoming more self-sufficient in terms of energy, why is it illegal to grow this plant in this country? Ah, the female. The evil female plant — marijuana. It gets you high, it makes you laugh, it does not produce a hangover. Unlike alcohol, it does not result in bar fights or wife beating. So, why is this innocuous plant illegal? Is it a gateway drug? No, that would be alcohol, which is so heavily advertised in this country. My only conclusion as to why it is illegal, is that Corporate America, which owns Congress, would rather sell you Paxil, Zoloft, Xanax and other additive drugs, than allow you to grow a plant in your home without some of the profits going into their coffers. This policy is ludicrous. It has surely contributed to our dependency on foreign energy sources. Our policies have other countries literally laughing at our stupidity, most notably Canada, as well as several European nations (both Eastern and Western). You would not know this by paying attention to U.S. media sources though, as they tend not to elaborate on who is laughing at the United States this week. Please people, let’s stop the rhetoric and start thinking about how we can truly become self-sufficient.
With that I say good-bye and good luck.
All the best,
Andrew Lahde (more…)
“Mostly, what we’re concerned with is Jesus.”
Whoever thought The Beatles were such a problem?
http://www.cnn.com/2007/US/08/22/gw.teen.christians/index.html
We might draw an analogy between democracy and knowledge and the traditional philosophical tension between politics and truth. Philosophers since Socrates have tended to align philosophy with truth and rhetoric with the sophistic world of the political. However, ‘truth’ has connotations rather different to those of ‘knowledge’. While there are various philosophical conceptions of truth – with correspondence, consensus and coherentist being the main three – truth is generally taken to be ‘that which is the case’ while knowledge is knowledge of a thing.
Jean-Jacques Rousseau is a particularly important figure in the history of modern democracy. He believed that laws should be general and impersonal rather than specific, applied to the general populace rather than the individual: the whole population rules over the whole population and decides what the population is to do. Political parties and factions within the state impede this process, but only on the basis of such differences can the general will be identified and established. Therefore, Rousseau argues, particular and general interests should be kept separate so as to avoid the emergence of divisive political factions. With the appropriate mechanisms in place, laws which are in the interests of the people (instituted by le contrat sociale) can become apparent. This kind of legislative power, Rousseau believed, cannot be deferred or allocated to representatives.
It is important to note that this only applies to the realm of legislative and not executive power. For him, democracy is a form of constitutional government in which all citizens are required to participate. However, in a small, homogenous and uncomplicated society such a system cannot work since the abstract relationship between the individual and the state is compromised and individuals are likely to interfere with each other’s business. This leads Rousseau to the conclusion that democracy in the strict sense is a bad form of government that requires representation in order to give form to the principle of sovereignty. Government is therefore synonymous with the formal realisation of public political activity.
Rousseau uses the word ‘statute’ to denote the outcome of processes of representative democracy. This is deigned to denote more than an expression of will and incorporates the idea of the exercise of power. Crucially, this involves some dimension of knowledge – what is the case – before it can be formed. The exercise of executive power therefore requires both empirical and practical substantiation.
This position comes with a number of well-documented difficulties. What position is there, for example, for a dissenting individual within such a collectivity? Are we to understand the collective reflexively as a self-determining agent or referentially, as a ‘thing’, an object of knowledge? If an agent, what kind of autonomy can it display, what kind of voice can it speak with? Only representatives seem to have this authority, but they themselves remain individuals. If referential object of knowledge, it seems that executives have nothing to do but defer decision to those with the relevant epistemological expertise.
Rousseau attempted to overcome these problems through the figure of the législateur, who hopes to use knowledge and calculation to persuade and convince the people which laws should be adopted. However, the specialist knowledge that the législateur possesses is unavailable to the people themselves, who remain in a ‘democratic deficit’. Is the législateur obliged to tell the truth, or act in the interests of the people without their consent? If so, what place for democracy?
In the Republic, Plato says that the ideal political community will be realised by philosophers who become kings or kings who become philosophers. Glaucon asks Socrates how such a state is to be established. Socrates gives a rather unsatisfactory response, saying that after escaping domestic unrest and trouble abroad the paradoxical, unifying ‘third wave’ of moderate government is yet to come; and we cannot arrive at political knowledge prematurely (Republic, Bk. V). Nonetheless, the politicization of philosophy sets the programme for political philosophy as philosophy applied to politics and integrated within in. A commitment analogous to political commitment is made by the philosopher.
Leo Strauss has argued that the nature of political philosophy has changed. As representatives of modernity, he argues, we understand political philosophy in an entirely different way. Classical conceptions of practical philosophy, which took the cosmos to be a natural organisation, try to focus good governance on virtue, while moderns, who from Machiavelli and Hobbes onward understand society as something created or manipulated, concentrate on finding some sustainable sense of order.
The ancient understanding of virtue was a kind of self-training which cultivated morally excellent dispositions. It has connotations of aspirations towards greatness and excellence, as well as the maximisation of one’s potential. In Plato’s allegory of the cave, he considers what happens when a virtuous person experiences truth and then returns to the shared world of the unvirtuous. Strauss argues that this person becomes the political enemy of the cave community. Plato, for his part, expects such a person to be slaughtered (like Socrates) unless he is able to convey to them the truth he has experienced. To give this kind of political guidance, one must see discourse as a virtue, remaining focused both on what is philosophically pertinent and practically relevant.
American politics needs more Republicans like this. Ron Paul is a dyed-in-the-wool conservative who is one of the most outspoken of the Republicans against the war. He offers a number of robust constitutionalist arguments against U.S. foreign policy.
The more impotent democrats could learn a lot from this guy, that’s for sure. One wonders, though, whether he’ll have enough support within his own party for his presidental bid.
Naomi Wolf has an interesting article in The Guardian today which compares the present climate in the United States with the ferment of fascism in the middle of the 20th Century in Europe. I would say it’s pretty uncomfortable reading. Here’s a summary of the list for all wannabe fascists to keep handy.
1.) Invoke a terrifying internal and external enemy (Al-Quaida)
2.) Create a gulag (Guantanamo)
3.) Develop a thug caste
4.) Set up an internal surveillance system (Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism Act of 2001)
5.) Harass citizens’ groups (Counterintelligence Field Activity)
6.) Engage in arbitrary detention and release
7.) Target key individuals
8.) Control the press (CNN, Fox)
9.) Dissent equals treason (Military Commissions Act of 2006)
10.) Suspend the rule of law (John Warner Defense Authorization Act of 2007)
Full article here. It’s all a bit too much like 1984 again for me. What I have trouble understanding is this: we all know that there is a hard core of ultra right republicans who want to see this kind of thing happen, but how do the rest of the people in the U.S. let them get this kind of legislation through?
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/scotland/6330631.stm
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2007/02/05/nphilo105.xml
“Teachers will use pictures and stories to stimulate debate, rather than imparting theories or the views of particular philosophers.”
Well, that’s pretty much fair enough seeing as most undergraduates don’t really engage with particular philosophies in any depth. However, what are they going to be talking about? Here are the ten ‘themes’:
Happiness – Goodness – Service – Beauty – Patience
Knowledge – Wisdom – Justice – Myself – Truth
So, we won’t be doing Nietzsche’s critique of Judaism, then? Maybe ressentiment is a bit much for primary school. Perhaps worringly, the programme aims at increasing ‘emotional intelligence’, which seems to amount to the same moral lesson as was being taught religiously: more emotion than intelligence. No real harm there, but iIf you really wanted the kids to think for themselves, why not get them to ponder something a bit more controversial than ‘goodness’, ‘patience’ and ’service’?
In the spirit of Europa: Balans en Richting [Europe: Balance and Direction]” (Tielt: Lanoo, 2003), Ethical Perspectives is preparing a special issue to appear in December 2007 on the question of Europe as a moral project in the eyes of youth. As such, we are inviting contributions that discuss the problematic within the loose, non-exhaustive framework of the following:
* The meaning, direction and project of Europe
* What Europe has to offer outside of economics
* Is there in fact a European moral project?
* The death of the proposed European constitution and the rise of nationalism
* The role of Christianity and other religious traditions within Europe
While the framework is quite broad, contributions are requested to keep in mind the mission of Ethical Perspectives, which is to promote an international dialogue between fundamental and applied ethics.
If you are interested in contributing to this issue or have any questions or remarks, please drop me a line in advance. We would like to receive all the completed papers by June 30, 2007. Papers should be original and written in English. Please e-mail papers to John Hymers; both DOC (MS Word) and ODT (OpenOffice) format are acceptable. Please see our Information for Authors, which is also available on the back inside page of Ethical Perspectives, for other technical and formatting issues.
Does democracy contain inherent connotations of equality and diversity? I say it does not while Steven Gormley thinks that it isn’t so simple as that. Steve thinks it remains hard to make sense of democracy without these two concepts, and appeals to Plato’s Republic to establish a case. I think that there are good reasons to consider democracy and liberalism quite distinct as concepts.
Steve’s argument:
I accept your point regarding democracy being procedural that therefore liberty and equality are not the necessary outcome of the democratic process. Of course, there have been are all sorts of democracies – or regimes that at least present themselves as democracies – monarchic, plutocratic and tyrannical democracies of antiquity, for example, and democracies may be liberal, military or authoritarian, social, theocratic, etc. Indeed, the last century saw the democratic rise of a number of totalitarian regimes that had no commitment to liberty or equality (with Nazism being an obvious example).
However I think this is only half of the story.
You suggested that we could democratically elect a dictatorship every 4 years (which brings to mind Rousseau’s remark [I think] that the English people experience democracy once every four years after which the people is enslaved) and this would be a democratic process. I take the point that democracy is about the way in which a government is elected but is not also about the way in which arrangements are set up during the time of that regime’s rule? After we elect a dictatorship, are then next four years of that regime therefore four years of a functioning democracy? I would want to say no, as they may have rose to power by democratic means but they are not democratic. My justification for this would involve pointing to their denial of liberty and/or equality.
These concepts seem to be essential to an understanding of democracy. I mentioned Locke’s idea of separation of church and state, the public/private as a way of ensuring negative liberty – freedom from state intervention so people can choose to pursue their own particular conception of the good life regardless of its intrinsic value; and in Rosseau’s concept of the general Will – which “tends to equality” and is therefore that what should direct the state towards the object it is instituted for the common good – we get the idea the of equality. Now of course these may just be “modern day” interpretations of democracy and actually may not be essentially tied to the concept of democracy. But even if we go back to the Plato who in speaking of democracy notes: “Would you agree, first, that the people will be free? There is liberty and freedom of speech in plenty and every individual is free to do as he likes?” The answer: “That’s what they say” (557c). This answer is quite interesting – it’s as if he is reporting the accepted understanding of democracy – it’s what they say, its how they understand it. So even in this small exchange the idea of liberty at least seems to be an essential part of how they understood democracy. Plato goes on to talk about “everyone arranging his life as he pleases” and therefore there is in democracy “the greatest variety of individual character” Indeed he even goes on to say that democracy is a form of society “with plenty of variety, which treats all me as equal, whether they are equal or not” (558c). I won’t labour the point but there does seem to be a strong identification here of democracy and liberty (if not equality too). On the latter point we see this also in Aristotle’s description of how democracy is understood and he makes a similar identification, but more explicitly:
“Now a fundamental principle of the democratic form of constitution is freedom – that is what is usually asserted, implying that only under this constitution do men participate in freedom, for they assert this as the aim of every democracy” (Politics 6.1.1317a-b).
In the same passage he goes on to note:
“But one factor of freedom is to govern and be governed in turn; for the popular principle of justice is to have equality according to number not worth… This then is one mark of freedom which all democrats set down as a principle of the constitution. And one is for a man to live as he likes… and from this has come the claim not be governed, preferably not by anyone, or failing that, to govern and be governed in turns; and this is the way in which the second principle contributes to freedom founded upon equality” (1317b)
So it would seem that liberty and equality are principles of democracy that have been there from its birth and are not simply modern day understanding. Of course there way those principles have been interpreted has varies considerably – Plato and Aristotle understood equality based on worth not number – hence the exclusion of the those not of equal dignity. But according to Plato and Aristotle themselves this is not what was “commonly asserted” (its not “what they say” Plato and its not what “democrats set down as a principle).
My response:
Given that democracy can seem to be used to provide a mandate for other types of political systems, the question I would ask is ‘what is it about these kinds of of political systems that cause them to be referred to as democratic?’ The answer, it seems, it that in all of these cases the mandate has to be endorsed at some level by popular vote. Let us take the familiar idea of a leader who has absolute power for a four year term once they have been voted in. You suggest that during the intermittent period between voting sessions, the populace do not live under a democracy. I don’t think this is the case as any power wielded by the government in this justified by the fact that they are the elected epresentatives. The ‘true’ power as it were is still in the demos.
One might object at this point by noting that during their tenure we expect our representatives to fulfill the mandate. However, this isn’t what we vote for them on the basis of. By delegating our power to them we also delegate decision making. Members of government may also be party to particular or expert information that we are not (e.g. economic and intelligence reports) which decisions may be made on the basis of. If this information is particularly sensitive there may be reasons for it not to find its way into the public domain. This isn’t in itself undemocratic either: in fact, there may be good reasons to defer political decision-making to experts rather than popular vote. Popular views are often poorly thought-out or reactionary (which isn’t to say that politicians present decent alternatives!). We need not include transparency or publicity among the requirements of this kind of democratic system and therefore have introduced a level of inequality between the demos and the government which in itself is not undemocratic. What this system does require is a reasonable set of candidates from which to choose and, in my view, proportional representation.
Let’s compare this idea of ‘totalitarian representative democracy’ with a fully participatory democracy and a discursive democracy. A fully participatory democracy- by which I mean one where everyone votes n every issue that affects them – seems to be the most egalitarian of all, since everyone’s vote truly is equal. From the perspective of widening the ‘democratic defecit’ as it were, this one is the winner and some would no doubt say closest to our own normative conception of democracy. While this remains an equal and fair way of making decisions, however, it raises a whole new set of problems at the governmental level. It simply isn’t practical to run a system of any size by consulting the demos on every decision that has to be made. Imagine the kind of chaos that would ensue from trying to run even a small modern country according to this principle. So, we either end up delegating political power to elected representatives (becasue they are able decision makers) or by voting on the policies (which inevitably leads to the generation of political parties). We might also once more raise Plato’s misgivings about the ability of the average person to make political decisions.
One way of remedying this problem might be to hold referrenda on important issues. While progress in communications technology can facilitate this, deciding which issues we hold referrenda on seems to be something which is itself delegated to representatives. It might erroneously be thought that this approach is ‘more democratic’ since it involves greater participation from the electorate. In fact, they are equally democratic but this form emphasises direct over representative participation.
Another alternative is presented by the model of deliberative or discursive democracy (like Habermas’s). Under this view, legitimate political decisions are those given a mandate by consensus arising from public debate. Debate is supposed to encourage rationality and impartiality while developing those who participate in debates (whether as demos or representative) into more effective deliberators and decision-makers. The advantage of this model is that it place a value on political engagement itself, and is based around the idea of an achievable consensus. This kind of democracy only works in conjunction with either direct or representative democracy, but hopes to enrich it.
This raises the question of whether democratic mandate is a matter of majority or consensus. Even under conditions of direct democracy, is it liberal or egalitarian to expect the minority to abide by the view of the majority? I would think not, though the situation seems fairer under discursive democracy. This is a classical objection to democracy, but does highlight a problem with the relationship between democracy and equality. Depending on the size of different groups within a democracy and the relative power held by different groups (e.g. media, religious, ethnic) some people are less equal than others and/or have a quieter voice.
It seems to me that you want to say that a democracy which is accompanied by liberalism, equality, and freedom is more democratic or allows democracy to work more ‘effectively’ but there seem to be good reasons to think that any kind of endless debate is a hinderance to effective governance. Where, then, can we set the limits of debate? Can this be done without compromising the committment to equality? Furthermore, how do we aggregate the different (potentially irreconcilable) positions in the debate into some sort of Rousseauian volunté générale while at the same time being ‘liberal’?
While I don’t deny that we tend to associate democracy with freedom and, I suppose, a sense of political justice, I think the association between a nominally democratic state (which observes democratic processes) and values like freedom, liberty and justice (which are normative) is potentially pernicious. To recognise democracy for what it is involves extricating from its association with the liberal form of democracy which articulates these values more explicitly. If we don’t, we risk accepting a normative model of liberal democracy without fully understanding its conceptual structure; and without understanding how it can be changed. This includes separating the idea of liberalism from democracy and realising that any link between egalitarianism and democracy is tenuous and short-lived at best.
After all, the inclusive democratic ideals of Athens did not allow Socrates the freedom to break the law.
Now in its eleventh year, the Discourse Editorial Staff is currently
seeking submissions for the 2007 issue. The theme for this issue is
contemporary issues in social and political philosophy.
While well-written work dealing with the aforementioned topic is preferred,
the Editorial Staff of Discourse remains open to the possibility of
accepting work outside of the year’s suggested theme. The Discourse Staff
encourages not only essay submissions, but also poetry, short stories,
plays, photography, etc.
DISCOURSE accepts original submissions from any person below A.B.D.
level. All submissions will be considered under double blind peer
review. Your name may not appear anywhere in the text. Please include a
cover page and a short biography page.
On the cover page, with the title, include the following:
-Name
-Phone number
-Mailing Address
-E-mail address
-University affiliation (if any)
-Brief (50 word maximum) biographical citation in the third person.
Submissions should not exceed 7,000 words or 20 double-spaced pages. All
submissions must be cited in Chicago Style with footnotes. All submissions
must be e-mailed to: discourse@usfca.edu as a Word document or in Rich Text
Format. You will be notified of the receipt of your submission within three
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Submissions must be received no later than January 30, 2007.
Orwell, Politics and the English Language (1946)
While I am perhaps more sympathetic than Orwell to the view that “any struggle against the abuse of language is a sentimental archaism, like prefering candles to electric light”, I certainly endorse what he has to say about the benefits of clarity and economy of expression.
In recent years (in the UK, at least) there has been a resurgence of the ‘zero tolerance’ approach to grammar. This dictates that we should follow the rules of grammar as they have been laid down, and not deviate from them. While I support the notion that people should use punctuation and grammar more correctly and more concisely, this approach neglects two important considerations.
1.) The rules of grammar (as we have ingerited them) are historical accident. They simply happen to be the ‘rules’ that were in place when English was standardised during the 16th and 17th centuries.
2.) English does not have – and never has had – a body to govern its correct usage. French has the Académie Française to mind their language, while Spaniards have the Real Academia Española. The idea that there is some sort of ‘core’ to English that we need to preserve is mistaken. This can be demonstrated etymologically. It is difficult to accept that standard English has some sort of rational basis worth preserving either: it is less uniform than most other European languages (largely because it is a composite). The notion of standard English – typically described as the kind of English that an educated person would use – is a complete nonsense and reinforces the pernicious normative ideal of class. It has to be recognised that language is organic and evolving to fit our needs. This is a continual process, common to all languages and linguistic communities. Recognising this does not exclude the possibility that some forms of expression are inherently better than others. However, any clarity we can bring to this idea is likely to take a negative character.
Orwell provides a good list of faults of expression: he has political language in mind, primarily.
Staleness of Imagery – Evoking metaphors or similies which do not have the intended effect because they have either lost their evocative potential from over-use and become part of everyday language, failed to adequately express their intended object, or become mixed and confused.
Verbal False Limbs – Using a phrase where a single verb would do, e.g. “greatly to be desired” rather than “desirable”.
Pretentious Diction – Unecessary neologism and trumpeting of one’s own vocabulary. The worst excesses of German philosophy might be prone to this.
Meaningless Words – Orwell’s particular target is aesthetic criticism. The worst excesses of French philosophy might fall under this category.
For the “scrupulous” writer, Orwell suggests the following guidelines: unfortunately, the last of them is somewhat subjective.
i.) Never use a metaphor, simile, or other figure of speech if you can avoid it.
ii.) Never use a long word where a short one will do.
iii.) If it is possible to cut a word out, always cut it out.
iv.) Never use the passive where you can use the active.
v.) Never use a foreign phrase, a scientific word, or a jargon word if you can think of an everyday English equivalent.
vi.) Break any of these rules rather than say something outright barbarous.
Orwell makes a rather interesting remark towards the end of the piece. In summarising his thoughts, he says that “the great enemy of clear language is insincerity”. This suggests an interesting parallel with Habermas’s validity claim to “truthfulness”. Whether Orwell’s suggested reforms of language are deigned to make communication more rational seems a moot point; in fact he seems most intent on making political discourse more rational.
Reactions to Leader of the House Jack Straw’s recent comments about the communicative barrier raised by the niqāb (“a visible statement of separation and of difference”) have prompted thoughts about the extent to which this case raises the communication vs. recognition problem.
On the one hand, we could argue, covering the face works against any idea of unfettered or ideal communication. This is certainly Straw’s view. He does introduce the slightly odd idea that “face-to-face” conversations with constituents, enable him to “see what the other person means, and not just hear what they say” as if meaning were somehow distinct (perhaps he means to refer to emotional content or sincerity). Straw argued that being able to see someone’s face is important for communication. While it is certainly true that a significant part of communication is non-verbal, one would also have to say that as such it is non-cognitive and hence not ‘meaningful’ in any straightforward sense.
This might highlight a deficiency in Habermas’s theory of meaning. While there is room in his theory for non-verbal communication, it focuses heavily on linguistic communication. The kind of non-verbal communication involved in properly seeing a person’s face typically supports claims to sincerity or authentic expression. These claims have ‘meaning’ in only a limited sense: a claim to sincerity.
This does not appear to be the kind of meaning Mr. Straw has in mind. One might, however, recast his approach in a more explicitly Habermasian direction – without being unfair – and suggest that before we can discuss and decide the way people of different (or no) faiths can live together we have to appeal to the shared value of clear and meaningful communication.
Jack Straw clarifies his position
This is markedly different to the tradition of liberalism that has traditionally provided the ‘ground zero’ of debates about tolerance in the UK. Much is often made of the so-called ‘clash of civilisations’ and the purported inability of Western notions of tolerance to accommodate traditional Islam (Derrida’s rethinking of ‘hospitality‘ is most relevant).
One of the central problems arises from the way in which liberalism ascribes a certain set of individualistic rights and responsibilities in an undiscriminatory and universalistic way. Since in the West we understand these as a conceptually and normatively prior to any other beliefs (such as religion) people tend to be rather suprised when a Muslim woman expresses her preference (or fulfills her religious duty) by wearing the niqāb. The Habermasian regulative ideal of unfettered communication offers an alternative (and universalistic) normative foundation that is understood to transcend cultural boundaries.
Dr Nazreen Nawaz responds to Straw’s comments
This brings me to the second aspect of the problem. We might well say that even if we take Habermas’s notion of ‘reaching mutual understanding’ as the correct model for productive debate – the one thing all but the most radically subjective on any side of the argument can agree on – the question remains as to how whether the idea of undistorted communication is the most useful way of approaching the problem.
Where Habermas advocates the communicative paradigm of rational consensus, Honneth widens the criteria for common understanding so that the ‘conditions of recognition’ (i.e. the intersubjective presuppositions of human identity development) become the requirement for reaching common understanding free from domination. In this way, one might establish common ground through the experience of social conflict. Instead of taking Habermas’s formalism as a starting point, we begin from the everyday moral experience and identification with a cause (in this case, either liberalism or Islamism). For Honneth, the question of social justice cannot be divorced from the question of identity. Honneth wants to argue that recognition contains a grammar or logic that makes it possible to critically differentiate social and political systems and explain social development in terms of collective moral consciousness, rather than rationality.
It is worth noting that, as a normative paradigm, recognition refers directly to political claims raised in the public sphere, and as such is based on a broadly Habermasian notion of transferring the emancipatory potential of critique from the paradigm of labour to the paradigm of linguistically-mediated interaction. However, for Honneth, the problem with this idea as Habermas has developed it is that “it is not entirely clear whether the transcending potential is to reside in the normative presuppositions of human language or in social interaction”. Honneth’s response is to treat recognition as the fundamental, overarching moral category – a form of ‘normative monism’ – that provides an alternative basis for critique which is based in the experience of moral injustice in place of systematically distorted communication.
The potential benefit of this approach is that it might get us past the impasse of faith/reason or liberalism/theologism that seems to be the sticking point. It should be clear that I refer only to that degree of recognition that we need to establish a point of agreement which can serve as the beginning of a meaningful debate without being fractious in the way that calls for ‘integration’ or ‘tolerance’ might be. After all, recognition is necessarily an intersubjective process.
The particularly British concept of multiculturalism informing the present debate stands in stark contrast to that of France, where the outcome after a similar series of debates was to ban the veil outright in public places.
One interesting aspect in this respect is the preponderance of younger, British-born Muslim women who are choosing to wear the veil in far greater numbers than in previous generations. It is tempting to speculate on two things here. Firstly, we might note that the radicalisation of these issues might attract rebellious young women. Secondly – and more interestingly – one common feature of the adolescent mindset is the desire not to be seen, to be invisible to others, at least in one’s own specificity. It is tempting to understand the adoption of the veil by young women as an extention of this logic of anomymity. Who doesn’t want to cease to have a public identity, to ‘become invisible’, from time to time?
Straw’s comments have been widely understood to be devisive, but they have brought one thing to light: the generally agreed need for an improved framework for debating these issues.
Straw defends veil comments (Guardian Unlimited)
Muslim writer Zaiba Malik describes her experience of the hiqab (Guardian Unlimited)
Sultana Freeman sues Florida State after having her driving licence revoked for refusing to take off her veil for the licence photograph (BBC News)
Protect-Hijab calls for public debate with Straw (Muslim Weekly)
A BBC debate on the issues with Rod Liddle and Salma Yacoob (Respect)
