File spoon-archives/heidegger.archive/heidegger_2003/heidegger.0311, message 387


Date: Sun, 23 Nov 2003 17:30:36 +0100
From: artefact-AT-t-online.de (Michael Eldred)
Subject: Re: Rorty on Kerneuropa -- sclerosis, social inertia, etc.


Cologne 23-Nov-2003

HealantHenry-AT-aol.com schrieb Sat, 22 Nov 2003 11:00:03 EST:

> In a message dated 11/21/03 11:47:24 AM, artefact-AT-t-online.de writes:
>
> >ME:
> >An "oath of loyalty to George W. Bush"?? Habermas' rhetoric here is less
> >than honest.
>
> Michael,
> I had not heard of this Derrida/Habermas initiative
> until I was directed to this response by Rorty.
> I know it is an oddity, and very limited in scope,
> but I see some usefulness in these guys making
> this stand despite the "sclerotic" manefestations
> of EU & US.

Henry,
My choice of the word "sclerotic" was for the socio-economic inertia of "core
Europe", esp. Germany. I'll try to spell out a bit more below what I mean by
social sclerosis. In Germany itself there has been a discussion for several years
in the political arena about the need "Verkruestungen abzubauen", i.e. to get rid
of petrified structures, whilst simultaneously the SPD/Green government has been
conscientiously, with all the neuroticism of German Gruendlichkeit, adding to the
burden of social regulatory laws in the name of "social justice". Only very
recently are there any serious signs of social reform at all, but still in slow
motion, and with lots of screaming about "sozialen Abbau" (dismantling of the
welfare state).

> >ME:
> >Europe "sufficiently united and self-confident" -- come back maybe in a
> >couple of centuries.
>
> ditto US democracy...

I know you don't like the Bush administration (to put it mildly), but the US state
is capable of acting on the world stage and plays a leading role. Leadership is a
synonym for hegemony, which in modern English has more sinister connotations. So
US hegemony/leadership has that uncomfortable Janus-face, too. If the US withdrew
from this leadership role... Well, I hate to think what would happen.

I still remember that it took US initiative and US resolve and US bombs to stop
the recent.war in Bosnia. The EU itself was hopelessly dithering in trying to come
to any resolution and the European NATO partners were completely unable to act.

> >ME
> >Famous last words.
>
> >ME:
> >And Germany, for instance,  is not "too preoccupied with domestic problems"?
> >It's main
> >concern is trying to keep its Titanic Sozialstaat afloat, that cocoon of
> >security that
> >pads Germans against the dangers and unpleasantness of the world, including
> >lulling them
> >into pacificism. Without a credible military force and the willingness
> >to act when needs
> >be, the EU will remain totally ineffective in world politics for it cannot
> >present any
> >credible alternative to US foreign policy.
> >
> >As it is, Germany (I only know this one EU country intimately) will continue
> >to screw
> >itself up with German Gruendlichkeit, such as 206 taxation laws and 96,000
> >taxation
> >regulations -- and I'm not kidding. If anyone tries to simplify taxation
> >in this country
> >(there's been a federal government committee working on simplification
> >of taxation for
> >YEARS), people start screaming about Steuergerechtigkeit (taxation justice).
> >And the
> >state's bureacrats with all their privileges do not want anything at all
> >to change.
> >Germany today is still DISCUSSING reforms that were carried out in Australia
> >in the
> >seventies -- that's an entire generation ago!
> >
> >It's not just that EU countries have not put sufficient resources into
> >the military. Since
> >the mid-seventies, Germany has been allowing its entire education system
> >to slide into
> >dilapidation. You should see the state of some the schools and universities
> >here! A friend
> >of mine told me this week that his kid's school cannot afford to replace
> >broken windows!
> >Whereas today the caring German social welfare state puts all of 4.4 per
> >cent of GDP into
> >education, in cold, ruthless US capitalism, this figure is 7.7 per cent!
> >And yet the
> >Germans remained arrogant and complacent about their education system up
> >until the recent
> >PISA study in which Germany was near the bottom of the pile, which was
> >a big shock for the
> >smug German psyche -- I personally still remember how German officials
> >regarded my
> >education as second-rate because I was an Australian.
> >
> >European societies and their economies have to free up to be more vigorous,
> >proactive,
> >adaptable for any vigorous, unified EU foreign policy to become at all
> >possible. Social
> >security cocooning and social inertia are at high levels here. But tough
> >competition on
> >capitalist world markets will tear away this all-too-cozy cocoon sooner
> >or later. (Over 4
> >million unemployed in Germany at present and rising and still no foreseeable
> >prospect of a
> >diminution.) To talk in this context of proud European traditions that
> >must be conserved
> >is simply a diversionary tactic for complacency and arrogance and ignorance
> >of the world.
> HH:
> The media attention we get here (what little there is) describes
> a critical decision on the part of Blair to stay tight with Bush,
> or throw Brit's considerable weight behind a unified and militarized
> EU.
>
> Reading what you say about the decadent social democracy in Germany
> helps me realize that these decadent societies mirror the decadence
> of liberal democracy in the US.
>
> Broken windows in schools?  How 'bout
> requests from school administrators
> that pupils bring their own toilet paper?

Anecdotal evidence, of course, is only indicative and not enough to make a
comparison. Here some figures are helpful. It is the peculiarity of capitalist
economy that it offers its own quantification in the monetary dimension (something
that the discussion of the Gestell has to take into account if it is to get
anywhere -- what is money?).

A telling quantitative indicator for a comparison of the Germany with the US are
the GDP growth figures since 1990. The US economy needs a threshold growth rate of
under one per cent for the economy to create jobs. In Germany this figure is two
and a half per cent, because of all the compulsory social security levies. Since
1990 the German economy has been under 2.5 per cent most of the time. Its best
figure was 3.0 per cent in 2000 (from memory). And even these very modest growth
figures (which have not been able to generate jobs) have only been possible
because the US economy was delivering growth rates of 4, 5 and 6 per cent
throughout the nineties (since the last recession in 1991, in fact), and pulling
along the rest of the world economy behind it. Without this engine, the world
would plunge into an economic depression, with all the dire political and social
consequences worldwide.

In the most recent quarter, the US economy had an annualized growth rate of 7.2
per cent. Germany managed 0.2 per cent. That's the kind of discrepancy we are
talking about. The Germany economy is TOTALLY reliant on the US economy for it to
manage any growth at all and has fallen behind in economic growth on a long-term
basis. (Like it or not, economic life is the main realm where people put their
potentials and abilities (_dynameis_) to work (_energeia_ = at-work-ness).
Economic life is the main realm of social intercourse in modern life. It does not
have to be a grind or 'exploitation'. Hard work _can_ have its own satisfactions,
fulfilments, apart from earning money. At this point a Marxist would say I am
spouting bourgeois ideology...)

Okay, you will probably say, what is all this fetishism with numbers? Behind these
numbers there are the lives of millions, mainly middle class, who are doing well
or not so well or even badly. Even though the income distribution in the US is
extreme, even obscene, generating millions and millions of jobs is good for the
population as a whole. The description of workers being sucked into the
Gestell/capitalism (take your pick) as the mere objects of the set-up/capitalist
corporations I find totally inappropriate.

Re. "the decadence of liberal democracy in the US". Of course democracy in the US
has its major flaws, not least of all, the fact that enormous amounts of money are
needed to get elected to public office, especially the office of President of the
United States. On the other hand, the US is one of the strongest democracies in
the world with INDIVIDUAL rights enshrined and protected in the constitution. The
individual citizen still has a fighting chance. (In Germany these individual
rights are much weaker and the conviction that the state exists for the sake of
the lives of the citizens is much, much weaker. Liberalism has almost been
extinguished in Germany.)

One major feature of democracies (noted since Plato) is that the electorate has to
like its leaders. This "liking" depends on whether the leader/government serves
the people's self-interests. Today, to get elected, governments have to
demonstrate that sectoral interests of the population are being promoted, and this
leads to some of the most viciously self-interested acts of the state.
Protectionism effected by trade barriers is a case in point. This phenomenon is
becoming more visible once again at the moment in the run-up to the US
presidential elections (although it is by no means only US democracy that is prone
to this aberration).

The high tariffs on steel imports to the US and this week's announcement of
protective tariffs on Chinese textiles (sold mostly in Wal-Mart, which accounts
for sucking in 10 per cent of Chinese imports and a massive one per cent of
Chinese GDP). These tariffs are only imposed in an attempt to secure votes.
Whether it is steel or textiles or catfish or prawns ro whatever, US WORKERS are
in competition with Chinese, Vietnamese, Thai, European, etc. WORKERS. Workers
DESIRE to earn a living and do well, and to do better. WORKERS' DESIRES compete
indirectly against each other on world markets. To put it down simply to greedy
multinational corporations is hogwash.

Despite all the inequities in the Chinese economy, we have been witnessing over
the incredibly short period of only ONE DECADE the emergence of a Chinese middle
class with spending power.  And DESIRING workers with their own self-interests
elect democratic governments. It doesn't help that the governments may be
committed to furthering free trade relations across the globe (in their own
enlightened self-interest). Protectionism holds sway most often because of
self-interests of a voting sector of the population. (The cases of industries
being protected by trade barriers in the national interest are relatively few.
Other, transitionary tariff protection may well be justified, and can be
accepted.)

So that is one big aberration of democracies -- that the electorate is viciously
self-interested and totally incapable of adopting a universal standpoint (Hegel is
perhaps the best source for seeing the difference between particular interests and
universal interests.) To blame Bush or the Republicans alone for imposing import
tariffs for electioneering purposes is one-sided. They are forced by the rules of
gaining power democratically to pander to self-interests. The other side is the
desiring electorate caught up in the Gewinnst. (With Heidegger's thinking on
Gestell, once again, this phenomenon cannot be seen -- all you get is a lament
about omnipotent social powers over against innocent, modest, ordinary people
being set-up.)

I think it is cheap, easy criticism for left Western intellectuals to say with
regard to the still emerging Asian economies, "But they're only being exploited by
rich Western capitalist corporations..." or "Welcome to the Gestell". In East Asia
since WWII literally hundreds of millions of people have worked their way out of
poverty.

> >ME:
> >A veto-free UN is definitely a mere dream. Above all, France would have
> >a lot of political
> >and diplomatic influence to lose in any rebuilt UN. How does one constitute
> >a UN that is capable of a unified resolve to deal with wars on the planet?
> HH:
> How does one indeed? But the whole idea of a UN
> was a mere dream 60 years ago, and since then
> the ebb and flo of UN achievements for a better world
> I think have redeemed the institution, helped push the
> evolution of the idea, and still provides opportunities
> despite the current very low influence and accomplishment.

I am certainly not for abandoning the UN. The issues have to be put on the table.
Every journalist knows that the UN is a power play of national self-interests, But
it is not just that. It is also an organization committed to human freedom, and
the US has had a very large part in establishing that. Countries like Russia and
China would be totally incapable of standing up in any credible way for the human
rights enshrined in the UN Charter. If China is emerging as the world's next
super-power over the next decades, that will be an enormous challenge for
individual human rights. I am not so naive as to believe that the US acts
consistently for human rights throughout the world -- on the contrary -- but when
it does, it is a credible force and has a rich tradition of struggle FOR human
rights. And if the US has any notion at all of its "enlightened self-interest",
i.e. of universal interest, then it will genuinely learn to work in the Middle
East to further the cause of human rights and promote democracy. THESE aspects of
US foreign policy must be supported and reinforced, whilst at the same time
criticizing the blatant self-interest that is also at work (very often at the
behest of US voters).

When the US flip-flops between particular self-interest and universal interest,
this is far more visible on the world stage than in the case of any other country,
but every country does it, and some more blatantly than others. To say nothing of
the dozens of thoroughly corrupt regimes throughout the world under which their
populations suffer. Getting fixated on Bush and the particular policies of his
administration, to my mind, is a big mistake. Even focusing on the aberrations of
political process in the US has to keep a balance with what is good in US
political life and also be seen against the backdrop of how politics, the media,
etc. work in other countries.

> >ME:
> >Cosmopolitan? Germany, this parochial, xenophobic country supporting
> cosmopolitanism?
> >That's a laugh. Just look at the way Germany makes its aliens feel at home
> >(I am one of
> >them)! Foreigners are treated with suspicion, especially the Turks. The
> >German state makes
> >an alien's life hard in all sorts of major and minor ways. The largest
> >country in Europe
> >is still aeons away from any laudable, convincing leadership role in the
> >world.
> HH:
> Isn't Rorty's larger point that it is of vital
> necessity that (Germany and specifically)
> Europe elbow itself to the table?

If only Europe would elbow itself back into a credible leadership role. Yesterday
(22-Nov) in the op-ed of the International Herald Tribune there as a commentary
from Margarita Mathiopoulos of the Berlin-based European Advisory Group. A short
excerpt:

"First, Europe must match its own standards to the realities of the 21st century
and speak with one voice on the international stage. This voice must be backed by
credible military capabilities."

Rorty and Habermas do not speak of "military capabilities", do they? They are both
wishy-washy liberals.

> >ME:
> >This is pie-in-the-sky idealism and utterly useless. The way of thinking
> >in Europe has to
> >change more fundamentally in the social sphere beyond just opening up another
> >chat-room or
> >launching huge anti-everything protests that serve as a nice day out for
> >the kids.
> >Bureaucratic regulation and a cozy, sclerotic system of institutional vested
> >interests
> >have to be swept away.
> >
> >US business people and politicians (like J. Snow) are known for referring
> >to Continental
> >Europe as "sclerotic", and one could be forgiven for thinking that this
> >is just another
> >instance of US arrogance. Unfortunately, it is much too mild a term. The
> >Europeans have
> >lost the plot in a world that opens up as a manifold of know-hows for
> setting-up
> >and as a
> >manifold of opportunities for gain. The dream of a cozy social welfare
> >state lasted from
> >about 1950 to 1975. The western Europeans didn't notice that the dream
> >was over and kept
> >on dreaming of social justice while the entire social and economic fabric
> >decayed.
> >
> >Just one small sign of European decline: the largest European software
> >company, SAP,
> >announced this week that it is expanding its operations in India. The new
> >Indian facility
> >will employ around 1,500, even more than are employed at SAP's German
> headquarters.
> >Asia is indeed emerging as a force to be reckoned with.
> HH:
> Michael, again the mirror image is the US.
> Economically, the sclerotic US and the sclerotic EU
> are sustaining themselves on the easier exploited
> areas of the globe rather than addressing domestic
> issues domestically.

See above on this. To talk of the more easily exploited in other parts of the
globe, I think, is a rather glib Western standpoint, given the struggle of
countless people in poorer countries to get on their feet and earn some kind of
decent living. For instance, the fact that a Chinese worker may cost only ten per
cent or five per cent of the wages of a US worker is no injustice and not a proof
of comparative exploitation at all. It's just the opposite. For Chinese workers,
their low wages are an opportunity to get a toehold in the world economy and start
moving up the ladder. That's exactly what Japan and South Korea have done, and now
they are even challenging US and EU economic hegemony! (Japan's own extreme
socio-economic sclerosis is another issue.) Things are moving very quickly in
historical terms. Even Thailand and Malaysia are already being forced to move up
the so-called value chain as a response to Chinese competition. People have to get
better and better at what they do, learn more, acquire new skills, etc. etc.

> >ME:
> >While talking about U.S. arrogance or that of a particular government,
> >we should also talk
> >of French arrogance and German arrogance, and above all about European
> >complacency.
> HH:
> Still, there is evolution taking place in the EU; in the US
> there is a retro movement back to the 19th century.

I don't see that.

> >ME:
> >I would welcome the EU as "a powerful independent force in world affairs".
> >But then
> >Europeans would have to shift from their defensive, dithering and endlessly
> >diplomatic
> >stance on the world stage which is aimed merely at securing a comfortable,
> >protected way
> >of life.
> >
> >The challenge to US military hegemony in the world will come from China,
> >not from the EU.
> >That seems plain enough. US military hegemony is only a short interlude.
> >A globe enmeshed
> >in a web of international trade patterns has a better chance of finding
> >some peaceful
> >balance than any alternative vision I can see on the horizon at present.
> >Europeans should
> >fight for fair competitive rules of play on the world markets if they want
> >to be
> >idealistic. Then they would really have to feel the pain of having to change
> >their way of life.
> HH:
> It is obvious that the US has set its sights on China
> (and much of its blame for its own sclerotic issues).

See above for my comment on this. It is important to learn to see that sclerosis
in a society is not something imposed from above but arises originarily from the
social inertia of a way of living. Such social inertia is not to be damned (in the
name of 'progress'), nor is it to be decorated with the title of 'preserving our
traditional values'. The way modern democracies work has a hell of a lot to do
with social inertia, with resistance to change on the part of the population,
which is an 'eternal' issue in the West (and now globally). The Western-Greek
beginning set this historical movement in train, and that has also made Western
human being highly adaptable, especially since the seventeenth century.

The phenomenon of social inertia, too, cannot be seen clearly without a
metaphysics of social relations. To this end, one has to be prepared to think
through again Heidegger's thinking on the Gestell and twist its focus toward
simple social relations  -- without the hubris, of course, of being able to then
pose grandly in the posture of the philosopher who is able to make wise
pronouncements on the course of world history, like loyal adherents are wont to
do. Even Heidegger risked making predictions sparingly, especially after the
fiasco of 1933/34. And one has to learn to see that the Gestell is a manifold of
POSSIBILITIES and NOT a construction of CAUSALITY, which is the way the term is
bandied about mostly on this list.

> ME:
> >Putting aside violent and murderous Islamist terrorists (who have to be
> >defeated), the
> >many Muslim revivalists from Marocco through to Indonesia put their faith
> >in studying the
> >Koran and following it, believing that then the world will be in order
> >and that everything
> >(including the economy) will fall into place by the grace of Allah. Regarding
> >the West as "sick" will not make the challenge represented by the West go away.
>
> HH:
> Well, my take on what in the early 20th century
> might have been called "the Muslim question" is
> that the political and economic bondage is in
> tatters and there are no visionaries among
> those who have held these people in bondage
> nor among the elite of this Islamic slavery
> to western political and economic strategies.
> Thus the popularity and successes of the
> fundamentalist violence and the continuing
> downward spiral of the whole planet.
>
> Obviously the terrorism must be stopped.
> But the decades long legitimaized violence
> and bondage must be resolved and compensation paid
> for there to be any harmony.
>
> >> Richard Rorty teaches philosophy in the comparative literature department
> >> at Stanford University.
> >>
> >>
> >ME:
> >"Many things are terrible, but nothing stirs that is more terrible than
> >humankind."
> >Sophocles
> >Europe seems to have forgotten this, too.
> HH:
> "Because that's where the money is."
> Willie Sutton, noted American bank robber, as to why he robbed banks.
> The US and the EU seem to have forgotten that's why they ever bothered
> with the rest of the world to begin with...

This modern European bothering with the rest of the world goes back to the
fifteenth century. Then it was the Spanish and the Portuguese who established the
first European colonies. But there's been lots of empires in world history, as you
know.

Adam Smith, for instance, reports back in the 18th century: "Plano Carpino
[confusion with  Rubruquis], a monk sent ambassador from the king of France to one
of the sons of the famous Gengis Khan, says that the Tartars used frequently to
ask him, if there was plenty of sheep and oxen in the kingdom of France? Their
enquiry had the same object with that of the Spaniards. They wanted to know if the
country was rich enough to be worth the conquering. Among the Tartars, as among
all other nations of shepherds, who are generally ignorant of the use of money,
cattle are the instruments of commerce and the measures of value. Wealth,
therefore, according to them, consisted of cattle, as according to the Spaniards
it consisted in gold and silver. Of the two, the Tartar nation, perhaps, was the
nearest to the truth." (Wealth of Nations Book IV Chapter 1 'Of the Principle of
the Commercial or Mercantile System').

Conquering for the sake of riches has been going for an awful long time, so
there's no point in having an especially bad, Post-Christian conscience about
so-called Western imperialism. Imperialism itself has lots of aspects apart from
the exploitation of a native population, not all of which are bad.

Another aside -- the question of "value", in my view, cannot be adequately dealt
with starting with Nietzsche and his critique of the "values" of Platonic
Christianity. Unfortunately, one has to descend to the grubby, banal level of
everyday life and the values that are traded on the market day in and day out. It
should be a source of amazement and wonder that it was ONLY the Greeks of all the
world-historical origins who thought through the totally banal everyday practices
of carpentering a bed or exchanging a pair of shoes for a bushel of grain. From
such APPARENT banality of questioning, such enormous world-historical
consequences! Heidegger himself concentrated on the paradigm of carpentering the
bed, and did not bother about looking at the significance of exchanging shoes for
wheat. Therefore, sources like Aristotle and Plato, and then Hobbes, Locke, Adam
Smith and Marx are far more fruitful in pursuing the question of value than
Nietzsche or Heidegger can ever be on their own.

The Christian and Islamic appropriations of Plato and Aristotle were both to
theological ends, i.e. aimed at reconciling the monotheistic faith with some sort
of thinking, thus underpinning the faith. Nowadays ontotheological schemes of
thinking focus on human structures themselves as the summum ens, and powerful
humans themselves are endowed with quasi-omnipotence over against which there are
only the exploited, the oppressed, the impotent, etc. Thus the vertical structures
of ontotheology are only reproduced in a secular form, so remaining the same, and
the 'horizontal' question of social relations among human beings as individual
starting-points for freedom is swept under the carpet once more.

Thanks,
Michael
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