Padd Solutions

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Open letter to a neo-liberal or technocratic apologist

Posted by moses @ 17:38 • , , , , , • 0 comments


This letter is a synthesis of my arguments in an extended on-line debate with a member of an older generation. The debate pertains to the political situation in Singapore, but I believe my arguments can also be applied to the context of some of today's so-called liberal democracies, particularly the United Kingdom.

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Dear Sir,

In the past year, I have witnessed growing discontent in the two societies that I am part of. There is increasing resentment against the ruling elite that stems from economic grievances. Yet, as apt as this may seem from a Marxist point of view, I think much of the resentment is not as productive as one might hope.

In saying this, I appear to be critical of criticisms from the ground, but this neither suggests that I am on your side nor that I have an intellectually elitist viewpoint. I just don't think the criticisms are radical enough.

I'm saying that simpler socio-economic complaints belie the real issue of our need to take back our agency. I'm also saying that we shouldn't get sidetracked into pseudo-xenophobic discussions about immigration. Many European countries are getting mired in this situation and it basically only allows the disaffected to expend their energy on something that wouldn't help them in the longer run. They can restrict immigration, but it wouldn't solve the fundamental problems in their society.

Essentially, the root of the problem is the fact that the people have been patronised all along by the government. I believe what many of us also believe—that our democracy is dysfunctional. You know why the government doesn't listen to us? Because it doesn't really have to. How are we even going to debate public policy properly when the government holds all the cards? And our own culture, mentality and method of opposition are contributing to this. We ourselves are guilty for letting this continue.

One reason might be that we are engaging in politics of wish-fulfilment. We look to the government to fulfil our wants and needs, and we give it pretty much a free hand as long as it can do this. That may sound par the course in politics, but that's also why we're so easily duped. In the next election, the ruling elite would come up with some bones to toss our way, and the majority of us would lap it all up and once again perpetuate the system. Who really holds the power—whether it's the bureaucrats, the politicians or the people—never really mattered to us. And no matter what evasive answers one might give about the necessity of a true participatory democracy, nothing changes the fact that it is what enables the people to govern themselves. If we don't want it, then we can't really cry when we are ignored by the ruling power. We have to blame ourselves for that.

To be fair, it's not entirely our fault. Our psychology is the product of the system. But that's all in the past. The government might have justified a top-down system because of the need to develop. However, now that we have developed to a large extent, what is pretty much the same system is still being kept around in the name of continued economic growth. When will this stop? That is the present question, and only we can come up with the answer.

On the economic aspect of social organisation, I agree that material interests are legitimate interests, but not when we run away with them and forget everything else. Now that times are hard, people are unhappy—that's a perfectly valid sentiment. But what about when times were good? Did we care about how things were done?

A true participatory democracy cannot guarantee that we meet our desired material goals, especially when we set the bar higher and higher. However, what it does guarantee is that we have a real say and that we as a people run our country. The overly risk-averse state of mind is what makes us captives of the system—we want rights and we want to be heard, but we won't take the necessary material risks to make our country our own.

The basic reactionary position is to deny that there is a real fundamental problem, or at least to justify the current system by pointing out that other systems have problems too. Yes, there is an empirical basis for making the latter claim. But does that mean that every society is simply stuck with its own set of problems? I'm saying that there is a possible way forward through changing the system. And systemic change is worth looking at because the problem is structural—it has to do with mechanisms of feedback and control.

There is no panacea for all problems, but we can choose to do something about them instead of simply suffering perpetual injury.

I doubt, however, that you will understand this line of reasoning as long as you choose to regard it as yet another normative point of view in a relativist political paradigm. It doesn't simply boil down to a subjective choice of political and moral values. Advocates of participatory democracy have valid and positive points to make about issues of power and participation as long as democracy serves as our political ideal.

On a final note, you might point to an uncertain future as the defining problem, but so does the ruling elite. And their proposed solution is to band together under their banner to work for the common good.

Yet there is an alternative, one that neither you nor they are willing to entertain. But perhaps under a system that clearly favours one particular brand of hegemonic discourse it's not surprising that we are not really being heard. Just like many of those who have simpler grievances.

A pro-choice critique of choice

Posted by moses @ 18:47 • , , , , , • 0 comments


There are some things that are perhaps confusing or seemingly very contentious in what I wrote about last. Therefore there is a need to qualify it or, more precisely, to delve into the unspoken claims behind some of the statements made. Most importantly, I think, I must talk about my perspective on choice, freedom of choice and the critique of choice.

I've written some time ago about the ability to question the choice of others. I argued that the sovereignty of the subject is illusory, since choices are often externally induced rather generated by an authentic individual will. I should add that whether there is such a thing as authentic individual will does not pose a problem to this view. In fact, if there is no such thing as authentic individual will, if choices are therefore entirely a matter of persuasion, all the more it should be possible to legitimately debate subjective choice.

There are two new things that I want to bring up here: Firstly, I want argue for the existence of general or common conceptions of what constitutes bad choices. Secondly, I want to question the non-invasiveness of subjective personal choice.

Some might disagree fiercely that what I consider bad are truly bad in any objective sense. Some might go on to say that there is nothing objective about taste. I'd like to question this last statement. Indeed, my position stems from my scepticism regarding absolute relativism even in the notoriously personal and subjective realm of tastes.

As such, I'm not so much positive of the existence of one correct theory of the good as I am sceptical of the notion that people cannot commonly share certain conceptions about what is bad. It may be impossibly difficult to find a general enough conception of the good with which we can objectively judge all choices, but it's a lot easier to find general ideas about what is bad with which we can legitimately argue that certain choices are bad.

This is a lot more obvious for choices with real material, physical and psychological consequences, but if we can establish this in the realm of tastes, it's probably safe to say that it's a solid claim. Are there instances where people commonly regard certain cultural products as lacking in quality? I think so. When I talk to people about reality TV shows, for example, I find that many would admit that certain shows are "trashy" or "bad", even if they admit to having a 'guilty pleasure' in watching them.

Perhaps this is too anecdotal, and perhaps there is a correlation between such sentiment and education level or class. However, there is still something to be said about this phenomenon.

Firstly, this implies that pleasure and people's conception of the good do sometimes diverge. Thus, it seems to contradict the central thesis of traditional hedonistic Utilitarianism, which is ironically a very popular mode of thinking. As such, good and bad is not merely a question of what consequences a choice brings in terms of utility or pleasure.

Secondly, though one might convincingly argue that common perceptions on what cultural products are bad could simply be explained by the fact that people have been told by the 'experts' about what could be considered good and what could not, all is not lost. At first glance, this may seem to corroborate the notion that nothing is objective, that what seems objective is simply the imposition of a subjective viewpoint. Yet, no matter what we think of some of those 'experts', there tends to be a process of discourse that generates and moderates the opinions offered within serious critical analyses of cultural products. Discourse, whether it is realised through an actual debate or through the influence of intellectual traditions that play off one another, lends criticism credibility as something greater than simply a collection of individualist subjective viewpoints.

Therefore, it might be that what is considered bad is something whose merits cannot be seriously analysed and discussed. Hence, it is mostly examined, if at all, merely as a symptom of a cultural trend, tending on its own to fall outside the process of discourse. What is good is a question that is debated, perhaps endlessly, in the discourse, but what is bad simply falls outside of it. The reverse is not true; what falls outside of the discourse is not necessarily bad. However, at least we now have somewhere to begin in deciding what is bad—by asking why some things don't come up in serious discussion on their own merits.

This is a bold argument, and it might come off as some kind of intellectual snobbery. But I would add that it's not necessarily a sin to enjoy something simply for any kind of pleasure that it gives. The problem is when the vast majority of what is offered can only be enjoyed in terms of the overt pleasure that it brings. Thus we come to the issue of the invasiveness of subjective choice.

If you want to do business, half the job would be done for you if you appeal to what people want. Does this mean, however, that consumer choice is paramount in production and marketing decisions? In fact, the very nature of marketing is antithetical to consumer choice. But the power of capital is not so much in forcing you to consume what you do not want, but in making you consume what you want all the time and, in the process, making you want to consume associated products as well.

Thus, the companies appeal to the lowest common denominator in order to increase sales. And they do not let your attention wander, for the sales of other cultural products and physical goods, upon which billions of units of exchange value ride, depend upon your near-undivided attention.

This is how capital imposes a near-monolithic culture on our tastes, by giving us what we want, but on their own terms and hindering our ability to emancipate ourselves from the pre-determined choices that we as consumers and members of modern society are expected to make.

But the burden of creating these circumstances does not lie on inhuman capital alone. In continuing to make the same kind of choices, we are also guilty of imposing on society a narrow range of tastes as the determinant of the cultural products that are available. Hence, our subjective choices are invasive in that, collectively, they deny other people and society at large choices that are emancipated from the dominant cultural milieu, while at the same time bulldozing through any question of quality in favour of focusing on the levels of pleasure obtained from cultural products.

Hence, like slaves who have never apprehended the notion of freedom or like the benighted denizens of Plato’s cave, we perpetually choose to live within the same kind of paradigm, not knowing what else lies outside of it, including things that convincingly possess qualitative value. The market may give us choices, but as long as we are unable to escape the paradigm of pleasure, we know that we are still fundamentally unfree.


Marx contra Nozick

Posted by moses @ 17:23 • , , , , , , , • 0 comments



If it is true that we are all free, why do we consistently choose what is bad? Why does participation not lead to quality in society?

This is a question that Christianity asks in order to call to our attention true freedom in God, free of enslavement and of human weakness, which causes us to be unable to choose anything but the slavery of sin. Unfortunately, Christianity cannot be divine because it is tainted by human beings. Thus we are left to ask questions on our own, as the Church Fathers did.

Does choosing to be slaves imply freedom? Some might say yes. This absurdity and contradiction comes about through two main threads of human thought: Libertarianism and relativism gone mad. The first posits that human agency is so absolute that human beings can, if they so choose, lose it. The second would have us believe that anything can be good to someone—perhaps some people choose to be slaves because they want to be slaves, perceiving slavery as a good? Or perhaps there is no good at all, only preferences, in which case we might as well be nihilists.

Marxist thought, on the other hand, offers a human solution to this puzzle. In our apparent freedom, we perpetually choose to be unfree because of false consciousness. We are not attuned to our real interests, and therefore we choose what is bad by first allowing our freedom to be subverted in letting powerful groups tell us what we want.

"We are free to choose," they say, as they readily queue up for the next Apple product like the hungry for bread.

It is probably true that to some extent preferences are negotiated. The industries give us what we want while trying to mould our tastes to further their own interests. But, if this picture allows neither side to wield near-absolute power, why does the reality feel so stunted? Why does a relatively free market not produce the promised creativity? Why does the UK publishing industry, for example, only publish what appeals to lowest common denominators, what will attract by virtue of its harlot-like easiness?

Why can we not, for the most part, refuse the bad?

Either we are extremely stupid as free beings, or we are not truly free. I choose to believe the latter.

The fact is we are not free as long as we are enslaved by uncompromisingly non-objective conceptions of the good, or by false notions about freedom. And this is something we as free beings are responsible for—we are guilty of enslaving ourselves through our own ways of thinking.

Some scholars are quite dismissive of the Frankfurt School, thinking it an artefact of a bygone age, while they indulge in blissful proclamations about an age of freedom and choice brought about by technologies they hardly know themselves. They study every petty whim of society and profess to find all that is good with the universe in Coronation Street.

But, far from dissipating, power merely grows ever more subtle in its application. The Frankfurt School is not wrong. It has just become less easy to see what they criticised in their time.