2005/10/15

Science Abuse

Boyce Rensberger considers the question of science abuse in his review of The Republican War on Science by Chris Mooney. The online review is at

Scientific American: Science Abuse
Subverting scientific knowledge for short-term gain

The reviewer sees the US Republican Party's attack on unfavourable scientific research as a means of increasing profits for the large corporations in the short term. This is done through encouraging the general public's ignorance of the scientific process by playing up on the lack of consensus by exaggerating disputes within the scientific community.

I think that the problem is more of wilful ignorance by the US public. Jim Kunstler expresses this as a Land of Make Believe where he concludes that:

Another unpleasant truth about the situation is that the US public wants to pretend that everything is okay as much as its leaders do. The public is not so much being misled as demanding that its leaders in government, business, and the news media continue a game of make-believe -- that we can still run a cheap oil economy without cheap oil.

What we are witnessing the death throes of Capitalism in the USA. (Capitalism looks likely to survive in EU and PRC). Science was the rationale for Capitalism. It was not a coincidence that the rise of Science coincided with the rise of Capitalism. Both of these ideologies are materialistic and humanist in their outlook. Both believe that humans could understand and control their environment. This revolutionary idea blew away millenia of religious ignorance to give us the society and associated freedoms that we have today (for the time being at least).

The fight against the rise of religious intolerance under the guise of so-called Christian Fundamentalism is the fight for the very existence of Capitalism. Capitalism requires the intellectual ferment of Science to advance. When Capitalism stagnates or stalls, it dies. It is a dynamic system for dynamic people not for those who want an unchanging world.

Should then Communists cheer on the destruction of Capitalism by this means? NO! We should remember that Socialism evolves from Capitalism under the conscious direction of the Proletariat. We need to defend Capitalism against those who would tear the living heart of Capitalism out and replace it with the cold, dead stone of religious bigotry.

We must throughly understand the nature of Capitalism and see that the next logical step is Socialism where the enthusiasm and drive of the capitalists infuses the Proletartiat and the solidarity of the Proletariat infuses the capitalists so that these two classes merge into one. Workers become owners, and owners become workers.


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Rachel has role to play

Rachel Corrie's parents (Cindy and Craig) write how Rachel has role to play after seeing a play based on the e-mails Rachel received and sent. The play is called My Name is Rachel Corrie and is playing at the Royal Court Theatre in London until 29 October 2005. Her parents conclude the article with:

The month before she was killed, Rachel wrote the following in an email to us: "I look forward to seeing more and more people willing to resist the direction the world is moving in, a direction where our personal experiences are irrelevant, that we are defective, that our communities are not important, that we are powerless, that our future is determined, and that the highest level of humanity is expressed through what we choose to buy at the mall." Action has already flowed from her words.


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2005/10/09

Who'd be a suicide bomber?

Kim Bullimore concludes her review of Paradise Now by asking Who’d be a suicide bomber?:

With the "war on terror" in full swing, Paradise Now brings into context a historical and material understanding of why suicide bombings happen. The mainstream corporate media, which rarely mentions the word "occupation" in relation to Palestine, Iraq or Afghanistan, all too often presents suicide bombings in a vacuum and as the irrational act of a deranged Islamic fundamentalist. However, as University of Chicago academic Robert Pape notes, what 95% of suicide bombers have in common is not religion but their opposition to imperialism and occupation.

According to Pape’s study Dying to Win: The Strategic Logic of Suicide Terrorism, of the 462 suicide bombings carried out since 1980, half were by secular bombers and there is little evidence that they "hate Western values or hate being immersed in Western society". Instead, what they have in common, says Pape, is that "they are deeply angered by military policies, especially combat troops on territory they prize and that they believe they have no other means to change those policies".

It is this anger and resignation that Abu-Assad brings to the screen through Kahled and Said, but he also brings hope for justice and a way to change the dynamics of resistance and occupation through the character of Suha. Paradise Now is a film that should not be missed by anyone interested in understanding the realities of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict.

Italics in original; bold emphasis mine

In other words, suicide bombings are seen by their supporters as patriotic acts of resistence. Communists see them as futile acts because they misunderstand the nature of power in a capitalist society. These acts of terror drive the proletariat into the hands of the capitalists seeking safety. The correct course is to appeal to the solidarity of the international proletariat against their common oppressors.


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LENIN, TROTSKY, AND FREEDOM FROM THE TYRANNY OF KNOWLEDGE AND REASON

Fabian Pascal writes in LENIN, TROTSKY, AND FREEDOM FROM THE TYRANNY OF KNOWLEDGE AND REASON

... I actually lived in a communist state, and studied politics, I have a better understanding of social systems in general, and of the difference between the Soviet and US systems in particular, than US/western armchair ideologues who have neither my experience, nor my education; who pummel their chests in defense of freedom, without a clue as to what that means; who understand neither capitalism, nor communism; and who, my guess is, never bothered to read Lenin and Trotsky, but nevertheless are quick to throw their books at those with whom they cannot sustain any meaningful intellectual argument.

What struck me after living in the US for a while, was the similarity, at a very fundamental level, between the US and Soviet systems: while the means by which they attain their objectives differ, the objectives themselves are, for all practical purposes, the same: control and exploitation of the public. Both systems indoctrinate with propaganda from childhood. But because the Soviet system had coercion at its disposal, the propaganda did not need to be convincing: if you stepped out of line, the government came hard after you. That’s why propaganda could be blatant and absurd, and the public was fully aware of it and did not believe it, only pretended to. That is also one reason why the Soviet system collapsed.

The US system cannot use coercion (well, not at the Soviet level, at any rate, but the way things are going, give it time), so it must rely solely on propaganda, which must be believed. This means it’s got to be very subtle and psychologically simple and attractive, rather than blatant and absurd, to be at once unobtrusive and effective. It’s no coincidence that the mother of marketing and advertising originates here. If you step out of line, the government does not need to come after you: business, the media, and even the public itself will. They cannot jail, torture, or disappear you (the system is testing the waters, though), but they will try to marginalize you, and make it very difficult to function professionally and socially. And at least insofar as members of the public are concerned, they are enforcers without realizing it. Quite elegant.

Otherwise put, under Soviet "communism", everybody must believe without questioning in the party, which almost nobody did; under US "capitalism", everybody must believe without questioning in "the market", which almost everybody does (I use quotes, because neither system is the true thing, as they pretend).

Emphasis Mine

Dr. Pascal is confusing form with function.

Let's clear up a few definitions. The former USSR was a Socialist state not a Communist one. The ruling class in the USSR was the workers (Proletariat). The oppressed classes were the capitalists (mainly small business people and the rich farmers - Kulaks). The lack of democracy in the USSR consolidated the power and privileges of the bureaucratic caste within the Proletariat. This caste monopolised the positions of power within the Communist Party and within the bureaucracy that ran the Soviet economy. To consolidate their power, the bureaucrats needed an external enemy (the Capitalist world) and a series of threats to erode the rights under the Soviet constitution. This mainly happened under Stalin. When Socialism collapsed, the bureaucratic elite became the new Capitalist class with relative ease.

In the case of the USA, there are two (2) major classes: Capitalists and Proletariat. The vast majority of production facilities and businesses are owned by private individuals either directly or through share-holding. From a Marxist point of view, the USA is a Capitalist country. The government regulation exists to stabilise the Capitalist economy by moderating the effects of the boom and bust cycle.

The form of both of these political and economic systems is to maintain the ruling class. In the Soviet Socialist system, it was the bureaucratic caste who usurped the role of the Proletariat. Whereas in the US Capitalist system, the financiers (esp. the international bankers) have usurped the role of the Capitalists. Even though the ruling class in both systems has been usurped, the structure of the economic system remain unchanged and different. The majority of ownership of the factories and businesses was in the hands of the government in the Soviet system, and the majority of the same is in the hands of individuals or family trusts in the US system.

What Dr. Pascal calls propaganda, Marxists would call spiritual production. This is the output of the economic system that does not add to the economic, but, rather, help to justify its existence. For example, all major newspapers and television shows in the Capitalist West do not question the validity of the Capitalist system - they may criticise aspects of the operation of the system in order to get the system working better for some group of people. Any reference to alternate systems are dismissed as dated or out of touch with reality. Failings of the system are presented as the system working to correct itself. Indeed, the market is always correcting itself. This was no different to the spiritual production under teh Soviet system.

As Engels once wrote, the State is ... a body of armed men. All economic systems other than primitive Communism and scientific Communism have a State to enforce the rule of the ruling class whenever the spiritual production proves to be inadequate. Feudalism had its knights and bishops to keep the rule of the lords safe. Barbarism has its warriors and shamans to keep the great unwashed in line. Slavery had its militia and priests to keep the slaves working away for the benefit of decent people. Socialism has its KGB and agitprops to keep the capitalists and large landowners in their place. Capitalism has its police and intellectuals to keep the workers down.

Here Dr. Pascal is mistaken. The US system does use coercion all the time and they are quite blatant about it. The recent wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are glaring examples of what the USA does to states that do not toe the line with regards to US policy. On the domestic front, the massacres at Waco and Ruby Ridge along with the Rodney King beating among others serves to remind the US poor of their place in the US Capitalist system. It is only when the State starts getting too close for comfort, that people like Dr. Pascal start to get worried.

But this does not detract from the main point that Dr. Pascal makes: that people are wilfully ignorant of the true state of affairs. They get very angry when anyone tries to reveal the underlying reality of the system that they live in. They would prefer to live in the fantasy world created by the spiritual production.


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