Malalai Joya and democracy

Anyone who has been paying attention to the situation in Afghanistan has hopefully run across the remarkable Afghan woman named Malalai Joya. She is an amazing thirty year old Afghan MP who was suspended from parliament by the dark forces in that country for her outspoken criticism of the foreign occupation, the corruption in government, and president himself. While our government offers platitudes and has the gall to act as though President Karzai has been duly elected, this woman risks her life speaking about what a lie the Western invasion has been. Ms. Joya is an excellent and historic role model for young girls and women and will be proud to teach my own daughter about her life and work.

But one issue that the events surrounding Ms. Joya raises in my mind is the question of the legitimacy of democracy in our age. A great deal of what have come to expect from democracy has vanish slowly before our eyes and has gone unnoticed by many in our society.  Extreme events such as those in Afghanistan often give us a glimpse into the real workings behind a process like democracy. And watching such ‘elections’ as those they recently had there illustrate the real failings of the democratic process in the modern world. Ideally a democratic system should be nurtured by a healthy public sphere (now sometime mistermed ‘civil society,’ a term with a long and complex history) in which ideas about the ‘good life’ and our collective future are openly debated in honest meaningful way. However, in recent years such an ideal has receded so far beyond reach that we cannot even talk about a fair process let alone reach that process.  Money and power have corrupted the system so severely that the vast majority of people don’t even understand the possibilities of political debate anymore. The influence of money in the process gradually narrows the terms of debate and the essence of our collective possibilities to the point that democracy grows gradually meaningless. It is similar to being stranded on a desert island with, say, twenty people, and three of them have most of the supplies and guns. Even if one attempted to institute a democratic decision making process in such circumstances they would mean little because the three people with the inherent power would easily control the terms of the debate. And these three individuals were also mean-spirited and nasty (as our present leaders here in Canada are) democracy would become completely meaningless.

Ms. Joya reminds us of the courage of some individuals in the face of the threat of death to work for justice. Unfortunately she also reminds us of the corruption of democracy and the degree to which the ideals of democracy are quickly receding. 

Some Thoughts on Power

I recently became engaged in an internet argument with someone who had accused Emma Goldman of being an agent of British Imperialism. This struck me as a particularly odd accusation and I tried to get to the bottom of it through a discourse with the accuser, always a difficult thing to do through email. But I did this because the person who had made the accusation seemed like a normally cogent and rational person. Perhaps it is needless to say that I received no satisfaction. The person continually failed to make it clear if he really thought Goldman was an actual ‘agent’ of British Imperial forces or just a dupe of that system. I thought that perhaps he were really just claiming that the actions of the US anarchists somehow played into the hands of British interests, and I waited for some evidence for this claim but none was forthcoming, instead I just condescended to with the claim that I didn’t understand the subtleties of British Imperialism. Even in the face of no evidence, I proceeded to argue that even if anarchists like Goldman had somehow played into the hands of the British, it was an entirely unintended consequence of their actions. Similarly, I said, if Napoleon’s failed invasion of Russia had served to strengthen the position of the Russian aristocracy, this did not mean that the French Emperor was somehow an agent, or even dupe, of the Czar; it just means that the flow of power is a complex and tricky thing and any action, dissent in particular, can have deeply influential unintended consequences. After a number of emails and condemnations of British Imperialism, I finally realized that this person was just a disgruntled US citizen who saw red whenever he thought of Goldman because he thought she was involved in the assassination of President McKinley for whom he seemed to have a soft spot. Funny enough, this is another accusation for which there is no real evidence. Anyway, I thought it was funny that he would be upset about British Imperialism when one considers the role that McKinley played in US imperialism; it was under McKinley’s rule, after all, that the US annexed Puerto Rico and the Philippines. The sad fact is that many Americans, and I grew up as an American, simply cannot see that US policy has been a clear form of Imperialism for over a hundred years.

But even if my internet adversary does not, I understand mixed effects of actions, even Imperialism. I have opposed US actions in the Middle East since I first became politically involved. And the recent events are typical examples of US Imperial actions. Even right-wing commentators like Eric Margolis continue to point out that the US invasion of Afghanistan has largely been a front for their efforts to find a cheap and reliable way of drawing oil out of the former Soviet states to the north of Afghanistan. Recently the government of Tajikistan gave notice to the US that they have to close the Manas airbase on their territory. But even here one finds mixed results. For example large numbers of Tajik farmers have accused the US of destroying their crops through land grabs, pollution, and carelessness. On the other hand members of the US forces in the country have raised funds to build schools and give healthcare to poor children. Overall, I think one has to opposed Imperialism, whether it is of the British or US variety, because its goals and effects are overwhelmingly problematic. But it should be clear to everyone who is willing to look carefully at any geo-political event that the power flows in multiple directions at once, particularly in advanced Capitalist states, and conceptions of it should be oversimplified. This is the greatest lesson of Antonio Gramsci’s work on Cultural Hegemony which should be read and enjoyed by all.

Justice and Empathy

Earlier on in life you had already begun to grapple with some basic problems that seemed so imponderable. Among these problems are questions like ‘why is it that the people who obtain power are the very ones who should never have it? And, ‘why is it so difficult to find justice in the world.’ But then these problems seem to roll themselves into a ball and you realized that behind all these questions lurks a bigger, over-arching one. ‘Why is it that so many people are hell-bent on the destruction of the human soul?’ And so you begin to scour the lines of great philosophers and poets in the hope of finding some plausible story that explains this basic problem. It is a frustrating problem. At some time you realize that there are simply some people who actually seek the destruction of most of the other people around them. Some of these people pursue this goal openly through murder or a career in the military. But most of these people hide their destructive impulses behind a veil of legitimacy and power. These people practice their destruction by seeking positions of power wherein they can push people down and undermine their basic humanity. Some become Prime Ministers and others are found in more humble positions, but all of them abuse their power and oppress those around them. Unfortunately some of these sad souls even pretend to be left-wing, they become ‘progressive’ politicians or union activists, and then proceed to practice in their professional and personal lives the very opposite of what they claim to believe.

No, it is not necessarily politics that distinguish these people, it is something much more fundamental. I believe that what is behind this basic destructive behavior is the absence of empathy. These folks are simply incapable of comprehending, at a basic gut level, the real effects that their actions have on others. And because they are, at heart, empty human beings who cannot connect to their fellow humans, they get some kind of basic thrill from undermining others. And to hide their emptiness and the wonton destruction that they continually commit on others, they hide behind the claim that they are really actively pursuing good. It is particularly frustrating when you meet one of these people in a left-wing organization which is supposed to be established for the cause of social justice. I have met union activists, for example, that are supposed to be employed full-time in the pursuit of justice who continually undermine the autonomy, self-respect, happiness, professional competence, and well-being of those over which they are able to wield power. I think that these people have often convinced themselves that they are actually ‘good’ people, but the rest of us know better.

I believe that this lack of empathy is at the root of all the other seemingly complicated problems of social injustice. The problem is that it is not at all clear to me that human beings can overcome this problem and when you meet these people there seems to be absolutely nothing you can do, it is like trying to convince a schizophrenic that they are not seeing things. You need empathy to understand empathy and thus you can explain nothing to such people. Even if this problem is rooted in some basic mental disorder (like some form of Alexithymia), we will probably never be able to do anything about it because those in positions of power would be most likely to be suffering from it so they would prevent us from addressing the issue. So it goes.