I tend to try not to write about electoral politics, but an unusually heated e-mail exchange with my best friend earlier prompted me to write an essay on why I am extremely unhappy with the selection of progressive candidates available, including (unfortunately) Barack Obama, an otherwise likeable and progressive candidate who seems pro-union and pro-labor but has connections to the ethanol-Archer-Daniel-Midlands collusion that I find distasteful. Also, Obama's rhetoric (while stirring) echoes Bill Clinton's right-Democrat statements on 'helping workers' that eventually led to an unhealthy trade policy that embraced NAFTA and the exportation of American jobs.

I sent an e-mail to my friends and relatives earlier expressing with some astonishment that I had recently read a post on alternet regarding Mike Huckabee, who has left the vast majority of Republican contenders behind by advancing a robustly pro-labor, anti-"free" trade policy platform that seeks to end overcompensation for executives, stop the exportation of American jobs, and support a healthy welfare state. What follows is a fairly unpolished version of my final reply:

I appreciate your feelings re: civil unions/marriage/etc., although I think interracial marriage is a poor comparison for reasons that would take a very long e-mail to explain. I don't think Mike Huckabee is necessarily completely opposed to the power elite (he does, after all, favor the Bush tax cuts), but the fact that he's one of perhaps five politicians in the entirety of the United States who hasn't embraced "free" trade and the expansion of global capital's interests (even Obama uses weasel words to conceal the fact that, like Bill Clinton, he's essentially a free trade fundamentalist) says volumes to me.

What is going to follow is a lengthy rant that has nothing to do with Huckabee, except that he has consistently expanded social spending and championed pro-labor legislation as a governer. I know that civil rights are an important issue, and I fully support civil unions/gay marriage/whatever, as I'm sure you know. I just consider it a wedge issue that has less to do with one side or the other truly caring about the outcome of policy than it has to do with getting the far left and far right bases stirred up.

I think that it would be very, very hard for both the Republicans and the Democrats to get away with the things they are doing right now if everybody wasn't so busy thumping their chests about abortion (which will never be made fully illegal or fully easy to obtain, despite what both sides keep bleating), gay marriage (which, as you have pointed out, will eventually happen one way or the other, and it's not as though homosexuals are going to be rounded up into concentration camps--I would like to see more hate crime legislations though), etc. The secret behind 'culture war' issues is that neither side can really do anything about them. You can't legislate homosexuality, abortion, or "immorality" in general out of society, and you can only get so draconian in your 'culture war' legislation before you run up against the reality of American politics, as the religious right has recently realized so glumly (have you read the statistics on evangelical disillusionment with politics? if someone were to drop the culture war thing entirely and try to court their votes on issues of caring for the poor or protecting the environment, I honestly think we could shift twenty years of right wing manipulation in maybe a decade.)

These "issues" exist only to distract us while stuff like the following happens: in 2006 Congress passed a MYP (Multi-Year Procurement) of F-22 fighter jets that are not only useless (a rating from the Center for Defense Information said that the Raptor was - and I quote - "a horrible failure on almost every criteria [we rated it on]." You can't fight an insurgency with jet fighters, and last time I checked, there really isn't anyone we need to fight with jet fighters. When home made bombs triggered by cell phones are causing significant problems for the most technologically advanced and powerful military in history, I doubt that the solution is to pour more money into technology.

And that MYP? It ran 65 billion dollars. In a just amazing aw-shucks gee golly coincidence, post-Katrina aid to New Orleans was 'paid for' by cutting about 50 billion dollars from social programs ranging from single mother support to Medicaid and student loans. This type of horrible "lets pay unnecessary toys with cuts so deep that the state of Texas literally has to fire 2/3 of its child support collection staff" (true story) thinking, along with the health care crisis, the loss of American jobs, and an increasing disconnect between executive compensation and living wages for workers, strikes me as a way bigger deal than some 'culture war' cooked up by GOP operatives to keep the country continually at war with itself over smoke and shadows.

Just to cap this off, I want to re-emphasize that I do care deeply about civil rights. I also care deeply about civil liberties, which the right and left have done a pretty good job of completely defiling. I just think that the best way to get progressive, socially democratic politicians elected is to reframe the debate from "GAYS ARE YUCKY! NO, CHRISTIANS ARE YUCKY!" to "hey, wait a minute...we're all being deeply, thoroughly, unfairly screwed by the richest and most powerful men in this country, who just so happen to have been pouring money into and exerting control over Washington D.C. for the last seventy years. By God, that makes me ANGRY!"

That, to me, is something that might even make a man like Huckabee learn to shut his mouth about abortion and gay rights, because on the campaign trail so far, those are issues he has left alone. Is he an ideal candidate? No. But even a progressive like Obama hasn't shown the balls that this guy has so far.

I suppose this makes me the opposite of a Ron Paul Liberal -- while they are willing to throw social economics out the window in favor of civil liberties and sane foreign policy, I may have to hold my nose on social issues and vote for the first candidate I've seen that supports American labor.

At 2 AM on Friday, December 2nd 2005, the state of Missouri executed Kenneth Lee Boyd, marking the one thousandth execution to take place in the United States since the death penalty was reinstated in 1976. Originally, the distinction would have belonged to Robin Lovitt, but a short time before his execution was to be carried out, the governor of Virginia commuted his sentence to life in prison. Both the execution of Mr. Boyd and the decision on the part of Governor Mark Warner to spare Mr. Lovitt’s life point to what a contentious and ethically thorny issue the death penalty is. Our society obviously condemns the taking of life–we have laws against murder, and mourn the accidental death of any person. Despite this, we sometimes feel that killing is justified (as is the case in warfare or execution).

In the case of the death penalty, a strong justification for executing murderers can be made in two ways. A proponent of capital punishment may argue that the death penalty has a deterrent effect, and will thus serve 'utility' by preventing future crimes. This argument is, of course, based on the anticipation of future results. Another argument that a supporter of the death penalty may make is that retributive justice is served by executing someone who takes a life. The strongest form of this argument is sometimes based on the concept of lex talionis ('the law of retribution'), which is often characterized in certain quarters as 'an eye for an eye,' but more often based on the concept of proportionally retributive justice. In this theory of justice, the punishment meted out is equivalent, rather than equal, to a crime. While these arguments are well-presented, in the end neither one fully justifies the execution of criminals.

The weaker of the two arguments in favor of capital punishment is the theory that capital punishment is a deterrent to crime. This argument is utilitarian in origin–it does not attempt to justify the death penalty on the grounds that executing a murderer is just because it inflicts a just amount of harm upon the murderer (or attempts to 'restore the balance' by taking the life of a life-taker). The deterrence argument seeks to maximize the number of lives saved by executing those who take innocent life.

The first central justification for this argument is that we must set the severity of punishment for a crime at level 'x,' where 'x+' would fail to deter potential criminals. According to death penalty proponents, life imprisonment does not deter criminals to the degree that execution does. This reasoning is justified by the 'preference argument;' that is, since most criminals would prefer life imprisonment to execution, execution acts as a better deterrent than a life sentence. (1) The problem with this justification is that studies attempting to establish what (if any) deterrent effect the death penalty may employ have proved inconclusiv. In some cases, the studies have shown that crime increases when capital punishment is introduced. (2) In any case, the evidence has not established conclusively that deterrence is a reality, and thus deterrence can not be treated as a fact.

Those who argue for capital punishment and ground their support in its deterrent effect respond to this fact with the 'best bet argument.'

As Van den Haag writes,

I cannot prove conclusively that the death penalty deters more than life imprisonment, or that the added deterrence is needed. [Opponents of the death penalty] cannot prove conclusively that the added deterrence is not needed, or produced. I value the lives of innocents more than the lives of murderers. Indeed, I value the lives of murderers negatively. Wherefor I prefer over- to under-protection. (3)

What Van den Haag means is that in the absence of proof one way or the other on the deterrent effects of the death penalty, it produces greater utility to bet the lives of murderers (who will lose if there is no deterrent effect) against the lives of the innocent (who will lose if there is an increased deterrent effect).

Responses exist to both the 'preference argument' and the 'best bet argument,' however, that render the justification of the death penalty on the grounds of its deterrent effect unsound. One response, best articulated by David Conway, is that the death penalty is already a severe enough punishment that anyone rational enough to be deterred by the death penalty would already be deterred by life imprisonment. Conway compares the difference between the two as the difference between 'one thousand years in hell' and 'an eternity in hell' (4).

This argument holds that would-be murderers who are not discouraged by the idea of a life sentence are not going to be discouraged by any form of punishment. After all, if the death penalty provides an increased level of deterrence, why not institute torture? Perhaps the 'x+' of torture would provide additional utility when compared to the 'x' of the death penalty. Van den Haag responds to this last point by saying that:

I do not oppose torture as undeserved or nondeterrent (although I do doubt that the threat of the rack, or of anything adds deterrence to the threat of execution), but simply as repulsive. Death is not, nor is the death penalty...If [Jeffery] Reiman should convince me that the threat of the rack adds a great deal of deterrence to the threat of execution he might persuade me to overcome my revulsion and to favor the rack as well. (5)

First of all, Reiman is a thoroughly repulsive excuse for a human being. It can’t be established (as Van den Haag admits himself by using the 'best bet' argument) that execution has any deterrent effect. If Van den Haag is willing to bet the life of a convicted criminal on the possible utility gained in innocent lives, why is he unwilling to make the same bet with regards to 'the rack?' After all, Van den Haag is willing to bet the actual and real lives of prisoners against the possible good done to innocent life–why does he require convincing with regards to any form of punishment that might decrease the probability of future murders? Secondly, why is torture repulsive, but death and the death penalty not repulsive? Van den Haag himself finds lethal injection unsettling because of its 'veterinary air' (5)–couldn’t it be argued that a clean death itself is too 'veterinary,' and a painful death a better way to employ the death penalty?

The stronger argument for supporting the death penalty is one based not on the utilitarian idea of deterrence, but on the moral theory of retribution. Retribution is a well-articuled idea that exists in most societies. Once a wrong has been done, some form of punishment must be meted out in a sort of ethical inevitability. Two major forms of justification for this idea exist.

One (best understood as 'Hegelian') is based upon the idea that crime upsets the equality of a just society, where no person can claim unjust power over another. Punishing a criminal restores the balance by taking an equal amount of sovereignty from the criminal that the criminal has taken from the victim of his crime. (6) The other form of justification (thought of as 'Kantian') holds that punishing a criminal is the State’s way of treating that criminal as a rational person.

Since a rational person should know the legal consequences of a crime, punishing a criminal accordingly is treating that person as though s/he has asked for the punishment through his/her actions. (6).

Obviously, we cannot fully return the harm done to others by a criminal upon that criminal. If, for example, a person has killed four people, we do not have the ability (nor would it be palatable if we did) to kill that murderer four times. Likewise, there are some punishments that are beyond the scope we are willing to consider in terms of retribution–the rape of a rapist, for example, would not be acceptable in our society when carried out by the state. As a result, the moral justification for capital punishment is provided by the idea of 'proportional retribution'–we punish crimes in a way that is equivalent to, but not identical to, the crime committed. In this way, someone convicted of assault is not brutally beaten by the police, but has their liberty curtailed for a period of time that is deemed equivalent in severity to a severe beating.*

Supporters of the death penalty who use this argument to justify capital punishment see execution as an acceptable means of equivalent punishment. In this reasoning, the worst crimes should be met with what the state determines to be the worst acceptable punishment. To establish the worst acceptable punishment is, one must determine what level of punishment is unjustly strong, and what punishment is unjustly weak, and determine the punishment that lies between the two unacceptable options.

Proponents of the death penalty who justify their support on the basis of proportional retribution argue that unacceptably severe forms of punishment for a crime might include various forms of torture, but that life imprisonment is too weak a punishment to mete out to murderers. By the definitions provided by the Kantian and Hegelian definitions of retribution, the crime of murder should be punished by death. In fact, it is very hard to argue that a punishment other than execution meets the moral standards of just punishment for murder.

As Jeffrey Reiman writes, 'However horrible executions are, there are surely some acts to which they are commensurate in cost.' (7)

An explanation of why the proportional retribution justification of the death penalty does not justify capital punishment must concede that, for some crimes, the state ostensibly has a right to execute the offender because the grievous nature of the offense calls for the worst punishment the state can legitimately deal out–in this case, death.

Any punishment less than death for killing an innocent person is, necessarily, a less equivalent form of retribution. Even execution, it could be argued, is insufficient punishment. When a criminal kills an innocent person, they do not simply deal out an amount of suffering equal to A, where A is the end of the victim’s life–any moral consideration of murder must also take into account the fact that the victim is innocent (unlike the victim of capital punishment), and that the act of murder harms society as well as the victim. (8)

Capital punishment is the best way to inflict equivalent harm upon a murderer without crossing the moral boundary of inflicting identical harm. Any argument against this justification of capital punishment must argue that society has no right to execute murderers.

Society may have the right to execute criminals, but does it have the obligation? Are there other considerations we should take into effect? Perhaps the fact that the state has the option to execute murderers does not mean that capital punishment is just. After all, death sentences are commuted to life imprisonment all the time. If the only moral consideration we must take into account when signing a death warrant is the right to do so, we would hardly expect any governors to show mercy–especially when the recipient of that mercy is guilty of such an egregious crime. These moral considerations that move past a state’s right to execute criminals comprise the 'civilization' response to capital punishment.

Assuming we have the right to execute murderers, must we do so? Not necessarily. After all, the principle of lex talionis–in fact, the very idea of justice and retribution–might give us the 'right' to inflict pain upon a murderer in exact proportion to the pain suffered by their victim(s). Despite this, we choose a lesser punishment, and find it acceptably equivalent to the crime committed. If we place torture, beating, starvation, and other forms of ill treatment 'off the table' when considering just punishment, why shouldn’t we do so with the death penalty?

The 'civilization' argument holds that in refusing to exercise the full power of the state upon murderers, we create a positive 'civilizing' effect. One reason for this is that by refusing to condone execution for a murderer, the state acts to reinforce the already-existing taboo against taking human life. As Reiman states, '...publicly refusing to do horrible things to our fellows both signals the level of our civilization and, by our example, continues the work of civilizing.' (9) Reiman argues that the death penalty is “uncivilized” because, like slavery, torture, or rape, it involves the total subjugation of an individual’s body to the state–a subjugation that goes far beyond mere imprisonment.

Van Den Haag responds to this argument by writing that 'whereas slavery is not voluntary, the murderer runs the risk of execution voluntarily...I find nothing uncivilized in imposing the risk of subjugation and death on those who decide to murder.' (10) This again shows the arbitrary nature of Van Den Haag’s refusal to allow torture, beatings, or rape. If there is nothing uncivilized about the subjugation of a criminal’s body to the power of the state, why not exercise the full (and truly awful) power that such total subjugation places at our disposal? As has already been stated, we place torture and other unacceptable forms of punishment 'off the table' when considering a punishment that is equivalent to murder. Why stop at capital punishment, if there is nothing uncivilized about the total subjugation of one who commits such a heinous crime? Reiman’s argument on this point is much stronger. The state may have the right to execute, torture, beat, or rape a prisoner, but it is a more moral and civilized thing to refuse to do so: it shows the morality of the state and our advancement beyond the days of the rack and the thumbscrews, and reinforces society’s taboos regarding the unacceptable nature of killing.

A solution to the question of capital punishment which satisfies everyone is not likely to come about in the near future. Executions are a thorny enough issue that satisfactory solutions to the question of whether or not to execute murderers differ from state to state, and (like the stories of Kenneth Boyd and Robin Lovitt indicate) public official to public official. America’s thousandth execution since the moratorium on the death penalty was lifted sparked protests, vigils, debate and self-examination for many. It did not, however, provide a conclusive answer one way or the other. Opponents of execution saw a symbol of injustice, proponents saw justice being served.

At this particular juncture, the only thing to do is to continue to encourage debate on capital punishment, and attempt as individuals and a nation to come to terms with our moral prohibition on murder, our need to do justice, and the question of whether the state should be willing to take lives.

We are at a juncture where fewer questions have a high priority than this.

1 -- Van den Haag, 1995, p.329/30

2 -- Lecture notes, 9/29/5

3 -- Van den Haag, 1995, p.329

4 -- Conway, 1995, p.263

5 -- Van den Haag, 1995, p.330

6 -- Reiman, 1995, 278/79

7 -- Reiman, 1995, p.277

8 -- Van Den Haag, 1995, p.326

9 -- Reiman, 1995, p.295

10 -- Van Den Haag, 1995, p.328


*--I am in the process of reading Foucault's Discipline and Punish, and I have little doubt that his idea of the emergence of 'disciplines' and the not-so-coincidental emergence of schoolhouses, workhouses, mills, and the military will have many things to say to my ideas in the future.

“A robust public realm, in which words illuminate rather than conceal (as in the case of ideology, propaganda, or advertising) is literally another (fuller) reality for human beings. It is a reality where speech and action, as well as the memory of the words and deeds of previous generations generate unlimited meaning and interpretation. It is a reality where great words and deeds light up the world, making it a thing of beauty.”--Dana Villa, from ‘Socratic Citzenship’

Hannah Arendt has written extensively of how humans’ capacity to act and speak with other humans constitutes the primary difference between humanity and ‘beasts and barbarians.’ Perhaps she is right. Man may be, as Aristotle put it, a ‘social animal,’ but the most base and primitive distinction that can be made between humans and other animals is twofold: first, our capacity for reason, and second, our tendency to craft tools to shape the world around us. Liberal philosophy relies heavily on this first distinction in its definition of the agent, and in its development of a theory of rights. The lone individual, stripped of context, is acknowledged as having faculties capable of reason, and is thus a legal or theoretical person, with rights contingent on this status (where these rights come from and how one can derive them without invoking God or Nature in an awkward fashion is a question for another day). Of course, a truly atomized and context-deprived individual would hardly be considered a rational agent. Imagine a child raised in a cellar, deprived of the light of the world and the gifts of social existence. Such a child would know no language, no reason, no context for the development of emotions or ideas. Such a feral creature would hardly be human by any conception of the word. Thus, we see, ‘rational agency’ hinges upon something more complex than merely being human.

For the purposes of considering Arendt’s approach to public life and the value of a ‘bright light’ of the public realm, let us put this first approach aside for the moment. The second distinction between humans and other animals is our capacity for building tools with which we shape our environment. Intelligence is, arguably, a corollary of this evolutionary trait. Perhaps ‘reason’ was a side effect of our proclivity for investing objects with an essence other than their mere material existence: perhaps the path to reason began when ‘rock’ became ‘hammer.’

Arendt acknowledges this uniquely human capacity for tool-building, but includes in her philosophy a gradation of human-ness. At one level we are ‘homo faber,’ man-as-maker. I conceptualize man-as-maker as an inferior form of human-ness for reasons that may differ from Arendt. Man-as-maker is always tied to the instrumental nature of material reality: a rock is always a hammer, and every act is purposive. In a way, this is similar to the feral child I mentioned earlier. Man-as-maker is trapped in the cellar of material production and consumption, hidden from the light. What is this light that man-as-maker fails to glimpse? Public life.

To Arendt, public life is a means of stripping ideology from one’s conception of the world. The purposive nature of public life (its status as ‘tool’) is secondary: by participating in a shared public life, one adds one’s perspective to the common experience of reality. Only by appreciating reality from the perspectives of many, only by escaping one’s limited, individual point of view, can reality be glimpsed. Arendt writes that
Being seen and being heard by others derive their significance from the fact that everybody sees and hears from a different position. This is the meaning of public life, compared to which even the richest and most satisfying family life can offer only the prolongation or multiplication of one’s own position with its attending aspects and perspectives…Only where things can be seen by many in a variety of aspects without changing their identity, so that those gathered around them know they see sameness in utter diversity, can worldly reality truly and reliably appear. (1)
This is the promise of public life, of shared discourse, of participating in a deliberative and meaningful forum outside of the ‘darkened’ realities of one’s work and home: the light of a public space reveals to us the reality of the world.

But isn’t it a danger of such public life that groupthink must inevitably take over, that the most violent opinions will gather enough strength to eliminate dissent and quash diversity? Evans and Boyte answer this question in ‘Free Spaces’:
Authoritarian movements are also born within civil society—a fact which critics of the concept of free space often noted. But such movements are characterized by their transformation of civil society in a fashion which obliterates its dimensions of public, in any sense suggesting openness to debate and to difference. Privatized communal spaces in movements like the Klan extinguished dissent, exiled people who represented ‘difference,’ and maintained strict boundaries between inside and outside. (2)
In much the same way that democracy’s greatest weakness is its fragility, the greatest weakness of public life is that at any given moment, all must strive to keep it public, to avoid shutting out dissent and creating an echo chamber in which ideology will flourish, and the light of reality fade.

Public life is possessed of other virtues not shared by the life of man-as-maker. Man-as-maker is, in the material context of recent Western history, primarily a creature of the market. The goal of public life is not instrumental or purposive first. As John Stuart Mill (no foe of the market or of the idea of man as rational agent he) explains:
The private money-getting occupation of almost every one, is more or less a mechanical routine; it brings but few of his faculties into action, while its exclusive pursuit tends to fasten his attention and interest exclusively upon himself, and upon his family as an appendage of himself;--making him indifferent to the public, to the more generous objects and the nobler interests, and, in his inordinate regard for his personal comforts, selfish and cowardly…The spirit of a commercial people will be, we are persuaded, essentially mean and slavish wherever public spirit is not cultivated by an extensive participation of the people in the business of government in detail…(3)

There are, in the end, many inter-related distinctions that separate humans from other animals. Certainly one of these distinctions is man’s rational agency. That agency is contingent, however, on the moral and philosophical context of community life. No matter how small or ideologically homogenous the community is, it provides the building blocks of human-ness: language, operative metaphors, and the interaction with other humans that gives an individual emotional and rational bricks with which to build a self. Another aspect of human-ness is our proclivity for building and using tools. Again, our rationality may be partially contingent on this proclivity, and has certainly enhanced our tool-making capacity in a reciprocal fashion.

Ultimately neither our status as ‘homo faber’ nor our rational agency alone can allow us to perceive and experience reality in a meaningful way, however. To do that requires engagement with a public life beyond the hearth or the shop. Whether one’s end is rational, purposive, or having to do with the pursuit of and engagement with reality, a robust public life is a prerequisite for success.




1—Hannah Arendt, ‘The Human Condition’

2—Sara M. Evans and Harry C. Boyte, ‘Free Spaces’

3—J.S. Mill, ‘Tocqueville on Democracy In America (Volume II)'

Mohandas Gandhi is a name that exists in our collective memory in distinguished company. Henry Thoreau, Martin Luther King Jr.–-many exceptional people have influenced, or been influenced by, the thoughts of Mahatma Gandhi. Gandhi is an enigmatic figure. He once stated that “I am not a saint who strayed into politics. I am a politician who is trying to become a saint.” (1) Gandhi’s doctrine of Satyagraha provided an unlikely end to colonial rule. After all, Gandhi teaches that a Satyagrahi must be willing to endure self-suffering, rather than engage in violence against an oppressor, an idea with little currency in our modern political climate. In discussing Gandhi's supposed greatness, however, a question arises--was Great Britain really such a terrible oppressor in India? A Millsian view of liberal politics would argue that it was Great Britain's duty to bring the light of modern, liberal political thought to India, a nation previously plauged by religious hysteria and a lack of human rights. Some thinkers attribute India’s modern successes as a democracy to the infrastructure (both political and physical) that Great Britain built during colonial rule. Was Gandhi’s opposition to British rule justified? If it was, and the injustice visited upon Indians by the British grave enough to warrant political unrest, was an unwillingness to condone violence as a means of liberation justified?

The answer to some of these questions can be found in the writings and actions of Mohandas Gandhi. Gandhi believed that there were injustices inherent in British rule over India, and that they did, indeed, warrant action that put the destiny of Indians into their own hands. However, his writings argue that violence in political action is never justified. Gandhi believed that such violence is never justified because violence presupposes total truth. Gandhi viewed the peaceful philosophy of Satyagraha–“Truth-force”--as the suitable means for finding truth, because it never broadly asserts itself upon others. Violence is inferior to nonviolence both in moral effectiveness and in its treatment of the oppressor as a moral and rational being capable of persuasion.

The first point that must be addressed in any examination of Gandhi’s Satyagraha movement is whether, in fact, Indians were justified in rejecting British rule. After all, wasn't it Great Britain that was responsible for the emergence of an Indian economy in terms of salt, textiles, and other necessities? Weren't many of the members of the Indian National Congress wary of the radical economic policies that Gandhi proposed (2)? What was so bad about Britian's dominion over India? After all, Britain opened up civil positions to Indians relatively early in the 20th century for a colonial power and maintained a limited presence of soldiers and police on the continent. Since the beginning of British occupation, Great Britain preferred to rule by proxy through local officials whenever possible. While the system of government the British had established in India was far from just (or truly representative of the wishes of some Indians), it could in no way be considered a police state or authoritarian regime. (2)

Indian natives may have had some form of self-government under British rule, but many problems existed that (Gandhi argued) were better solved by non-cooperation than by pseudo-representation within what was, essentially, a British occupational government. Despite the friendly nature of British colonialism, exploitation of sharecroppers in Champaran (near Nepal) by British landlords, and of textile workers in Ahmedabad proved that Britain was not the enlightened despot it pretended to be. (3) An additional problem was posed by the salt issue–in particular, the arrests carried out in Gujarat against salt tax resistors:

"The threatened has after all happened. I congratulate the government on having commenced arrests in right earnest of Salt tax resisters at least in Gujarat...Legal procedure may be a cumbersome business for the Government. But since they have begun well let them not end ill. Let it be a pure trial of strength between them and the people. [emphasis added] If they will resort to terrorism and if I am not mistaken, they will find the people, men as well as women, ready for any ordeal they may prepare for them." (4)

Let us follow Gandhi’s logic. All of the 'properly electd' Indian civil servants that were participants in a so-called proxy government and all the 'enlightened' British laws that existed thus far did not change the simple fact that an unjust tax (in the opinion of most Indians) was being levied against salt, and those who opposed the tax were being confronted by the full civil and military power of the British crown.

Gandhi sought to set the simple power of the Indian people against the physical and military might of the British rulers. In Gandhi’s opinion, the only form of government that can be considered just is one in which those who are governed have an authentic voice in their own government. However, as will be noted later, Gandhi’s conception of social change is not a matter of 'power over,' but rather 'power to'–in this case, the provision of power to Indians who were the subject of an unjust tax. Gandhi hoped to accomplish this by means of non-cooperation, the only form of action that he saw as justifiable under a bad government. Gandhi wrote that
It was a sign of religious atrophy to sustain an unjust Government that supported an injustice by resorting to untruth and camouflage. So long therefore as the Government did not purge itself of the canker of injustice and untruth, it was [Indians’] duty to withdraw all help from it, consistently with their ability to preserve order in the social structure. (4)

Although Gandhi organized the Indian people against British rule, he did not view the situation as one that should be dealt with violently. When he spoke of a 'contest of brute strength' between the people of Gujarat and the British government, he spoke in terms of 'self-suffering' pitted against brutality. (4) If the British occupation of India was, in fact, a situation that did not grant an authentic voice to Indian people, and if the laws of the British were equivalent to brutality in certain instances (like the arrest of those who peacefully opposed the salt tax), why did Gandhi refuse to endorse violence? Certainly such dire circumstances required a course of action that was more extreme than peaceful resistance. No, Gandhi argues; there are no appropriate means of ending colonial rule (or any other unust power relation) that are not peaceful.

Gandhi blends many religious doctrines into his doctrine of Satayagraha, and one important idea that he draws from Hindu philosophy is that of ahimsa. As Joan Bondurant writes, 'The full force of ahimsa, explicitly stated, means "action based on refusal to do harm."' (5) This 'harm' includes not only violent rebellion or the use of force, but the transmission of words or thoughts that meant ill toward any human (and, to a certain extent, nonhuman) living thing. The use of violence is flawed because violent action assumes total moral truth, whereas only nonviolence can ultimately lead to truth. Bondurant writes that 'if there is dogma in the Gandhian philosophy, it centers here: that the only test of truth is action based on the refusal to do harm.' (5)

Gandhi's philosophy refuses to separate means and ends. He believes that only by employing good, moral means can a good, moral end be achieved. This raises again Gandhi’s idea of 'power to' rather than 'power over.' Frantz Fanon is a thinker on colonialism and conquest who advocates violence against oppressors as the appropriate means of liberation. To Fanon, violence is a way to eliminate the political and psychological dichotomy that arises in colonialism. Once a native has killed an occupying solider, the act does not influence the society that will emerge from the overthrow; no matter what means are used, the ends can still be good (in fact, Fanon argues, the end can only be good if violent means are used). As Gandhi points out, however, this is not the case–the 'character of the means determines the character of the end.' (6) The difference between Gandhi’s conception of nonviolent resistance and Fanon’s advocation of violence is that Gandhi advocates 'power to' an oppressed group, while Fanon seeks 'power over' the oppressor, in the form of physical violence. Gandhi teaches that self-suffering (fasting, the refusal of luxury, or placing oneself at the mercy of one’s oppressor through passive resistance) is the only appropriate means of struggle, because no harm is done to one’s foe. This places the moral burden of the suffering inflicted by an oppressor entirely upon that person, rather than taking on a share of the immorality, as the use of violence does. In this way, the Satyagrahi 'seeks Truth' in a way that is not stained by violence, and is more morally persuasive than violent means.

Does Gandhi discount all violence, then? Are there no circumstances under which a Satyagrahi can seek redress (or even defense) by forceful means? Gandhi was careful to qualify his nonviolence with a differentiation between self-suffering and nonviolent resistance entered into by the strong, and 'cowardice':
I do believe that where there is only a choice between cowardice and violence I would advise violence. [emphasis added] Thus when my eldest son asked me what he should have done, had he been present when I was almost fatally assaulted in 1908...I told him that it was his duty to defend me even by using violence. (4)

Gandhi did not believe that nonviolence was the weapon of the weak. He believed that nonviolent resistance could only be appropriately carried out by one who has immense strength of will, and the ability to pit his courage against the force of the oppressor. As Gandhi wrote in The Doctrine of the Sword, 'Strength does not come from physical capacity. It comes from an indomitable will.' (4)

To Gandhi, then, violence was only justified when the path of nonviolence was not entered into with a strong will and by free choice–when, in other words, nonviolence would be cowardice because it was not a choice, and because the self-suffering entered into was not an intentional act meant to put the weight of violence on the oppressor.

Gandhi was justified in his opposition to British colonial rule, and the means he espoused–those of non-cooperation and Satyagraha–are morally superior to the violence advocated by thinkers like Frantz Fanon. Gandhi opposed British rule because to accept a government that is based on injustice is morally and spiritually unacceptable. By seeking justice in nonviolence, Gandhi advocates a moral method of finding truth, while violent resistance both assumes truth and seeks 'power over' the oppressor rather than 'power to' the oppressed. Self-suffering should be entered into with a strong will.

Indian independance was a striking moment in political history. Despite the overwhelming advantages that the British possessed over Indians (in terms of both weaponry and the willingness to use it), Gandhi’s philosophy of nonviolence had an enormous impact on India’s eventual independence. As Gandhi once said after achieving a small victory over a magistrate in Champaran, 'What I did was a very simple thing. I declared that the British could not order me around in my own country.' (1) Not only did Gandhi accomplish this 'very simple thing' many times over, he did it by using more moral means than his opponents. He sought, and achieved, justice--and he did so through suffering and love.

1 -- Calvin Kytle, 'Gandhi: Soldier of Nonviolence' 1969

2-- Judith Brown, 'Gandhi and Civil Disobedience' 1977

3-- Calvin Kytle, 'Gandhi: Soldier of Nonviolence' 1969

4-- Mahatma Gandhi 'Non-Violent Resistance' 2001 (1961)

5-- Joan V. Bondurant, 'Conquest of Violence: the Gandhian Philosophy of Conflict' 1965

6-- Arnes Naess, 'Gandhi and Group Conflict: An Exploration of Satyagraha' 1974

At the exact moment that one invokes the term ‘community,’ a can of worms is popped open. Those worms, live and wriggly, take the form of important questions: what is a community? Who is invited, and who isn’t? Does ‘community’ have a value all it’s own, or does the benefit that a community can provide to one’s life only equal the extent to which temporary brotherhood can advance one’s goals as an individual? Are all communities beneficial, or can ‘community’ come into conflict with the concepts of individual liberty and self-determination?

A fascinating facet of the ‘community’ debate can be found in the question of gay marriage. Andrew Sullivan and a few conservative thinkers have, surprisingly, come out in favor of the idea of gay marriage, because marriage, as a traditional institution that falls under the banner of the civic ‘little platoons’ that Edmund Burke glorified, can serve as a morally educative institution—gay marriage would, in other words, provide a means by which the allegedly promiscuous and immoral lifestyle of homosexuals might be reformed. Gay people would be welcomed into the ‘big tent’ of traditional society. (1)

There is weight behind this argument. From a purely liberal point of view, the argument is that we should not condemn any sexual behavior that involves informed consent. I agree with this point of view to an extent. We are all free to view with disgust a lifestyle that we find abhorrent, but our ability to use the power of the state to transform our disgust into law should be extremely limited at best, lest we find ourselves in a system of law that is based on irrational prejudices and the invocation of deities in the place of ethical argument.

The facet of the gay marriage that I find most interesting has nothing to do with legalizing or prohibiting gay marriage. Contractarians advocate a system that is purely legalistic—one where any adult or group of adults could enter into a legal contract with one another. This concept is interesting when cross-applied to the idea of community, especially the ‘banyan tree’ theory of gay community.

The ‘banyan tree’ theory holds that in the absence of legal marriage, and in the wake of the AIDS crisis, American gay men and lesbians created a new form of family, one that is less compartmentalized, more broadly spread, and a larger network than the so-called ‘nuclear family.’ (2) The operative metaphor is that a traditional family is a tree with one trunk, one set of roots, and one set of branches, while the banyan tree of gay community is constantly developing a dense network of roots and branches, and developing them to the extent that an entire forest becomes, in a sense, one tree.

This idea of the banyan tree is fascinating. The traditional idea of marriage is both strongly gendered (man as bread-winner, woman as house-keeper) and strangely atomistic, as Betty Friedan pointed out in ‘The Feminine Mystique’—as recently as the 1950s, women were, to a large extent, completely isolated, existing solely as songbirds within a gilded cage. (3) Whether this description is entirely accurate is questionable, as some research shows that a broad spectrum of largely-female voluntary associations existed prior to the 1970s. (4)

Regardless, this idea of a ‘banyan tree’—an association of people who show strong devotion to each other, but don’t follow the ideal of the nuclear family—is one that I find very intriguing. ‘Alternative communities’ like communes and co-ops have existed for much of America’s history, and while some have been abysmal failures, the potential for success present in such a model deserves more thought.

From a conservative point of view, the family is nothing less than the cornerstone of political life—the oikos that keeps the polis healthy, the hearth that educates the public square. For the moment, let us grant this point. Let us examine living arrangements in which a team of people bound by love, rather than two people, ‘morally educate’ children or each other. Is such a community really less capable of passing on the ideals of selflessness, ethical behavior, and commitment to the common good than a household in which Dad works, Mom cooks, and the neighbors come over for Bingo every Thursday? I think rather the opposite—that a diverse and interesting collection of voices dedicated to the common good of a household provide a more than adequate moral education.

Perhaps ‘gay marriage’ is an assimilationist idea—perhaps the institutions of marriage and traditional child-rearing are in and of themselves a product of outdated notions of what it is to be a community. Some of the anecdotes that the AIDS epidemic provides are truly heart-warming: children reared by a ‘family’ of five or more friends, people deserted by their parents and sibling providing financial support for one another, and ex-lovers of ex-lovers providing deathbed care.

In the tired political meme that ‘it takes a village to raise a child,’ perhaps there is less a totalitarian desire to censor videogames than an acknowledgement that, in this day and age, we find community where we can.

1--Andrew Sullivan, "How Conservative Is Gay Marriage?"

2--Charles Bennison Jr., "Rethinking Marriage--Again"

3--Betty Friedan, "The Feminine Mystique"

4--Robert Putnam, "Bowling Alone"

A common theme among many of the liberal political thinkers of the 1960s is that humans are capable of great things, but are prevented from realizing a perfect world by forces that thwart the noble intentions of the lone human spirit. In the writings of Abbie Hoffman, Tom Hayden, and Herbert Marcuse, the forces that have led to humanity’s failure to realize perfection are capitalism and the social structures of authority. All of these thinkers establish a view of so-called 'human nature,' and then explain how American social structures (and, in particular, the economic practice of capitalism) have warped or attempted to destroy humanity’s essential goodness.

Tom Hayden achieved fame by writing 'The Politics of the Movement,' and was involved in the construction of the Port Huron Statement (a sort of overaching manifesto of 1960s liberal thought). Hayden’s optimistic view of human nature is summarized beautifully in the Port Huron Statement; 'We regard men as infinitely precious and possessed of unfulfilled capacities for reason, freedom, and love. In affirming these principles we are aware of countering perhaps the dominant conceptions of man in the twentieth century: that he is a thing to be manipulated, and that he is inherently incapable of directing his own affairs.' (1) The language Hayden uses reflects his trust in and hope for the individual human spirit ('infinitely precious,' for example). Hayden reiterates this faith many times—he writes that people are inherently competent, and deserving of empowerment: '[the Movement] aims at a transformation of society led by the most excluded and ‘unqualified’ people.' (2) Hayden’s use of quotes around the word unqualified indicate that he places faith in the fundamental qualification of marginalized people to form communities and govern their own lives--a commendable point of view. What has led to the corruption of this basic human goodness and capability, according to Hayden, is the 'system’s inhumanity.' To Hayden, much of this 'inhumanity' is the result of a widening gap between rich and poor, excessive militarism in the U.S.’s foreign policy, and the paradoxical relationship between the statement 'all men are created equal' and the reality of class and race inequalities. (1) The Port Huron Statement says that 'The conventional moral terms of the age, the politician moralities–‘free world,’ ‘people's democracies’--reflect realities poorly, if at all, and seem to function more as ruling myths than as descriptive principles.' (1) Hayden proposes that the essential nature of mankind–full of intelligence, love, and a desire for a better world–has been corrupted by politics that are manipulated by wealth and privilege.

Herbert Marcuse believes that humans are, if not entirely good at their core, at least capable of attaining a state of universal harmony. He rejects the notion that a utopia will never be achieved because of some flaw in human nature; 'Utopian possibilities are inherent in the technical and technological forces of advanced capitalism and socialism: the rational utilization of these forces on a global scale would terminate poverty and scarcity within a very foreseeable future.' (3) Marcuse believes that technological innovation and the efficiency of capitalism have created a world in which a metaphorical Eden can be gained, and that the force which is preventing our entrance is not a flaw inherent in human nature, but what Marcuse calls an 'exploitative apparatus' that creates desires that are not truly needs, but become seen as 'natural.' Marcuse describes consumer society as a manifestation of exploitative society, in which people are enslaved with their unspoken consent by material needs that they become convinced are essential to their happiness. He describes what will be necessary to create a genuinely free society in which no exploitation occurs and his vision of utopia can be achieved: '...the new direction, the new institutions and relationships of production, must express the ascent of needs and satisfactions very different from and even antagonistic to those prevalent in the exploitative societies.' (3) Marcuse is not entirely critical of capitalism, because he believes it is technological innovation and the easy production of goods that have made this change possible, as modern science has made the production of vast quantities of power, food, shelter and other basic needs relatively easy. According to Marcuse, however, we live in a society in which obscenity has been redefined–and the definition of obscenity (with its accompanying sensations of shame and taboo) is important to shaping a society. Marcuse writes that our modern society has defined that which is 'natural' (like nudity) as obscene, and that which is 'unnatural' (like war or the celebration of war heros) as acceptable. This warping of morality, along with 'this so-called consumer economy and the politics of corporate capitalism' (3) have stolen from mankind the ability to achieve what technology can offer us–a utopian world. Marcuse's writings in this regard are somewhat underdeveloped in their examination of technology's relationship to capitalism and a consumer society, and whether the two can, in fact, be separated. In addition, I find Guy DeBord's theory of 'the spectacle' a more convincing critique of consumer society than Marcuse's.

Abbie Hoffman is, to say the least, somewhat more daring than Marcuse and Hayden in both his prose and approach (in real life and writing) to authority and its role in what he would consider the degradation of human potential. Hoffman, when he writes about human nature, is exuberant and almost childish. Describing a 'Be-In,' in which people were free to exist outside of roles he views as having been largely constructed by capitalism and authority, Hoffman writes: 'Everybody [was] high on something: balloons, acid, bananas, kids, sky, flowers, dancing, kissing, I had a ball...' One observation in particular stands out in its odd relationship with reality: 'People [were] giving things away free: fruit, jelly beans, clothes...' Hoffman is describing the Be-In as a sort of proof in action of what he believes (a praxis); that humans acting upon their 'true nature,' when stripped of the chains placed upon that nature by authority, commerce, and modern life, are essentially good, generous, loving, and beautiful. What keeps this paradise, this world of flowers and free jelly beans, from being realized throughout the world? Hoffman believes that the concrete definitions of property, propriety and authority that dictate our day-to-day lives are to blame. He writes that 'property is the enemy–burn it, destroy it, give it away. Don’t let them make a machine out of you, get out of the system, do your thing. Don’t organize students, teachers, Negroes, organize your head.' (3) Hoffman makes the argument that it is the cultural and social aspects of our current system of capitalist obsession with property and authoritarian obsession with hierarchy and obedience that prevents us from attaining true freedom. To Hoffman, the only way to fight stagnation and despair is to make every act a revolution, and to make every thought an attempt to escape from a narrow prison created by modern society.

Obviously, not everything that Abbie Hoffman, Tom Hayden and Herbert Marcuse espouse is practical, desirable, or (if one is to be less than charitable) coherent. As Marcuse pointed out, (some form of) capitalism has, to a large extent, freed certain portions of humanity from the burden of worrying about subsistence, and allowed them the opportunity to pursue more meaningful and creative activities than growing food and worrying about a drought or flood wiping out next season’s food supply. However, this very statement–freed certain portions–is what rings truest in the writings of the liberal thinkers of the 1960's. Tom Hayden is convincing when he says that 'freedom and justice for all' is the worst kind of hypocrisy (or, as Marcuse would call it, obscenity) when certain groups in America, whether they are defined by race or social standing, are denied freedom and justice. Faith in the essential goodness of humans is important as a motivating tool. When one assumes that the poor and mistreated segments of society in America are that way because they are incapable of doing better, or because they are a means to an end, one loses any possible motivation to make things better.

I still have my doubts as to the validity of much of the writing of Marcuse, Hoffman, and Hayden. I automatically view with skepticism anyone who appeals to 'human nature' in framing their argument, whether that argument is in favor of anarchism, capitalism, or christianity. I also find that all three authors portray a liberal obsession with individualistic expression that borders on narcissistic self-obsession. The liberal political thought of the 1960s was a tempest in a teapot--a brief affirmation of the glory of the uninhibited self that was quickly sold out, bought into, and largely subsumed by the same evil boogeymen it purported to fight. Even in selecting its boogeymen, 1960s liberal thought was haphazard at best. In Hoffman's statement that organizing 'students, teachers, negroes' is a less valid strategy than 'organizing [my] head' I see a mortal flaw--when injustice surrounds us, it seems to me that obsessive navel-gazing is perhaps somewhat further down the list of worthy goals than community organization and civic service. In fact, the central thesis of Sara Evans' and Henry Boytes' magnificent 'Free Spaces' is that one of the primary successes of 1960s politics was not the self-indulgent nonsense indulged in by white students like Hoffman, but the sort of so-called 'Negroe organizing' that occurred in the American South during the civil rights movement. Much of this organizing was done in churches under the auspices of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference--a circumstance that would no doubt horrify Hoffman, smacking as it does of the chains of cruel religious tyranny reigning over the sacrosanct shrine that is the unencumbered individual. Despite this, these churches acted as 'schools of democracy (5),' providing a whole generation of previously disenfranchised African-Americans the chance to participate in self-generated community organization and action, and a subsequent voice in American politics that had been previously denied them. In my opinion, that was a bigger achievement than dumping a sack of dollar bills onto the floor of the New York Stock Exchange, watching the ensuing chaos, and attempting to make some juvenile commentary on 'human nature.'

1--Students for a Democratic Society, "Port Huron Statement"

2--Tom Hayden, "The Politics of the Movement"

3--Herbert Marcuse, "An Essay On Liberation"

4--Abbie Hoffman, "The Raising of the Pentagon"

5--Sara Evans and Henry Boyte, "Free Spaces: The Sources of Democratic Change in America"

Any response to the question of whether prostitution is an exploitative practice brings to light profound questions regarding rational choice, human agency, and the meaning of sex and gender. Two loosely-defined camps of thought exist within feminism regarding this issue. One, the ‘liberal feminist’ camp, argues that prostitution is not exploitative—that it is merely an occupation like any other, and one that women should be allowed to profit from. The other, the ‘radical feminist’ camp, argues that prostitution does, in fact, involve coercion, sometimes coercion in the physical or psychological sense, but more often in the social or political sense. Although the liberal feminist camp presents some interesting and articulate arguments, ultimately radical feminism is correct that prostitution is not ‘just another job of work,’ and does involve coercion.

The International Committee For Prostitutes’ Rights’ call for the reform of prostitution laws(1) recognizes that some coercive forms of prostitution do exist. It calls for a solution by suggesting that the state enact rights for prostitutes that are the equivalent of protective rights guaranteed workers in other professions. If, after all, prostitution is just like coal mining, and is an individual choice of occupation, equality and safe working conditions should be instituted by law. This is the same general attitude that Sunny Carter takes(2)—her rational choice to have sex for money provided her with a safe and lucrative career (she even argues in her anecdotes that she provided something of a community service). Debi Sundahl takes her tale of stripping even further(3), arguing that sex work can be pro-female and empowering.

While some rare cases like Carter’s and Sundahl’s no doubt exist, Evelina Giobbe provides a more accurate description of prostitution as a reality in America today(4). Giobbe describes case after case of where prostitution is anything but a choice—women are coerced by poverty, by violence, and by circumstance. It is most telling when Giobbe describes an ex-prostitute who was brought up in a family structure where the sex/gender dynamics prepared her so fully for the pimp-prostitute relationship she was later to enter into that it seemed ‘natural.’ Carole Pateman takes this analysis even further(5), near the Marxist territory that defines prostitution as merely the most obvious embodiment of wage labor. She argues that sex workers are not merely selling labor (for example, they cannot be replaced by machines or ‘just any’ actor), but on a deeper level, selling their self in a way that is too heavily influenced by patriarchy to be a rational choice—in a way, prostitutes are victims of a male commodification of sex defined by the pimp/prostitute/”john” role.

While liberty is a vital component of any system of law and politics, it ceases to be a coherent concept when rational choice is replaced by social and political coercion. Prostitution may in some rare cases (like those of Carter and Sundahl) be an individual choice made in full consciousness of the consequences, but more often that not it is nothing of the kind.

A final thought: this is in no way meant to be an argument against the legalization of prostitution. As the situation currently stands, prostitutes face less of a risk of exploitation in states like Nevada that allow legal prostitution in a heavily regulated (and therefore safer) environment. A 'street whore' is undoubtedly in greater danger of contracting HIV/AIDS or another debilitating illness than an employee of the Bunny Ranch, and is also more likely to fall into an exploitative situation involving violence or drugs. The only point I am driving at here is that any discussion of prostitution that approaches the matter from a contractarian perspective of 'consent' and 'rights to contract' is ignoring coercive factors that limit the extent to which a prostitute is freely choosing to engage in sex with a john.

1—International Committee for Prostitutes’ Rights, “International Committee for Prostitutes’ Rights”

2—Sunny Carter, “A Most Useful Tool”

3—Debi Sundahl, “Stripper”

4—Evelina Giobbe, “Confronting the Liberal Lies About Prostitution”

5—Carole Pateman, “What’s Wrong With Prostitution”