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Critical Theory: Knowing What it is About

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THE ABSURD TIMES



Horkheimer
and his Masterpiece

    We have recently, and fortunately, seen much more about Critical Theory (sometimes called the "Frankfurt School," a bit too reified for my tastes), but there is little evidence anyone talking about it knows what it is all about.

    Max Horkheimer, partly inspired by Arthur Schopenhauer (and not as much by Nietzsche as many seem to think), is the center of this program and devoted much of his energy towards finding the means to correct social problems using philosophy as a tool.  The entire program could be characterized as a synthesis of the political left and the cultural right (if such terms mean much to you), with dialogue or give and take as a key issue, an approach sometimes referred to as "dialectic". 

    For this reason we reprint one of his earlier works, written as Hitler was gaining strength and sanity loosing it.  Hitler has since gone and hence has no strength, but sanity is even more rapidly on the decline.







Max Horkheimer 1939

The Social Function of Philosophy


Written: in English in 1939;
Source: Critical Theory. Selected Essays Max Horkheimer, published by Continuum 1982;
Public Domain: this article is free of copyright;
Transcribed: by Andy Blunden;
Proofed: and corrected by Chris, 2009.

WHEN the words physics, chemistry, medicine, or history are mentioned in a conversation, the participants usually have something very definite in mind. Should any difference of opinion arise, we could consult an encyclopedia or accepted textbook or turn to one or more outstanding specialists in the field in question. The definition of any one of these sciences derives immediately from its place in present-day society. Though these sciences may make the greatest advances in the future, though it is even conceivable that several of them, physics and chemistry for example, may some day be merged, no one is really interested in defining these concepts in any other way than by reference to the scientific activities now being carried on under such headings.
It is different with philosophy. Suppose we ask a professor of philosophy what philosophy is. If we are lucky and happen to a specialist who is not averse to definitions in general, he will give us one. If we then adopt this definition, we should probably soon discover that it is by no means the universally accepted meaning of the word. We might then appeal to other authorities, and pore over textbooks, modern and old. The confusion would only increase. Many thinkers, accepting Plato and Kant as their authorities, regard philosophy as an exact science in its own right, with its own field and subject matter. In our epoch this conception is chiefly represented by the late Edmund Husserl. Other thinkers, like Ernst Mach, conceive philosophy as the critical elaboration and synthesis of the special sciences to a unified whole. Bertrand Russell, too, holds that the task of philosophy is “that of logical analysis, followed by logical synthesis.” He thus fully agrees with L. T. Hobhouse, who declares that “Philosophy ... has a synthesis of the sciences as its goal.” This conception goes back to Auguste Comte and Herbert Spencer, for whom philosophy constituted the total system of human knowledge. Philosophy, therefore, is an independent science for some, a subsidiary or auxiliary discipline for others.
If most writers of philosophical works agree on the scientific character of philosophy, a few, but by no means the worst, have emphatically denied it. For the German poet Schiller, whose philosophical essays have had an influence perhaps even more profound than his dramas, the purpose of philosophy was to bring aesthetic order into our thoughts and actions. Beauty was the criterion of its results. Other poets, like Hölderlin and Novalis, held a similar position, and even pure philosophers, Schelling for instance, came very close to it in some of their formulations. Henri Bergson, at any rate, insists that philosophy is closely related to art, and is not a science.
As if the different views on the general character of philosophy were not enough, we also find the most diverse notions about its content and its methods. There are still some thinkers who hold that philosophy is concerned exclusively with the highest concepts and laws of Being, and ultimately with the cognition of God. This is true of the Aristotelian and Neo-Thomist schools. Then there is the related view that philosophy deals with the so-called a priori. Alexander describes philosophy as “the experiential or empirical study of the non-empirical or a priori, and of such questions as arise out of the relation of the empirical to the a priori” (space, time and deity). Others, who derive from the English sensualists and the German school of Fries and Apelt, conceive of it as the science of inner experience. According to logical empiricists like Carnap, philosophy is concerned essentially with scientific language; according to the school of Windelband and Rickert (another school with many American followers), it deals with universal values, above all with truth, beauty, goodness, and holiness.
Finally, everyone knows that there is no agreement in method. The Neo-Kantians all believe that the procedure of philosophy must consist in the analysis of concepts and their reduction to the ultimate elements of cognition. Bergson and Max Scheler consider intuition (“Wesensschau, Wesenserschauung”) to be the decisive philosophical act. The phenomenological method of Husserl and Heidegger is flatly opposed to the empirio-criticism. of Mach and Avenarius. The logistic of Bertrand Russell, Whitehead, and their followers, is the avowed enemy of the dialectic of Hegel. The kind of philosophizing one prefers depends, according to William James, on one’s character and experience.
These definitions have been mentioned in order to indicate that the situation in philosophy is not the same as in other intellectual pursuits. No matter how many points of dispute there may be in those fields, at least the general line of their intellectual work is universally recognized. The prominent representatives more or less agree on subject matter and methods. In philosophy, however, refutation of one school by another usually involves complete rejection, the negation of the substance of its work as fundamentally false. This attitude is not shared by all schools, of course. A dialectical philosophy, for example, in keeping with its principles, will tend to extract the relative truths of the individual points of view and introduce them in its own comprehensive theory. Other philosophical doctrines, such as modern positivism, have less elastic principles, and they simply exclude from the realm of knowledge a very large part of the philosophical literature, especially the great systems of the past. In short, it cannot be taken for granted that anyone who uses the term “philosophy” shares with his audience more than a few very vague conceptions.
The individual sciences apply themselves to problems which must be treated because they arise out of the life process of present-day society. Both the individual problems and their allotment to specific disciplines derive, in the last analysis, from the needs of mankind in its past and present forms of organization. This does not mean that every single scientific investigation satisfies some urgent need. Many scientific undertakings produced results that mankind could easily do without. Science is no exception to that misapplication of energy which we observe in every sphere of cultural life. The development of branches of science which have only a dubious practical value for the immediate present is, however, part of that expenditure of human labor which is one of the necessary conditions of scientific and technological progress. We should remember that certain branches of mathematics, which appeared to be mere playthings at first, later turned out to be extraordinarily useful. Thus, though there are scientific undertakings which can lead to no immediate use, all of them have some potential applicability within the given social reality, remote and vague as it may be. By its very nature, the work of the scientist is capable of enriching life in its present form. His fields of activity are therefore largely marked out for him, and the attempts to alter the boundaries between the several domains of science, to develop new disciplines, as well as continuously to differentiate and integrate them, are always guided by social need, whether consciously or not. This need is also operative, though indirectly, in the laboratories and lecture halls of the university, not to mention the chemical laboratories and statistical departments of large industrial enterprises and in the hospitals.
Philosophy has no such guide. Naturally, many desires play upon it; it is expected to find solutions for problems which the sciences either do not deal with or treat unsatisfactorily. But the practice of social life offers no criterion for philosophy; philosophy can point to no successes. Insofar as individual philosophers occasionally do offer something in this respect, it is a matter of services which are not specifically philosophical. We have, for example, the mathematical discoveries of Descartes and Leibniz, the psychological researches of Hume, the physical theories of Ernst Mach, and so forth. The opponents of philosophy also say that insofar as it has value, it is not philosophy but positive science. Everything else in philosophical systems is mere talk, they claim, occasionally stimulating, but usually boring and always useless. Philosophers, on the other hand, show a certain obstinate disregard for the verdict of the outside world. Ever since the trial of Socrates, it has been clear that they have a strained relationship with reality as it is, and especially with the community in which they live. The tension sometimes takes the form of open persecution; at other times merely failure to understand their language. They must live in hiding, physically or intellectually. Scientists, too, have come into conflict with the societies of their time. But here we must resume the distinction between the philosophical and the scientific elements of which we have already spoken, and reverse the picture, because the reasons for the persecution usually lay in the philosophical views of these thinkers, not in their scientific theories. Galileo’s bitter persecutors among the Jesuits admitted that he would have been free to publish his heliocentric theory if he had placed it in the proper philosophical and theological context. Albertus Magnus himself discussed the heliocentric theory in his Summa, and he was never attacked for it. Furthermore, the conflict between scientists and society, at least in modern times, is not connected with fundamentals but only with individual doctrines, not tolerated by this or that authority in one country at one time, tolerated and even celebrated in some other country at the same time or soon afterwards.
The opposition of philosophy to reality arises from its principles. Philosophy insists that the actions and aims of man must not be the product of blind necessity. Neither the concepts of science nor the form of social life, neither the prevailing way of thinking nor the prevailing mores should be accepted by custom and practiced uncritically. Philosophy has set itself against mere tradition and resignation in the decisive problems of existence, and it has shouldered the unpleasant task of throwing the light of consciousness even upon those human relations and modes of reaction which have become so deeply rooted that they seem natural, immutable, and eternal. One could reply that the sciences, too, and particularly their inventions and technological changes, save mankind from the deep-worn grooves of habit. When we compare present-day life with that thirty, fifty, or a hundred years ago, we cannot truthfully accept the notion that the sciences have not disturbed human habits and customs. Not only industry and transportation, but even art, has been rationalized. A single illustration will suffice. In former years a playwright would work out his individual conception of human problems in the seclusion of his personal life. When his work finally reached the public, he thereby exposed his world of ideas to conflict with the existing world and thus contributed to the development of his own mind and of the social mind as well. But today both the production and reception of works of art on the screen and the radio have been completely rationalized. Movies are not prepared in a quiet studio; a whole staff of experts is engaged. And from the outset the goal is not harmony with some idea, but harmony with the current views of the public, with the general taste, carefully examined and calculated beforehand by these experts. If, sometimes, the pattern of an artistic product does not harmonize with public opinion, the fault usually does not lie in an intrinsic disagreement, but in an incorrect estimate by the producers of the reaction of public and press. This much is certain: no sphere of industry, either material or intellectual, is ever in a state of complete stability; customs have no time in which to settle down. The foundations of present-day society are constantly shifting through the intervention of science. There is hardly an activity in business or in government which thought is not constantly engaged in simplifying and improving.
But if we probe a little deeper, we discover that despite all these manifestations, man’s way of thinking and acting is not progressing as much as one might be led to believe. On the contrary, the principles now underlying the actions of men, at least in a large portion of the world, are certainly more mechanical than in other periods when they were grounded in living consciousness and conviction. Technological progress has helped to make it even easier to cement old illusions more firmly, and to introduce new ones into the minds of men without interference from reason. It is the very diffusion and industrialization of cultural institutions which cause significant factors of intellectual growth to decline and even disappear, because of shallowness of content, dullness of the intellectual organs, and elimination of some of man’s individualistic creative powers. In recent decades, this dual aspect of the triumphal procession of science and technology has been repeatedly noted by both romantic and progressive thinkers. The French writer Paul Valéry has recently formulated the situation with particular cogency. He relates how he was taken to the theater as a child to see a fantasy in which a young man was pursued by an evil spirit who used every sort of devilish device to frighten him and make him do his bidding. When he lay in bed at night, the evil spirit surrounded him with hellish fiends and flames; suddenly his room would become an ocean and the bedspread a sail. No sooner did one ghost disappear, than a new one arrived. After a while these horrors ceased to affect the little boy, and finally, when a new one began, he exclaimed: Voilà les bêtises qui recommencent! (Here comes some more of that nonsense!) Some day, Valéry concludes, mankind might react in the same way to the discoveries of science and the marvels of technology.
Not all philosophers, and we least of all, share Paul Valéry’s pessimistic conception of scientific progress. But it is true that neither the achievements of science by themselves, nor the advance in industrial method, are immediately identical with the real progress of mankind. It is obvious that man may be materially, emotionally, and intellectually impoverished at decisive points despite the progress of science and industry. Science and technology are only elements in an existing social totality, and it is quite possible that, despite all their achievements, other factors, even the totality itself, could be moving backwards, that man could become increasingly stunted and unhappy, that the individual could be ruined and nations headed toward disaster. We are fortunate that we live in a country which has done away with national boundaries and war situations over half a continent. But in Europe, while the means of communication became more rapid and complete, while distances decreased, while the habits of life became more and more alike, tariff walls grew higher and higher, nations feverishly piled up armaments, and both foreign relations and internal political conditions approached and eventually arrived at a state of war. This antagonistic situation asserts itself in other parts of the world, too, and who knows whether, and for how long, the remainder of the world will be able to protect itself against the consequences in all their intensity. Rationalism in details can readily go with a general irrationalism. Actions of individuals, correctly regarded as reasonable and useful in daily life, may spell waste and even destruction for society. That is why in periods like ours, we must remember that the best will to create something useful may result in its opposite, simply because it is blind to what lies beyond the limits of its scientific specialty or profession, because it focuses on what is nearest at hand and misconstrues its true nature, for the latter can be revealed only in the larger context. In the New Testament, “They know not what they do” refers only to evildoers. If these words are not to apply to all mankind, thought must not be merely confined within the special sciences and to the practical learning of the professions, thought which investigates the material and intellectual presuppositions that are usually taken for granted, thought which impregnates with human purpose those relationships of daily life that are almost blindly created and maintained.
When it was said that the tension between philosophy and reality is fundamental, unlike the occasional difficulties against which science must struggle in social life, this referred to the tendency embodied in philosophy, not to put an end to thought, and to exercise particular control over all those factors of life which are generally held to be fixed, unconquerable forces or eternal laws. This was precisely the issue in the trial of Socrates. Against the demand for submission to the customs protected by the gods and unquestioning adaptation to the traditional forms of life, Socrates asserted the principle that man should know what he does, and shape his own destiny. His god dwells within him, that is to say, in his own reason and will. Today the conflicts in philosophy no longer appear as struggles over gods, but the situation of the world is no less critical. We should indeed be accepting the present situation if we were to maintain that reason and reality have been reconciled, and that man’s autonomy was assured within this society. The original function of philosophy is still very relevant.
It may not be incorrect to suppose that these are the reasons why discussions within philosophy, and even discussions about the concept of philosophy, are so much more radical and unconciliatory than discussions in the sciences. Unlike any other pursuit, philosophy does not have a field of action marked out for it within the given order. This order of life, with its hierarchy of values, is itself a problem for philosophy. While science is still able to refer to given data which point the way for it, philosophy must fall back upon itself, upon its own theoretical activity. The determination of its object falls within its own program much more than is the case with the special sciences, even today when the latter are so deeply engrossed with problems of theory and methodology. Our analysis also gives us an insight into the reason why philosophy has received so much more attention in European life than in America. The geographical expansion and historical development have made it possible for certain social conflicts, which have flared up repeatedly and sharply in Europe because of the existing relationships, to decline in significance in this continent under the strain of opening up the country and of performing the daily tasks. The basic problems of societal life found a temporary practical solution, and so the tensions which give rise to theoretical thought in specific historical situations, never became so important. In this country, theoretical thought usually lags far behind the determination and accumulation of facts. Whether that kind of activity still satisfies the demands which are justly made upon knowledge in this country too, is a problem which we do not have the time to discuss now.
It is true that the definitions of many modern authors, some of which have already been cited, hardly reveal that character of philosophy which distinguishes it from all the special sciences.
Many philosophers throw envious glances at their colleagues in other faculties who are much better off because they have a well-marked field of work whose fruitfulness for society cannot be questioned. These authors struggle to “sell” philosophy as a particular kind of science, or at least, to prove that it is very useful for the special sciences. Presented in this way, philosophy is no longer the critic, but the servant of science and the social forms in general. Such an attitude is a confession that thought which transcends the prevailing forms of scientific activity, and thus transcends the horizon of contemporary society, is impossible. Thought should rather be content to accept the tasks set for it by the ever renewed needs of government and industry, and to deal with these tasks in the form in which they are received. The extent to which the form and content of these tasks are the correct ones for mankind at the present historical moment, the question whether the social organization in which they arise is still suitable for mankind – such problems are neither scientific nor philosophical in the eyes of those humble philosophers; they are matters for personal decision, for subjective evaluation by the individual who has surrendered to his taste and temper. The only philosophical position which can be recognized in such a conception is the negative doctrine that there really is no philosophy, that systematic thought must retire at the decisive moments of life, in short, philosophical skepticism and nihilism.
Before proceeding further, it is necessary to distinguish the conception of the social function of philosophy presented here from another view, best represented in several branches of modern sociology, which identifies philosophy with one general social function, namely ideology. This view maintains that philosophical thought, or, more correctly, thought as such, is merely the expression of a specific social situation. Every social group – the German Junkers, for example – develops a conceptual apparatus, certain methods of thought and a specific style of thought adapted to its social position. For centuries the life of the Junkers has been associated with a specific order of succession; their relationship to the princely dynasty upon which they were dependent and to their own servants had patriarchal features. Consequently, they tended to base their whole thought on the forms of the organic, the ordered succession of generations, on biological growth. Everything appeared under the aspect of the organism and natural ties. Liberal bourgeoisie, on the other hand, whose happiness and unhappiness depend upon business success, whose experience has taught them that everything must be reduced to the common denominator of money, have developed a more abstract, more mechanistic way of thinking. Not hierarchical but leveling tendencies are characteristic of their intellectual style, of their philosophy. The same approach applies to other groups, past and present. With the philosophy of Descartes, for example, we must ask whether his notions corresponded to the aristocratic and Jesuit groups of the court, or to the noblesse de robe, or to the lower bourgeoisie and the masses. Every pattern of thought, every philosophical or other cultural work, belongs to a specific social group, with which it originates and with whose existence it is bound up. Every pattern of thought is “ideology.”
There can be no doubt that there is some truth in this attitude. Many ideas prevalent today are revealed to be mere illusions when we consider them from the point of view of their social basis. But it is not enough merely to correlate these ideas with some one social group, as that sociological school does. We must penetrate deeper and develop them out of the decisive historical process from which the social groups themselves are to be explained. Let us take an example. In Descartes’ philosophy, mechanistic thinking, particularly mathematics, plays an important part. We can even say that this whole philosophy is the universalization of mathematical thought. Of course, we can now try to find some group in society whose character is correlative with this viewpoint, and we shall probably find some such definite group in the society of Descartes’ time. But a more complicated, yet more adequate, approach is to study the productive system of those days and to show how a member of the rising middle class, by force of his very activity in commerce and manufacture, was induced to make precise calculations if he wished to preserve and increase his power in the newly developed competitive market, and the same holds true of his agents, so to speak, in science and technology whose inventions and other scientific work played so large a part in the constant struggle between individuals, cities, and nations in the modern era. For all these subjects, the given approach to the world was its consideration in mathematical terms. Because this class, through the development of society, became characteristic of the whole of society, that approach was widely diffused far beyond the middle class itself. Sociology is not sufficient. We must have a comprehensive theory of history if we wish to avoid serious errors. Otherwise we run the risk of relating important philosophical theories to accidental, or at any rate, not decisive groups, and of misconstruing the significance of the specific group in the whole of society, and, therefore, of misconstruing the culture pattern in question. But this is not the chief objection. The stereotyped application of the concept of ideology to every pattern of thought is, in the last analysis, based on the notion that there is no philosophical truth, in fact no truth at all for humanity, and that all thought is seinsgebunden (situationally determined). In its methods and results it belongs only to a specific stratum of mankind and is valid only for this stratum. The attitude to be taken to philosophical ideas does not comprise objective testing and practical application, but a more or less complicated correlation to a social group. And the claims of philosophy are thus satisfied. We easily recognize that this tendency, the final consequence of which is the resolution of philosophy into a special science, into sociology, merely repeats the skeptical view which we have already criticized It is not calculated to explain the social function of philosophy, but rather to perform one itself, namely, to discourage thought from its practical tendency of pointing to the future.
The real social function of philosophy lies in its criticism of what is prevalent. That does not mean superficial fault-finding with individual ideas or conditions, as though a philosopher were a crank. Nor does it mean that the philosopher complains about this or that isolated condition and suggests remedies. The chief aim of such criticism is to prevent mankind from losing itself in those ideas and activities which the existing organization of society instills into its members. Man must be made to see the relationship between his activities and what is achieved thereby, between his particular existence and the general life of society, between his everyday projects and the great ideas which he acknowledges. Philosophy exposes the contradiction in which man is entangled in so far as he must attach himself to isolated ideas and concepts in everyday life. My point can easily be seen from the following. The aim of Western philosophy in its first complete form, in Plato, was to cancel and negate onesidedness in a more comprehensive system of thought, in a system more flexible and better adapted to reality. In the course of some of the dialogues, the teacher demonstrates how his interlocutor is inevitably involved in contradictions if he maintains his position too onesidedly. The teacher shows that it is necessary to advance from this one idea to another, for each idea receives its proper meaning only within the whole system of ideas. Consider, for example, the discussion of the nature of courage in the Laches. When the interlocutor clings to his definition that courage means not running away from the battlefield, he is made to realize that in certain situations, such behavior would not be a virtue but foolhardiness, as when the whole army is retreating and a single individual attempts to win the battle all by himself. The same applies to the idea of Sophrosyne, inadequately translated as temperance or moderation. Sophrosyne is certainly a virtue, but it becomes dubious if it is made the sole end of action and is not grounded in knowledge of all the other virtues. Sophrosyne is conceivable only as a moment of correct conduct within the whole. Nor is the case less true for justice. Good will, the will to be just, is a beautiful thing. But this subjective striving is not enough. The title of justice does not accrue to actions which were good in intention but failed in execution. This applies to private life as well as to State activity. Every measure, regardless of the good intentions of its author, may become harmful unless it is based on comprehensive knowledge and is appropriate for the situation. Summum jus, says Hegel in a similar context, may become summa injuria. We may recall the comparison drawn in the Gorgias. The trades of the baker, the cook, and the tailor are in themselves very useful. But they may lead to injury unless hygienic considerations determine their place in the lives of the individual and of mankind. Harbors, shipyards, fortifications, and taxes are good in the same sense. But if the happiness of the community is forgotten, these factors of security and prosperity become instruments of destruction.
Thus, in Europe, in the last decades before the outbreak of the present war, we find the chaotic growth of individual elements of social life: giant economic enterprises, crushing taxes, an enormous increase in armies and armaments, coercive discipline, one-sided cultivation of the natural sciences, and so on. Instead of rational organization of domestic and international relations, there was the rapid spread of certain portions of civilization at the expense of the whole. One stood against the other, and mankind as a whole was destroyed thereby. Plato’s demand that the state should be ruled by philosophers does not mean that these rulers should be selected from among the authors of textbooks on logic. In business life, the Fachgeist, the spirit of the specialist, knows only profit, in military life power, and even in science only success in a special discipline. When this spirit is left unchecked, it typifies an anarchic state of society. For Plato, philosophy meant the tendency to bring and maintain the various energies and branches of knowledge in a unity which would transform these partially destructive elements into productive ones in the fullest sense. This is the meaning of his demand that the philosophers should rule. It means lack of faith in the prevailing popular thought. Unlike the latter, reason never loses itself in a single idea, though that idea might be the correct one at any given moment. Reason exists in the whole system of ideas, in the progression from one idea to another, so that every idea is understood and applied in its true meaning, that is to say, in its meaning within the whole of knowledge. Only such thought is rational thought.
This dialectical conception has been applied to the concrete problems of life by the great philosophers; indeed, the rational organization of human existence is the real goal of their philosophies. Dialectical clarification and refinement of the conceptual world which we meet in daily and scientific life, education of the individual for right thinking and acting, has as its goal the realization of the good, and, during the flourishing periods of philosophy at least, that meant the rational organization of human society. Though Aristotle, in his Metaphysics, regards the self-contemplation of the mind, theoretical activity, as the greatest happiness, he expressly states that this happiness is possible only on a specific material basis, that is, under certain social and economic conditions. Plato and Aristotle did not believe with Antisthenes and the Cynics that reason could forever continue to develop in people who literally led a dog’s life, nor that wisdom could go hand in hand with misery. An equitable state of affairs was for them the necessary condition for the unfolding of man’s intellectual powers, and this idea lies at the basis of all of Western humanism.
Anyone who studies modern philosophy, not merely in the standard compendia, but through his own historical researches, will perceive the social problem to be a very decisive motive. I need only mention Hobbes and Spinoza. The Tractatus Theologico-Politicus of Spinoza was the only major work which he published during his lifetime. With other thinkers, Leibniz and Kant for instance, a more penetrating analysis reveals the existence of social and historical categories in the foundations of the most abstract chapters of their works, their metaphysical and transcendental doctrines. Without those categories, it is impossible to understand or solve their problems. A basic analysis of the content of purely theoretical philosophical doctrines is therefore one of the most interesting tasks of modern research in the history of philosophy. But this task has little in common with the superficial correlation to which reference has already been made. The historian of art or literature has corresponding tasks.
Despite the important part played in philosophy by the examination of social problems, expressed or unexpressed, conscious or unconscious, let us again emphasize that the social function of philosophy is not to be found just there, but rather in the development of critical and dialectical thought. Philosophy is the methodical and steadfast attempt to bring reason into the world. Its precarious and controversial position results from this. Philosophy is inconvenient, obstinate, and with all that, of no immediate use – in fact it is a source of annoyance. Philosophy lacks criteria and compelling proofs. Investigation of facts is strenuous, too, but one at least knows what to go by. Man is naturally quite reluctant to occupy himself with the confusion and entanglements of his private and public life: he feels insecure and on dangerous ground. In our present division of labor, those problems are assigned to the philosopher or theologian. Or, man consoles himself with the thought that the discords are merely transient and that fundamentally everything is all right. In the past century of European history, it has been shown conclusively that, despite a semblance of security, man has not been able to arrange his life in accordance with his conceptions of humanity. There is a gulf between the ideas by which men judge themselves and the world on the one hand, and the social reality which they reproduce through their actions on the other hand. Because of this circumstance, all their conceptions and judgments are two-sided and falsified. Now man sees himself heading for disaster or already engulfed in it, and in many countries he is so paralyzed by approaching barbarism that he is almost completely unable to react and protect himself. He is the rabbit before the hungry stoat. There are times perhaps when one can get along without theory, but his deficiency lowers man and renders him helpless against force. The fact that theory may rise into the rarefied atmosphere of a hollow and bloodless idealism or sink into tiresome and empty phrasemongering, does not mean that these forms are its true forms. As far as tedium and banality are concerned, philosophy often finds its match in the so-called investigation of facts. Today, at any event, the whole historical dynamic has placed philosophy in the center of social actuality, and social actuality in the center of philosophy.
Attention should be drawn to a particularly important change which has taken place along these lines since classical antiquity. Plato held that Eros enables the sage to know the ideas. He linked knowledge with a moral or psychological state, Eros, which in principle may exist at every historical moment. For this reason, his proposed State appeared to him as an eternal ideal of reason, not bound up with any historical condition. The dialogue on the Laws, then, was a compromise, accepted as a preliminary step which did not affect the eternal ideal. Plato’s State is a Utopia, like those projected at the beginning of the modern era and even in our own days. But Utopia is no longer the proper philosophic form for dealing with the problem of society. It has been recognized that the contradictions in thought cannot be resolved by purely theoretical reflection. That requires an historical development beyond which we cannot leap in thought. Knowledge is bound up not only with psychological and moral conditions, but also with social conditions. The enunciation and description of perfect political and social forms out of pure ideas is neither meaningful nor adequate.
Utopia as the crown of philosophical systems is therefore replaced by a scientific description of concrete relationships and tendencies, which can lead to an improvement of human life. This change has the most far-reaching consequences for the structure and meaning of philosophical theory. modern philosophy shares with the ancients their high opinion of the potentialities of the human race, their optimism over man’s potential achievements. The proposition that man is by nature incapable of living a good life or of achieving the highest levels of social organization, has been rejected by the greatest thinkers. Let us recall Kant’s famous remarks about Plato’s Utopia: “The Platonic Republic has been supposed to be a striking example of purely imaginary perfection. It has become a byword, as something that could exist in the brain of an idle thinker only, and Bruckner thinks it ridiculous that Plato could have said that no prince could ever govern well, unless he participated in the ideas. We should do better, however, to follow up this thought and endeavor (where that excellent philosopher leaves us without his guidance) to place it in a clearer light by our own efforts, rather than to throw it aside as useless, under the miserable and very dangerous pretext of its impracticability. For nothing can be more mischievous and more unworthy a philosopher than the vulgar appeal to what is called adverse experience, which possibly might never have existed, if at the proper time institutions had been framed according to those ideas, and not according to crude concepts, which, because they were derived from experience only, have marred all good intentions.”
Since Plato, philosophy has never deserted the true idealism that it is possible to introduce reason among individuals and among nations. It has only discarded the false idealism that it is sufficient to set up the picture of perfection with no regard for the way in which it is to be attained. In modern times, loyalty to the highest ideas has been linked, in a world opposed to them, with the sober desire to know how these ideas can be realized on earth.
Before concluding, let us return once more to a misunderstanding which has already been mentioned. In philosophy, unlike business and politics, criticism does not mean the condemnation of a thing, grumbling about some measure or other, or mere negation and repudiation. Under certain conditions, criticism may actually take this destructive turn; there are examples in the Hellenistic age. By criticism, we mean that intellectual, and eventually practical, effort which is not satisfied to accept the prevailing ideas, actions, and social conditions unthinkingly and from mere habit; effort which aims to coordinate the individual sides of social life with each other and with the general ideas and aims of the epoch, to deduce them genetically, to distinguish the appearance from the essence, to examine the foundations of things, in short, really to know them. Hegel, the philosopher to whom we are most indebted in many respects, was so far removed from any querulous repudiation of specific conditions, that the King of Prussia called him to Berlin to inculcate the students with the proper loyalty and to immunize them against political opposition. Hegel did his best in that direction, and declared the Prussian state to be the embodiment of the divine Idea on earth. But thought is a peculiar factor. To justify the Prussian state, Hegel had to teach man to overcome the onesidedness and limitations of ordinary human understanding and to see the interrelationship between all conceptual and real relations. Further, he had to teach man to construe human history in its complex and contradictory structure, to search out the ideas of freedom and justice in the lives of nations, to know how nations perish when their principle proves inadequate and the time is ripe for new social forms. The fact that Hegel thus had to train his students in theoretical thought, had highly equivocal consequences for the Prussian state. In the long run, Hegel’s work did more serious harm to that reactionary institution than all the use the latter could derive from his formal glorification. Reason is a poor ally of reaction. A little less than ten years after Hegel’s death (his chair remained unoccupied that long), the King appointed a successor to fight the “dragon’s teeth of Hegelian pantheism,” and the “arrogance and fanaticism of his school.”
We cannot say that, in the history of philosophy, the thinkers who had the most progressive effect were those who found most to criticize or who were always on hand with so-called practical programs. Things are not that simple. A philosophical doctrine has many sides, and each side may have the most diverse historical effects. Only in exceptional historical periods, such as the French Enlightenment, does philosophy itself become politics. In that period, the word philosophy did not call to mind logic and epistemology so much as attacks on the Church hierarchy and on an inhuman judicial system. The removal of certain preconceptions was virtually equivalent to opening the gates of the new world. Tradition and faith were two of the most powerful bulwarks of the old regime, and the philosophical attacks constituted an immediate historical action. Today, however, it is not a matter of eliminating a creed, for in the totalitarian states, where the noisiest appeal is made to heroism and a lofty Weltanschauung, neither faith nor Weltanshauung rule, but only dull indifference and the apathy of the individual towards destiny and to what comes from above. Today our task is rather to ensure that, in the future, the capacity for theory and for action which derives from theory will never again disappear, even in some coming period of peace when the daily routine may tend to allow the whole problem to be forgotten once more. Our task is continually to struggle, lest mankind become completely disheartened by the frightful happenings of the present, lest man’s belief in a worthy, peaceful and happy direction of society perish from the earth.

Max Horkheimer Archive
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Die soziale Funktion der Philosophie

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Die absurde TIMES
Horkheimer
und sein Meisterwerk

    
Wir haben vor kurzem, und zum Glück, zu sehen , viel mehr über die Kritische Theorie (manchmal auch als die " Frankfurter Schule ", ein wenig für meinen Geschmack zu verdinglichten ), aber es gibt wenig Hinweise niemandem darüber zu reden, weiß, was es überhaupt geht.

    
Max Horkheimer , teilweise von Arthur Schopenhauer ( und nicht so viel von Nietzsche so viele zu glauben scheinen ) inspiriert , ist das Zentrum dieses Programms und widmete einen Großteil seiner Energie auf das Finden der Mittel, um soziale Probleme mit Philosophie als Werkzeug zu korrigieren. Das gesamte Programm kann als eine Synthese der politischen Linken und der Kultur rechts ( wenn solche Begriffe viel sagen ) charakterisiert werden , mit Dialog oder geben und nehmen als Schlüsselfrage , ein Ansatz , die manchmal als " Dialektik " .

    
Aus diesem Grund haben wir einen Abdruck seiner früheren Werke , wie Hitler geschrieben wurde, an Stärke und Vernunft es zu verlieren . Hitler ist seit gegangen und hat daher keine Kraft , aber Gesundheit ist noch schneller auf dem Rückzug.
Max Horkheimer 1939Die soziale Funktion der Philosophie
Geschrieben : in Englisch im Jahr 1939 ;Quelle: Kritische Theorie . Ausgewählte Essays Max Horkheimer , durch Continuum 1982 veröffentlicht ;Public Domain : Dieser Artikel ist frei von Urheberrechten;Transkribiert : von Andy Blunden ;Geprüft : von Chris 2009 korrigiert.
Wenn die Worte Physik, Chemie , Medizin oder Geschichte werden in einem Gespräch erwähnt, haben die Teilnehmer in der Regel etwas ganz bestimmtes im Auge. Sollte eine Meinungsverschiedenheit entstehen , könnten wir eine Enzyklopädie oder anerkannte Lehrbuch konsultieren oder sich an eine oder mehrere hervorragende Spezialisten auf dem Gebiet in Frage. Die Definition von einem dieser Wissenschaften leitet sich unmittelbar von seinem Platz in der heutigen Gesellschaft . Obwohl diese Wissenschaften können die größten Fortschritte in der Zukunft zu machen , obwohl es sogar denkbar, dass mehrere von ihnen , Physik und Chemie können beispielsweise einige Tage zusammengeführt werden soll, wirklich daran interessiert, bei der Definition dieser Begriffe in anderer Weise als durch Referenz ist niemand zu den wissenschaftlichen Aktivitäten jetzt auf unter solchen Überschriften durchgeführt.
Anders ist es mit der Philosophie. Angenommen, wir bitten Sie einen Professor der Philosophie , was Philosophie ist . Wenn wir Glück haben und zufällig einen Spezialisten, der abgeneigt Definitionen in der Regel nicht ist, wird er uns ein . Wenn wir dann diese Definitionen , sollten wir wohl bald entdecken, dass es keineswegs die allgemein akzeptierte Bedeutung des Wortes . Wir könnten dann an andere Behörden zu appellieren und brüten über Lehrbücher , modern und alt. Die Verwirrung wäre nur erhöhen. Viele Denker , der Annahme Plato und Kant als ihren Behörden, den Bezug Philosophie als exakte Wissenschaft in seinem eigenen Recht , mit seinen eigenen Bereich und im Thema. In unserer Zeit diese Vorstellung wird vor allem durch den späten Edmund Husserl vertreten. Andere Denker wie Ernst Mach , konzipieren Philosophie als kritische Ausarbeitung und Synthese der Einzelwissenschaften zu einem einheitlichen Ganzen . Bertrand Russell, auch hält , dass die Aufgabe der Philosophie ist , "dass der logischen Analyse , gefolgt von logischen Synthese. " Er damit voll einverstanden mit LT Hobhouse , der , dass " Philosophie erklärt ... eine Synthese der Wissenschaften zum Ziel . " Diese Konzeption geht zurück auf Auguste Comte und Herbert Spencer , für die Philosophie bildeten das gesamte System des menschlichen Wissens. Philosophie ist es daher, eine unabhängige Wissenschaft für einige, eine Tochtergesellschaft oder eine Hilfsdisziplinfür andere.
Wenn die meisten Autoren der philosophischen Werke einig über die Wissenschaftlichkeit der Philosophie, ein paar, aber bei weitem nicht das Schlimmste , haben mit Nachdruck geleugnet . Für den deutschen Dichter Schiller, dessen philosophische Essays haben einen Einfluss vielleicht sogar tiefer als seine Dramen hatte , den Zweck der Philosophie war es, ästhetische Ordnung in unsere Gedanken und Handlungen zu bringen. Schönheit war das Kriterium der Ergebnisse. Andere Dichter wie Hölderlin und Novalis , hielt eine ähnliche Position und sogar reinen Philosophen, Schelling zum Beispiel, in einigen ihrer Formulierungen kam sehr nahe. Henri Bergson, jedenfalls besteht darauf, dass die Philosophie ist eng mit Kunst und keine Wissenschaft .
Als ob die unterschiedliche Ansichten über den allgemeinen Charakter der Philosophie noch nicht genug, finden wir auch die unterschiedlichsten Vorstellungen über seinen Inhalt und seine Methoden . Es gibt noch einige Denker, die die Philosophie ist ausschließlich mit den höchsten Begriffe und Gesetze des Seins besorgt zu halten, und letztlich mit der Erkenntnis Gottes . Dies gilt für die aristotelischen und thomistischen Neo- Schulen. Dann gibt es die Ansicht, dass die damit verbundene Philosophie beschäftigt sich mit dem so genannten a priori. Alexander beschreibt die Philosophie als "die experimentelle oder empirische Studie der nicht- empirischen oder a priori und von Fragen wie ergeben sich aus der Relation der empirischen an die a priori" ( Raum, Zeit und Gottheit ) . Andere, die von den englischen Genussmenschen und der deutschen Schule von Fries und Apelt ableiten , begreifen Sie es als die Wissenschaft von der inneren Erfahrung . Nach den logischen Empiristen wie Carnap , wird im wesentlichen mit der wissenschaftlichen Philosophie betreffenden Sprache , nach der Schule von Windelband und Rickert ( eine andere Schule mit vielen amerikanischen Anhänger ) geht es um universelle Werte , vor allem mit der Wahrheit , Schönheit , Güte und Heiligkeit.
Schließlich weiß jeder, dass es keine Einigung in der Methode . Der Neo- Kantianer alle glauben , dass das Verfahren der Philosophie muss bei der Analyse der Konzepte und deren Reduktion auf die letzten Elemente der Erkenntnis bestehen . Bergson und Max Scheler betrachten Intuition ( " Wesensschau , Wesenserschauung "), um die entscheidende philosophische Akt sein . Die phänomenologische Methode Husserls und Heideggers flächig mit dem Empiriokritizismus entgegen. von Mach und Avenarius . Die logistische von Bertrand Russell, Whitehead, und ihre Anhänger , ist der erklärte Feind der Dialektik von Hegel. Die Art des Philosophierens man bevorzugt hängt nach William James , auf den Charakter und Erfahrung.
Diese Definitionen haben , um anzuzeigen, dass die Situation in der Philosophie ist nicht die gleiche wie in anderen intellektuellen Beschäftigungen erwähnt. Egal, wie viele Streitpunkte kann es in diesen Bereichen zu sein, zumindest die allgemeine Linie ihres geistigen Arbeit ist allgemein anerkannt. Die prominentesten Vertreter mehr oder weniger einig, Gegenstand und Methoden. In der Philosophie , aber Widerlegung einer Schule durch eine andere Regel beinhaltet vollständige Ablehnung , die Negation der Inhalt ihrer Arbeit als grundlegend falsch. Diese Haltung wird nicht von allen Schulen gemeinsam genutzt , natürlich. Eine dialektische Philosophie , zum Beispiel , im Einklang mit ihren Prinzipien , neigen dazu, die relativen Wahrheiten der einzelnen Standpunkte zu extrahieren und in einer eigenen umfassenden Theorie führen sie . Andere philosophischen Lehren , wie moderne Positivismus , haben weniger elastisch Grundsätze , und sie ausschließen, einfach aus dem Bereich des Wissens einen sehr großen Teil der philosophischen Literatur , vor allem die großen Systeme der Vergangenheit an. Kurz gesagt , kann es nicht selbstverständlich ist , dass jeder, der Begriff "Philosophie" Aktien mit seinem Publikum mehr als ein paar sehr vage Vorstellungen nutzt .
Die einzelnen Wissenschaften widmen sich , um Probleme , die behandelt werden müssen , weil sie aus dem Lebensprozess der heutigen Gesellschaft entstehen . Sowohl die einzelnen Probleme und deren Zuteilung an bestimmte Disziplinen ableiten , in der letzten Analyse von den Bedürfnissen der Menschen in Vergangenheit und Gegenwart Organisationsformen. Dies bedeutet nicht, dass jede einzelne wissenschaftliche Untersuchung genügt eine dringende Notwendigkeit . Viele wissenschaftliche Unternehmen produziert Ergebnisse , dass die Menschheit könnte leicht verzichten kann. Wissenschaft ist keine Ausnahme von dieser fehlerhaften Anwendung von Energie, die wir in allen Bereichen des kulturellen Lebens zu beobachten. Die Entwicklung der Zweige der Wissenschaft , die nur einen zweifelhaften praktischen Wert für die unmittelbare Gegenwart haben, ist jedoch ein Teil dieser Ausgaben der menschlichen Arbeit , die eine der notwendigen Bedingungen der wissenschaftlichen und technologischen Fortschritt ist . Wir sollten uns daran erinnern, dass bestimmte Zweige der Mathematik, die auf bloße Spielzeuge auf den ersten zu sein schien , später stellte sich heraus, außerordentlich nützlich zu sein. So , aber es gibt wissenschaftliche Unternehmen, die zu keiner sofortigen Einsatz führen kann , alle von ihnen haben einige potentielle Anwendbarkeit innerhalb der gegebenen gesellschaftlichen Realität , Remote- und vage sie auch sein mag . Von ihrem Wesen , ist die Arbeit der Wissenschaftler in der Lage, bereichern das Leben in seiner heutigen Form . Seine Tätigkeitsfelder sind daher weitgehend für ihn markiert , und die Versuche , die Grenzen zwischen den verschiedenen Bereichen der Wissenschaft, um neue Disziplinen zu entwickeln , sowie kontinuierlich zu differenzieren und integrieren diese zu ändern, werden immer von sozialer Not geführt wird, ob bewusst oder nicht. Diese Notwendigkeit ist auch wirksam , wenn auch indirekt , in den Labors und Hörsälen der Universität, nicht zu erwähnen, die chemischen Laboratorien und statistischen Abteilungen großer Industrieunternehmen und in den Krankenhäusern .
Philosophie hat keinen solchen Führer. Natürlich spielen viele Wünsche auf sie , es wird erwartet, dass Lösungen für Probleme, die die Wissenschaften entweder nicht behandeln oder zu behandeln unbefriedigend finden. Aber die Praxis des gesellschaftlichen Lebens bietet kein Kriterium für Philosophie, Philosophie kann auf keine Erfolge verweisen. Soweit einzelne Philosophen gelegentlich tun etwas bieten in dieser Hinsicht ist es eine Frage der Dienstleistungen, die nicht spezifisch philosophischen sind . Wir haben zum Beispiel die mathematischen Entdeckungen von Descartes und Leibniz , die psychologischen Untersuchungen von Hume, die physikalischen Theorien von Ernst Mach, und so weiter. Die Gegner der Philosophie auch sagen, dass , soweit es Wert hat , ist es nicht die Philosophie, sondern die positive Wissenschaft . Alles andere in philosophischen Systemen ist nur geredet , sie behaupten , gelegentlich anregend, aber in der Regel langweilig und immer nutzlos. Philosophen , auf der anderen Seite eine gewisse hartnäckige Missachtung für das Urteil der Außenwelt. Seit der Studie von Sokrates, war es klar, dass sie ein gespanntes Verhältnis mit der Wirklichkeit , wie sie ist , und vor allem mit der Gemeinschaft, in der sie leben. Die Spannung nimmt manchmal die Form von offenen Verfolgung , zu anderen Zeiten nur Versagen , ihre Sprache zu verstehen. Sie müssen in einem Versteck leben , körperlich oder geistig . Wissenschaftler auch in Konflikt mit den Gesellschaften ihrer Zeit. Aber hier müssen wir den Unterschied zwischen dem philosophischen und wissenschaftlichen Elemente , von denen wir schon gesprochen haben, wieder aufzunehmen, und umgekehrt die Bild, weil die Gründe für die Verfolgung der Regel lag in den philosophischen Ansichten dieser Denker , nicht in ihrer wissenschaftlichen Theorien. Galileo bitteren Verfolgern unter den Jesuiten gab zu, dass er frei, seine heliozentrische Theorie zu veröffentlichen gewesen, wenn er sie in der richtigen philosophischen und theologischen Kontext gestellt hätte. Albertus Magnus selbst diskutiert die heliozentrische Theorie in seiner Summa , und er war nie für sie angegriffen. Darüber hinaus ist der Konflikt zwischen Wissenschaft und Gesellschaft , zumindest in der Neuzeit nicht mit Fundamental verbunden , sondern nur mit einzelnen Lehren , nicht durch diese toleriert oder dieser Behörde in einem Land zu einer Zeit , toleriert und sogar gefeiert in einem anderen Land bei der gleichzeitig oder kurz danach .
Die Opposition der Philosophie zur Wirklichkeit ergibt sich aus ihren Grundsätzen . Philosophie besteht darauf, dass die Maßnahmen und Ziele der Mann muss nicht das Produkt des blinden Notwendigkeit. Weder die Konzepte der Wissenschaft noch die Form des sozialen Lebens , weder die vorherrschende Denkweise noch die vorherrschenden Sitten sollten durch individuelle und unkritisch akzeptiert werden praktiziert . Die Philosophie hat sich gegen bloße Tradition und Resignation in den entscheidenden Probleme der Existenz gesetzt , und es hat die unangenehme Aufgabe zu werfen, das Licht des Bewusstseins auch auf jene menschlichen Beziehungen und Reaktionsweisen , die geworden sind so tief verwurzelt , dass sie natürlich erscheinen , unveränderlich schult , und ewig. Man könnte antworten, dass die Naturwissenschaften , auch, und vor allem ihre Erfindungen und technologischen Veränderungen , die Menschheit vor den tief getragen Nuten der Gewohnheit. Vergleichen wir das heutige Leben mit dieser dreißig, fünfzig oder hundert Jahren , können wir nicht wahrheitsgemäß die Vorstellung, dass die Wissenschaften nicht gestört menschlichen Sitten und Gebräuche akzeptieren . Nicht nur Industrie und Verkehr , aber auch die Kunst , wurde rationalisiert. Eine Einzeldarstellung genügt. In früheren Jahren wäre ein Dramatiker erarbeiten seine individuelle Auffassung von der menschlichen Probleme in der Abgeschiedenheit seines persönlichen Lebens . Als seine Arbeit endlich in die Öffentlichkeit gelangt , wodurch er seine Welt der Ideen, um mit der bestehenden Welt in Konflikt ausgesetzt und damit an der Entwicklung seines eigenen Geistes und des sozialen Geist. Aber heute sowohl die Produktion und Rezeption von Kunstwerken auf dem Bildschirm und im Radio wurden vollständig rationalisiert. Filme werden nicht in einer ruhigen Studio vorbereitet, ein ganzes Team von Experten eingeschaltet ist. Und von Anfang an das Ziel ist nicht Harmonie mit etwas Ahnung, aber Harmonie mit den gegenwärtigen Ansichten der Öffentlichkeit, mit dem allgemeinen Geschmack, sorgfältig geprüft und zuvor von diesen Experten berechnet. Wenn manchmal das Muster eines künstlerischen Produkts nicht mit der öffentlichen Meinung zu harmonisieren , wird der Fehler in der Regel nicht in einer inneren Meinungsverschiedenheiten , sondern in einer falschen Schätzung von den Herstellern der Reaktion von Publikum und Presse . So viel ist sicher : kein Bereich der Industrie, entweder materieller oder ideeller , ist immer in einem Zustand völliger Stabilität; Zoll keine Zeit , in der sich niederzulassen haben . Die Grundlagen der heutigen Gesellschaft verschieben sich immer durch die Intervention der Wissenschaft. Es gibt kaum eine Tätigkeit in der Wirtschaft oder in der Regierung , die vermutlich nicht ständig in die Vereinfachung und Verbesserung engagiert.
Aber wenn wir ein wenig tiefer zu untersuchen , entdecken wir, dass trotz all dieser Erscheinungen , Denken und Handeln des Menschen ist nicht so viel wie ein geführt werden könnten , zu glauben, voran. Im Gegenteil, die Prinzipien zugrunde liegen nun die Aktionen der Menschen, zumindest in einem großen Teil der Welt sind sicherlich mehr mechanische als in anderen Zeiten, in denen sie leben, in das Bewusstsein und die Überzeugung begründet wurden . Der technologische Fortschritt hat dazu beigetragen, dass es noch einfacher, alte Illusionen mehr fest zu zementieren , und neue zu in den Köpfen der Menschen ohne Einmischung von Grund vorstellen . Es ist die Diffusion und Industrialisierung der Kultureinrichtungen, die wichtigen Faktoren des geistigen Wachstum rückläufig und sogar verschwinden , denn der Oberflächlichkeit von Inhalten , Dumpfheit der intellektuellen Organen, und die Beseitigung einiger der individualistischen schöpferischen Kräfte des Menschen verursachen. In den letzten Jahrzehnten diese doppelte Aspekt der Siegeszug von Wissenschaft und Technik wurde wiederholt von beiden romantisch und Vordenker festgestellt. Die Französisch Schriftsteller Paul Valéry hat kürzlich formuliert die Situation mit besonderer Beweiskraft . Er erzählt , wie er zum Theater als Kind , eine Fantasie , in dem ein junger Mann wurde von einem bösen Geist , der jede Art von teuflischen Gerät verwendet, um ihn zu erschrecken und machen ihn zu tun, seine Gebote verfolgt sehen übernommen. Als er im Bett lag und in der Nacht, umgeben ihn der böse Geist mit höllischen Dämonen und Flammen , und plötzlich würde sein Zimmer ein Ozean und die Bettdecke ein Segel zu werden. Kaum hatte ein Geisterbild verschwindet , als eine neue angekommen. Nach einer Weile diese Schrecken nicht mehr der kleine Junge zu beeinflussen, und schließlich, wenn ein neuer begann , rief er aus : Voilà les bêtises qui recommencent ! ( Hier kommt etwas mehr von diesem Unsinn! ) Eines Tages , Valéry schließt , könnte die Menschheit in gleicher Weise zu den Entdeckungen der Wissenschaft und die Wunder der Technik reagieren.
Nicht alle Philosophen, und wir zuletzt Aktien Paul Valéry pessimistische Auffassung des wissenschaftlichen Fortschritts . Aber es ist wahr , dass weder die Errungenschaften der Wissenschaft selbst , noch dem Fortschritt in der industriellen Verfahren , sind sofort identisch mit der wirklichen Fortschritt der Menschheit. Es ist offensichtlich, dass der Mensch wesentlich sein , emotional und trotz der Fortschritte von Wissenschaft und Wirtschaft in entscheidenden Punkten intellektuell verarmt . Wissenschaft und Technik sind nur Elemente in einer bestehenden gesellschaftlichen Totalität , und es ist durchaus möglich, dass , trotz aller Erfolge , andere Faktoren , auch die Totalität selbst, könnte nach hinten bewegt, könnte der Mensch zunehmend verkümmert und unglücklich , dass der einzelne konnte ruiniert werden und Nationen auf eine Katastrophe geführt. Wir sind glücklich , dass wir in einem Land, das sich mit nationalen Grenzen und Kriegssituationen über einem halben Kontinent getan hat, zu leben. Aber in Europa, während die Kommunikationsmittel immer mehr schnelle und vollständige , während Entfernungen zurückgegangen, während die Lebensgewohnheiten wurde mehr und mehr gleich, wuchs Zollmauern höher und höher, bis Nationen fieberhaft Waffen angehäuft , und beide Außenbeziehungen und interne politische Bedingungen angefahren und kamen schließlich zu einem Zustand des Krieges . Diese antagonistische Situation behauptet sich in anderen Teilen der Welt , auch, und wer weiß , ob und für wie lange der Rest der Welt in der Lage, sich gegen die Folgen in ihrer ganzen Intensität zu schützen. Rationalismus in Details kann leicht mit einer allgemeinen Irrationalismus zu gehen. Aktionen von Einzelpersonen, korrekt als angemessen und im täglichen Leben nützlich angesehen wird, kann auch Abfall und Zerstörung für die Gesellschaft bedeuten. Deshalb ist in Zeiten wie der unsrigen, müssen wir daran denken , dass der beste Wille, etwas Nützliches zu schaffen in ihr Gegenteil führen , einfach weil es blind für das, was über die Grenzen der wissenschaftlichen Fachgebiet oder Beruf, liegt, ist , weil es auf das, was am nächsten steht bei der Hand und verkennt ihre wahre Natur , für die letztere nur in den größeren Kontext offenbart werden. Im Neuen Testament : "Sie wissen nicht, was sie tun" bezieht sich nur auf die Übeltäter . Wenn diese Worte sind nicht für alle Menschen gelten , Denken darf nicht nur in den Fachwissenschaften beschränkt werden und auf die praktische Erlernen der Berufe , dachte die die materiellen und geistigen Voraussetzungen, die in der Regel für selbstverständlich untersucht , dachte , die mit menschlichen imprägniert Zweck diese Beziehungen des täglichen Lebens, fast blind erstellt und verwaltet.
Als es hieß, dass die Spannung zwischen Philosophie und Wirklichkeit ist von grundlegender Bedeutung , anders als die gelegentlichen Schwierigkeiten , gegen die Wissenschaft muss in das gesellschaftliche Leben zu kämpfen , dies bezog sich auf die Tendenz in der Philosophie verkörpert , nicht ein Ende zu setzen Gedanken , und insbesondere Kontrolle ausüben über alle diese Faktoren des Lebens , die allgemein als fixiert werden , unüberwindliche Kräfte oder ewigen Gesetze . Das war genau die Frage in der Studie des Sokrates. Gegen die Forderung zur Vorlage bei den Zoll von den Göttern und bedingungslose Anpassung an die traditionellen Formen des Lebens geschützt, behauptet Sokrates das Prinzip , dass der Mensch sollte wissen, was er tut, und Form seines eigenen Schicksals . Sein Gott wohnt in ihm , das heißt , in seiner eigenen Vernunft und Willen . Heute sind die Konflikte in der Philosophie nicht mehr als Kämpfe um Götter erscheinen , aber die Situation in der Welt ist nicht weniger kritisch. Wir sollten in der Tat werden die gegenwärtige Situation zu akzeptieren , wenn wir behaupten, dass Vernunft und Realität sind versöhnt und Autonomie des Menschen innerhalb dieser Gesellschaft versichert waren . Die ursprüngliche Funktion der Philosophie ist immer noch sehr relevant.
Es kann nicht falsch sein , anzunehmen , dass dies die Gründe, warum Diskussionen innerhalb der Philosophie und sogar Diskussionen über den Begriff der Philosophie , sind so viel mehr als radikalen und unversöhnlichen Diskussionen in den Wissenschaften. Im Gegensatz zu anderen Verfolgung, hat die Philosophie nicht über ein Aktionsfeld markiert für sie innerhalb der vorgegebenen Reihenfolge. Diese Ordnung des Lebens mit seiner Hierarchie der Werte , ist selbst ein Problem für Philosophie. Während die Wissenschaft noch immer in der Lage, zu bestimmten Daten, die den Weg für sie darauf verweisen , muß die Philosophie auf sich selbst zurückfallen, auf dessen eigenen theoretischen Aktivität. Die Bestimmung ihres Gegenstandes fällt in sein eigenes Programm viel mehr als es der Fall mit den Fachwissenschaften , auch heute noch , wenn diese so tief mit den Problemen der Theorie und Methodik vertieft. Unsere Analyse gibt uns auch einen Einblick in die Grund -Philosophie hat so viel mehr Aufmerksamkeit in der europäischen Lebens als in Amerika erhalten . Die geographische Expansion und der historischen Entwicklung haben es ermöglicht, bestimmte soziale Konflikte, die in Europa wegen der bestehenden Beziehungen wiederholt und scharf abgefackelt haben , an Bedeutung in diesem Kontinent unter der Belastung der Öffnung des Landes und der Durchführung der täglich zurückgeführt Aufgaben . Die grundlegenden Probleme des gesellschaftlichen Lebens gefunden, eine temporäre praktische Lösung , und so die Spannungen , die zu theoretischen Denkens in bestimmten historischen Situationen zu geben, wurde nie so wichtig. In diesem Land , hinkt theoretischen Denkens in der Regel weit hinter der Bestimmung und die Ansammlung von Fakten. Ob diese Art von Aktivität immer noch die Anforderungen, die mit Recht auf Wissen in diesem Land zu gemacht werden erfüllt , ist ein Problem, das wir nicht die Zeit , um jetzt zu diskutieren haben.
Es ist wahr , dass die Definitionen vieler moderner Autoren , von denen einige bereits zitiert , kaum zeigen, dass Charakter der Philosophie, die sie von allen Fachwissenschaften unterscheidet .
Viele Philosophen werfen neidische Blicke auf ihre Kollegen in anderen Fakultäten , die viel besser sind, weil sie einen gut markierten Feld der Arbeit , deren Fruchtbarkeit für die Gesellschaft nicht in Frage gestellt werden müssen. Diese Autoren kämpfen zu "verkaufen" Philosophie als eine besondere Art von Wissenschaft, oder zumindest , um zu beweisen , dass es sehr nützlich für die Fachwissenschaften . In dieser Art und Weise präsentiert , ist die Philosophie nicht mehr die Kritiker , sondern die Diener der Wissenschaft und der Sozialformen im Allgemeinen. Eine solche Haltung ist ein Bekenntnis , die Gedanken , die die vorherrschenden Formen der wissenschaftlichen Tätigkeit transzendiert und somit überschreitet den Horizont der heutigen Gesellschaft , ist unmöglich. Dachte eher zufrieden, die dafür festgelegt durch die immer neuen Bedürfnisse der Regierung und der Industrie Aufgaben anzunehmen und mit diesen Aufgaben in der Form, in der sie empfangen werden, umzugehen. Das Ausmaß, in dem Form und Inhalt dieser Aufgaben die richtigen sind für die Menschen in der heutigen historischen Moment , die Frage, ob die soziale Organisation , in der sie entstehen, ist immer noch für die Menschheit - solche Probleme weder wissenschaftlich noch philosophisch in den Augen sind diese bescheidenen Philosophen , sie Fragen für die persönliche Entscheidung , für die subjektive Bewertung durch die Person, die nach seinem Geschmack und Temperament übergeben hat, sind . Die einzige philosophische Position , die in einer solchen Auffassung erkannt werden kann, ist der negative Lehre , dass es wirklich keine Philosophie , dass die systematische Gedanke muss in den entscheidenden Momenten des Lebens zurückziehen , kurz gesagt, philosophischen Skeptizismus und Nihilismus.
Bevor Sie fortfahren , ist es notwendig , den Begriff der sozialen Funktion der Philosophie hier aus einer anderen Ansicht , am besten in mehreren Zweigen der modernen Soziologie , der Philosophie mit einem allgemeinen gesellschaftlichen Funktion, nämlich Ideologie identifiziert vertreten vorgestellt unterscheiden. Diese Ansicht macht geltend, dass das philosophische Denken , oder richtiger , dachte als solche ist nur der Ausdruck einer bestimmten sozialen Situation . Jede soziale Gruppe - die deutschen Junkers , zum Beispiel - ein Begriffsapparat entwickelt , bestimmte Methoden des Denkens und einer bestimmten Denkstil angepasst, um ihre soziale Stellung . Seit Jahrhunderten das Leben der Junkers hat mit einer bestimmten Reihenfolge nacheinander in Verbindung gebracht , ihre Beziehung zum Fürstenhaus , auf die sie angewiesen waren und ihre eigenen Diener hatte patriarchalischen Funktionen. Daher neigten sie dazu, ihr ganzes Denken auf die Formen der organischen , der geordneten Folge von Generationen , auf das biologische Wachstum zu stützen. Alles schien unter dem Aspekt des Organismus und natürliche Bindungen. Liberalen Bourgeoisie , auf der anderen Seite , deren Glück und Unglück hängen von Geschäftserfolg , dessen Erfahrung hat sie gelehrt , dass alles auf den Nenner des Geldes reduziert werden , haben ein abstrakter, mechanistische Denkweise entwickelt. Nicht hierarchisch , sondern Nivellierung Tendenzen sind charakteristisch für ihre intellektuellen Stil , ihrer Philosophie . Der gleiche Ansatz gilt für andere Gruppen , Vergangenheit und Gegenwart. Mit der Philosophie von Descartes, zum Beispiel , müssen wir uns fragen , ob seine Vorstellungen entsprach den aristokratischen und Jesuiten- Gruppen des Gerichts, oder an die Noblesse de Robe, oder die unteren Bourgeoisie und den Massen. Jedes Muster der Gedanke, jedes philosophische oder andere Kulturarbeit gehört zu einer bestimmten sozialen Gruppe , mit der es stammt, und mit deren Existenz er bis gebunden. Jedes Muster des Denkens ist " Ideologie. "
Es besteht kein Zweifel , dass es eine Wahrheit in dieser Haltung. Viele Ideen sind heute weit verbreitet zeigte auf bloße Illusionen sein, wenn wir sie aus der Sicht ihrer sozialen Basis. Aber es reicht nicht , diese Ideen mit jemand sozialen Gruppe korrelieren , wie die soziologische Schule tut. Wir müssen tiefer zu durchdringen und zu entwickeln, sie aus der entscheidenden historischen Prozess , aus dem die sozialen Gruppen selbst zu erklären sind . Nehmen wir ein Beispiel. In Descartes ' Philosophie, mechanistische Denken, besonders Mathematik, eine wichtige Rolle spielt . Wir können sogar sagen, dass diese ganze Philosophie ist die Universalisierung des mathematischen Denkens . Natürlich können wir jetzt versuchen, einige Gruppe in der Gesellschaft , deren Charakter Korrelat mit diesem Standpunkt zu finden , und wir werden wahrscheinlich eine bestimmte Gruppe zu finden , wie in der Gesellschaft von Descartes ' Zeit . Aber ein komplizierter , aber mehr ausreichend, Ansatz ist, die Produktivsystem dieser Tage, zu studieren und zu zeigen, wie ein Mitglied der aufstrebenden Mittelklasse, durch die Kraft seiner Aktivität sehr in Handel und Produktion, wurde veranlasst , um genaue Berechnungen machen, wenn er wollte seine Macht zu erhalten und in der neu entwickelten Wettbewerbsmarkt zu erhöhen, und das gleiche gilt seiner Agenten , so zu sprechen, in Wissenschaft und Technik , deren Erfindungen und andere wissenschaftliche Arbeiten in den ständigen Kampf zwischen Individuen , Städte spielten eine so große Rolle und Nationen in der modernen Zeit . Für all diese Themen , die gegebene Annäherung an die Welt war seine Überlegung mathematisch . Da diese Klasse durch die Entwicklung der Gesellschaft, wurde charakteristisch für die gesamte Gesellschaft , wurde dieser Ansatz weit weit über der Mittelklasse selbst gestreut. Soziologie ist nicht ausreichend. Wir müssen eine umfassende Theorie der Geschichte haben , wenn wir schwere Fehler vermeiden möchten. Ansonsten laufen wir Gefahr, über wichtige philosophische Theorien, die zufällig, oder jedenfalls nicht entscheidend Gruppen und der Verkennung der Bedeutung des bestimmten Gruppe in der gesamten Gesellschaft , und damit der verkennen, zu dem Kultur-Muster in Frage. Aber dies ist nicht der Haupteinwand . Die stereotype Anwendung des Begriffs der Ideologie zu jedem Muster des Denkens ist , in der letzten Analyse, die auf der Vorstellung, dass es keine philosophische Wahrheit , in der Tat keine Wahrheit für die Menschheit , und dass alle Gedanken seinsgebunden ( situativ festgelegt) . In seiner Methoden und Ergebnisse es gehört nur zu einer bestimmten Schicht der Menschheit und ist nur gültig für diese Schicht. Die Einstellung zu den philosophischen Ideen genommen werden nicht umfassen objektive Prüfung und praktische Anwendung , sondern eine mehr oder weniger komplizierte Beziehung zu einer sozialen Gruppe . Und die Ansprüche der Philosophie sind damit zufrieden. Wir leicht erkennen , dass diese Tendenz , ist die letzte Folge die Auflösung der Philosophie in einer speziellen Wissenschaft, in die Soziologie , wiederholt nur die skeptische Ansicht, die wir bereits kritisiert, es wird nicht berechnet , um die soziale Funktion der Philosophie zu erklären, sondern um führen Sie eine selbst, nämlich das Denken von seiner praktischen Tendenz , die auf die Zukunft zu verhindern.
Die reale gesellschaftliche Funktion der Philosophie liegt in seiner Kritik , was weit verbreitet ist . Das bedeutet nicht, oberflächliche Fehlersuche mit individuellen Ideen oder Bedingungen , als wenn ein Philosoph waren eine Kurbel. Es bedeutet auch nicht , dass der Philosoph beschwert sich über diese oder jene isolierten Zustand und schlägt Heilmittel. Das Hauptziel der Kritik ist, wie die Menschheit von sich selbst in diesen Ideen und Aktivitäten, die die bestehende Organisation der Gesellschaft flößt seiner Mitglieder verlieren verhindern. Man muss gemacht werden , um die Beziehung zwischen seiner Tätigkeit und was wird dadurch erreicht , insbesondere zwischen seiner Existenz und dem allgemeinen Leben der Gesellschaft , zwischen seinen täglichen Projekte und den großen Ideen, die er anerkennt, zu sehen. Philosophie macht den Widerspruch , in dem der Mensch in so weit, muss er sich um isolierte Ideen und Konzepte im Alltag legen verstrickt . Mein Punkt kann leicht aus der folgenden gesehen werden. Das Ziel der westlichen Philosophie in seinem ersten vollständigen Form , in Plato , war es, in einem umfassenden System des Denkens aufheben und negieren Einseitigkeit , in einem System flexibler und besser der Realität angepasst. Im Zuge der einige der Dialoge , der Lehrer zeigt, wie sein Gesprächspartner unweigerlich in Widersprüche verwickelt , wenn er seine Position zu einseitig hält . Der Lehrer zeigt, dass es notwendig ist, um von dieser einen Idee zur anderen zu fördern , für jede Idee erhält seine eigentliche Bedeutung nur innerhalb des gesamten Systems von Ideen. Betrachten Sie zum Beispiel die Diskussion über die Natur der Mut in den Laches . Wenn der Gesprächspartner klammert sich an seine Definition , dass Mut bedeutet nicht vom Schlachtfeld läuft, wird er zu erkennen, dass in bestimmten Situationen ein solches Verhalten keine Tugend, sondern Tollkühnheit , wie wenn die ganze Armee auf dem Rückzug und ein einziges Individuum versucht sein, gewinnen den Kampf ganz allein. Das gleiche gilt für die Idee der Sophrosyne , als unzureichend Mäßigkeit oder Mäßigung übersetzt . Sophrosyne ist sicherlich eine Tugend , aber es wird zweifelhaft , wenn es die einzige Ende der Aktion gemacht und wird nicht in Kenntnis aller anderen Tugenden geerdet. Sophrosyne ist nur denkbar als ein Moment der richtige Verhalten im Ganzen. Noch ist der Fall weniger für Gerechtigkeit. Guter Wille , der Wille , gerecht zu sein , ist eine schöne Sache. Aber das subjektive Streben ist nicht genug. Der Titel der Gerechtigkeit wird nicht auf Maßnahmen , die in Absicht gut waren aber nicht in der Ausführung anfallen . Dies gilt für das Privatleben sowie staatliche Aktivität. Jede Maßnahme , unabhängig von den guten Absichten des Autors, kann gefährlich werden , wenn sie auf umfassende Kenntnisse und für die Situation geeignet ist. Summum ius , sagt Hegel in einem ähnlichen Zusammenhang kann sich summa injuria . Wir können den Vergleich in der Gorgias gezogen erinnern . Das Handwerk des Bäckers , der Koch und der Schneider sind an sich sehr nützlich. Aber sie können zu Verletzungen führen, wenn hygienische Überlegungen ihren Platz im Leben des Einzelnen und der Menschheit zu bestimmen. Häfen , Werften, Befestigungsanlagen , und Steuern sind im gleichen Sinne gut. Aber wenn das Glück der Gemeinde ist vergessen , diese Faktoren von Sicherheit und Wohlstand zu Instrumenten der Zerstörung.

Late Capitalism or Industrial Society? -- Adorno

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THE ABSURD TIMES



 



Prior to some time ago when Critical Theory first appealed to me, the only writing I had ever come across by Theodore Adorno was a very strange essay attacking culture through an analysis of an American “situation comedy,” an art form that is only as good as its writers and the producers will allow.  One of my own favorites was called “Bilko,” which I saw in a re-run, and noticed that it was written by Neil Simon.  Such quality is missing today, or at least not allowed.

But the situation comedy he was writing about featured an educational institution, a high school, with a principal who was in charge of the teachers, mainly women, and who acted like a rooster in a hen house.  It focused mainly on the relationships between the faculty and the principal, and an occasional student, quite stupid, provided much of the so-called “humor.”  It took me quite awhile from his description and attack to realize what show he was writing about.  It turned out that he had selected “Our Miss Brooks,” with Eve Arden.  He never named it and that was part of the problem.  It seemed to me that he took the situation too seriously and underestimated Wally Cox, one of the male teachers, as a humorist.  (He could also yodel quite well, BTW.)  To me, it became more significant that a later show of the same sort, “Happy Days,” focused on the students and the teachers were non-existent.  This evolution quite accurately reflects how American society changed. 

But that is beside the point, of course, which is why I wrote it.

This following essay is quite interesting.  I have no qualms about citing the translator as called for under the creative commons tradition.  Andy Blunden does a magnificent job.  It is quite amazing how Adorno distinguishes between what words factually entail on the one hand, and the matter at hand on the other, as the same word (Sachverhalten) is used for both.  Only in German is this possible.

One other observation: German often does not like to import words, preferring to put several of its own words together than stoop to such an ignominious role.  Perhaps the reader is familiar with the term “Ferensprecher” to replace “telephone”.  (I’m not sure of the spelling.)

Anyway, here is Adorno’s Address:
 

Theodor Adorno, 1968

Late Capitalism or Industrial Society?
Opening Address to the 16th German Sociological Congress


Source: http://www.efn.org/~dredmond/AdornoSocAddr.html;
Translation: © 2001 Dennis Redmond;
CopyLeft: translation used with permission, Creative Commons (Attribute & ShareAlike);
Original German: from Suhrkamp Verlag as: Theodor W. Adorno. Collected Works, Volume 4;
Transcribed: by Andy Blunden.

It has become customary for the outgoing chair of the German Society for Sociology to say a few words of their own. In this case, his own position and the meaning of the problems being posed are not to be strictly separated: each is unavoidably conjoined to the other. On the other hand he can hardly present definitive solutions, which is the whole point of discussion by the Congress. This theme was originally suggested by Otto Stammer. In the meeting of the Executive Committee charged with arranging the conference, it was gradually transformed; the present title crystallized out through “teamwork” [in English]. Those who are unfamiliar with the state of current debate in the social sciences can be forgiven for suspecting that this is a question of mere nomenclature; that experts have the idle luxury of pondering whether the contemporary era is to be named late capitalism or industrial society. In truth, it is not a question of mere termini but something absolutely fundamental. The presentations and discussions will be assisting us to ascertain whether the capitalist system continues to rule, albeit in a modified form, or whether industrial development has made the concept of capitalism itself, the difference between capitalist and non-capitalist states, and indeed the critique of capitalism, outmoded. In other words, as to whether the currently popular thesis in sociology, that Marx is obsolete, is correct. According to this thesis, the world has been so thoroughly determined by an unimaginably-extended technology [Technik: technics], that the corresponding social relations which once defined capitalism, the transformation of living labor into commodities and therein the contradiction of classes, is becoming irrelevant, insofar as it has not become an archaic superstition. All this can be related to the unmistakable convergence between the technically most advanced countries, the United States and the Soviet Union. In terms of living-standards and consciousness, class differences have become on the whole far less visible in the Western states in question than in the decades during and after the industrial revolution. The prognoses of class-theory such as immiseration and economic crisis have not been so drastically realized, as one must understand them, if they are not to be completely robbed of their content; one can speak of relative immiseration only in a comic sense. Even if Marx’s by no means one-sided law of sinking profit-rate has not been borne out on a system-immanent level, one must concede that capitalism has discovered resources within itself, which have permitted the postponing of economic collapse ad Kalendas Graecus - resources which include the immense increase of the technical potential of society and therein also the consumer goods available to the members of the highly industrialized countries. At the same time the relations of production have shown themselves to be, in view of such technological developments, far more elastic than Marx had suspected.
The criterion of class relations, which empirical research is fond of referring to as “social stratification” [in English], strata divided according to income, life-style, education, are generalizations of the findings of specific individuals. To that extent they may be called subjective. In contrast to this, the more traditional concept of class was objective, meant to be independent of indices, which are garnered out of the immediate life of subjects, however much, by the way, that these express social objectivities. Marxist theory rests on the position of entrepreneurs and workers in the production-process, and ultimately of their control over the means of production. In the predominant contemporary strains of sociology this conclusion has for the most part been rejected as dogmatic. The controversy needs to be sorted out theoretically, not simply through the presentation of facts, which indeed for their part make numerous contributions to the critique, but which in light of critical theory can also conceal the structure. Even the opponents of dialectics have no wish to delay a theory, which serves to account for sociology’s own interests. The controversy is essentially one concerninginterpretation - even if it were only the attempt to banish the demand for such in the purgatory of that which is extra-scientific.
A dialectical theory of society concerns itself with structural laws, which condition the facts, in which it manifests itself and from which it is modified. By structural laws we mean tendencies, which more or less stringently follow the historical constitution of the total system. The Marxist models for this were the law of value, the law of accumulation, the law of economic crisis. Dialectical theory did not intend to turn structures into ordered schematas, which could be applied to sociological findings as completely, continually and non-contradictorily as possible; nor systemizations, but rather the procedures and data of scientific cognition of the already-organized system of society. Such a theory ought least of all to withhold facts from itself, to twist them around according to a thema probandum. Otherwise it would in fact fall right back into dogmatism and would repeat conceptually what the entrenched authorities of the Eastern bloc have already perpetrated through the instrument of Diamat: freezing into place what, according to its own concept, cannot be otherwise thought than as something which moves. The fetishism of the facts corresponds to one of the objective laws. Dialectics, which has had its fill of the painful experience of such hegemony, does not hegemonize in turn, but criticizes this just as much as the appearance, that the individuated and the concrete already determine the course of the world hic et nunc [Latin: here and now]. It’s very likely that under the spell of the latter the individuated and the concrete do not even exist yet. Through the word pluralism, utopia is suppressed, as if it were already here; it serves as consolation. That is why however dialectical theory, which critically reflects on itself, may not for its part install itself domestic-style in the medium of the generality. Its intention is precisely to break out of this medium. It too is not immune before the false division of reflective thinking and empirical research. Some time ago a Russian intellectual of considerable influence told me that sociology is a new science in the Soviet Union. He meant of course the empirical kind; that this might have something to do with what in his country is a doctrine of society raised to a state religion was no more apparent to him, than the fact that Marx conducted empirical inquests. Reified consciousness does not end where the concept of reification has a place of honor. The inflated bluster over concepts such as “imperialism” or “monopoly,” without taking into consideration what these words factually entail [Sachverhalten], and to what extent they are relevant, is as wrong, that is to say irrational, as a mode of conduct which, thanks to its blindly nominalistic conception of the matter at hand [Sachverhalten], refuses to consider that concepts such as exchange-society might have their objectivity, revealing a compulsion of the generality behind the matter at hand [Sachverhalten], which is by no means always adequately translated into the operational field of the facts of the matter [Sachverhalte]. Both are to be opposed; to this extent the theme of the Congress, late capitalism or industrial society, testifies to the methodological intent of self-critique out of freedom.
A simple answer to the question which lies in that thematic, is neither to be expected nor really to be sought after. Alternatives which compel one to opt for one or the other determination, even if only theoretically, are already mandatory situations, modeled after an unfree society and transposed onto the Mind [Geist], towards which the latter ought to do what it can to break unfreedom through its tenacious reflection. As completely as the dialectician may refuse to draw a defining line between late capitalism and industrial society, the less can he indulge in the pleasure of a non-committal on-the-one-hand-but-on-the-other-hand. He must guard against simplification, contrary to Brecht’s suggestion, precisely because the well-worn commonplace suggests the well-worn response, just as the opposite answer falls so easily from the lips from his opponents.
Whoever does not wish to be hoodwinked by the experience of the preponderance of the structure over the matter at hand [Sachverhalten], will not, unlike most of his opponents, devalue contradictions in advance to methodology, to mere conceptual errors and attempt to stamp them out through the harmony of scientific systematics. Instead he will trace them back into the structure, which was antagonistic ever since organized society first emerged, and which remains so, just as the extra-political conflicts and the permanent possibility of a catastrophic war, most recently also the Russian invasion of Czechoslovakia, crassly demonstrate. This glosses over an alternative thinking, to that unbroken formal-logical non-contradictoriness which projects itself onto that which is to be thought. It is not a question of choosing between either form, according to one’s scientific viewpoint or taste, but rather their relationship expresses for its part the contradiction which characterizes the current era, and it befits sociology to articulate this theoretically.
Many prognoses of dialectical theory have a contradictory relationship to one another. Some simply did not fulfill themselves; certain theoretical-analytical categories have lead meanwhile to aporias, which can only be thought out of the world with the utmost artifice. Other predictions, originally closely associated with the former, have been resoundingly confirmed. Even those who do not reduce the meaning of a theory to its prognoses, would not hesitate to ascribe the claim of the dialectical one as partly true and partly false. These divergences require for their part theoretical explanation. That one cannot speak of a proletarian class-consciousness in the leading industrial countries does not necessarily refute, in contrast to the communis opinio [prevailing opinion], the existence of classes: class was determined by the position to the means of production, not by the consciousness of its members. There are no lack of plausible reasons for the lack of class-consciousness: that workers are no longer being immiserated, that they were increasing integrated into bourgeois society and its world-views, as compared to the period during and immediately after the industrial revolution, when the industrial proletariat was being recruited from paupers and stood half-extraterritorial to society, could not have been foreseen. Social being does not immediately produce class consciousness. Without the masses, and indeed precisely because of their social integration, having any more control over their social destiny than 120 years ago, they lack not only class solidarity, but also the full consciousness of this, that they are objects and not subjects of social processes, which nevertheless animate them as subjects. Class- consciousness, on which according to Marxist theory the qualitative leap forwards depended, was consequently and at the same time an epiphenomenon. If however no class consciousness emerges over long periods in countries supposedly determined by class relations, for example North America, insofar as it had ever been present there; if the question of the proletariat becomes a puzzle-picture, then quantity rebounds into quality, and the suspicion of a conceptual mythology can only be suppressed by decree, not assuaged by thought. This development is difficult to separate from the central plank of Marxist theory, namely the doctrine of surplus value. This was supposed to explain the relationship of classes and the increase of class antagonisms as something objectively economic. But if the share of living labor, from which all surplus value accordingly flows, sinks, thanks to the extension of technological progress, to a tendential limit-point, then this affects the central plank, the theory of surplus value. The current lack of an objective theory of value is conditioned not merely by what the academy narrowly defines as scholastic economics. It also refers back to the prohibitive difficulty of objectively grounding the construction of classes without the theory of surplus value. Non-economists may find it illuminating, that even the so-called neo-Marxist theories attempt to stop the holes in their treatment of constitutive problems with scraps of subjective economics. The responsibility for this is certainly not merely the weakness of theoretical capability. It’s conceivable that contemporary society cannot be contained within a coherent theory. By comparison, Marx had it much easier, when he laid out the fully-fledged system of liberalism as a science. He only needed to ask whether capitalism corresponded in its own dynamic categories to this model, in order to produce, out of the determinate negation of the preexisting theoretical system, a system-like theory in its own right. Meanwhile the market economy has become so honeycombed, that it mocks any such confrontation. The irrationality of the contemporary social structure hinders its rational development in theory. The perspective that the direction of economic processes is passing into the hands of political power, though it follows from the logical dynamic of the system, is at the same time also one of objective irrationality. This, and not simply the sterile dogmatism of its followers, should help to explain why for a long time no really convincing objective theory of society emerged. Under this aspect the renunciation of such would be no critical advance of the scientific spirit, but an expression of compulsory resignation. The regression of society runs parallel to that of its thinking.
In the meantime we are faced with no less drastic facts, which for their part can be interpreted without [Adorno's emphasis] the usage of hte key concepts of capitalism only with th eutmost violence and caprice. The economic process continues to perpetuate domination over human beings. The objects of such are no longer merely the masses, but also the administrators and their hangers-on. In terms of the traditional theory, they have become largely functions of their own production-apparatus. The much-belabored question of the “managerial revolution” [in English], concerning the supposed transition of domination from the juridical owners to the bureaucracy is correspondingly secondary. then as now, this process produces and reproduces classes which, though not necessarily in the form of Zola’s Germinal, at the very least a structure which the anti-socialist Nietzsche anticipated with the expression, all herd and no shepherd. In this, however, was concealed what he did not want to see: the same odl social oppression, only now become anonymous. If the theory of immiseration was not borne out of à la lettre [to the letter], then it certainly has in the no less frightening sense, that unfreedom, one’s dependence on the consciousness of those who serve an uncontrollable apparatus, is spreading universally over humanity. The much-maligned immaturity of the masses is only the reflex of this, this they are as little as ever autonomous masters of their lives; like in mythology, it confronts them as a doom [Schicksal: fate, destiny]. Empirical investigations show by the way that even subjectively, according to their reality-principle [Realitaetsbewusstsein], classes are by no means so leveled out as one at times presumes. Even the theories of imperialism do not become obsolete due to the forcible withdrawal of the great powers from their colonies. The process which they referred to continues in the antagonism of both monstrous power-blocs. The supposedly outmoded doctrine of social antagonisms, including the telos of the final crisis, is being immeasurably trumped by manifestly political ones. Whether and to what extent class relations have been relocated onto those between the leading industrial nations and the much courted-after developing countries, remains to be seen.
In the categories of critical-dialectical theory I would like to suggest as a first and necessarily abstract answer, that contemporary society is above all an industrial society according to the level of its productive forces [Adorno’s emphasis]. Industrial labor has become the model pattern of society everywhere and across all borders of political systems. It developed itself into a totality due to the fact that modes of procedure, which resemble the industrial ones, are extending by economic necessity into the realms of material production, into administration, the distribution-sphere and that which we call culture. Conversely, society is capitalism in terms of its relations of production [Adorno’s emphasis]. Human beings are still what they were according to the Marxist analysis of the middle of the 19th century: appendages of machines, not merely in the literal sense as workers, who have to adapt themselves to the constitution of the machines which they serve, but far beyond this and metaphorically, compelled to assume the roles of the social mechanism and to model themselves on such, without reservation, on the level of their most intimate impulses. Production goes on today just as it did before, for the sake of profits. Needs have gone beyond anything Marx could have foreseen in his time, completely becoming the function of the production-apparatus, which they potentially were all along, instead of the reverse. They are totally governed [gesteuert: mechanically steered, governed]. To be sure, even within this transformation, as pinned-down and adapted to the interests of the apparatus as it is, the needs of human beings are smuggled in, something which the apparatus never fails to direct popular attention to. But the use-value side of commodities has in the meantime been shorn of their last “naturally-grown” or self-apparent truth [Selbstverstaendlichkeit: casualness, self-evidence]. Not only are needs satisfied purely indirectly, by means of exchange-values, but within the relevant economic sectors produced by the profit-motive, and thus at the cost of the objective needs of the consumers, namely those for adequate housing, and completely so in terms of the education and information over the processes which most affect them. In the realm of necessities not directly connected with basic living standards, use-values as such are tending to dissolve or be exhausted; a phenomenon which appears in empirical sociology under termini such as status symbols and prestige, without really being objectively grasped by such. The highly industrialized countries of the Earth, so long as, in spite of Keynes, some renewed economic natural catastrophe does not occur, have learned to conceal the more visible forms of poverty, albeit not to the extent that the thesis of the “affluent society” [in English] would have it. The bane, however, which the system exerts over human beings, has only become stronger due to this integration, insofar as such comparisons can be reasonably made. It is undeniable that the increasing satisfaction of material needs, in spite of their distortion by the apparatus, hints incomparably more concretely to the possibility of a life without necessity. Even in the poorest countries, no-one need hunger anymore. That the envelope before the consciousness of the possible has nonetheless become thin indeed, is supported by the panic-stricken fright created by any sort of social enlightenment which is not broadcast by the official communication systems. What Marx and Engels, who strove for a truly humane organization of society, denounced as utopian for merely sabotaging such an organization, has become a palpable reality. Nowadays the critique of utopia has sunk into the common ideological stockpile, while at the same time the triumph of technical productivity strives to maintain the illusion that utopia, incompatible with the relations of production, has already been realized within its realm. But the contradictions in their new, international-political quality - the arms race of East and West - make that which is possible at the same time impossible.
To see through all this demands, indeed, that one does not cast the blame on what critique has time and again been side-tracked by, namely technics, that is to say the productive-forces, thereby indulging in a kind of theoretical machine-breaking on an expanded level. Technics is not the disaster, but rather its intertwining with the social relations, in which it is entangled. One need only recall how the conscious application of the profit-motive and power-motive [Herrschaftsinteresse: “power-interest,” used here in the sense of factory discipline] canalizes technical development: they fatally harmonize, in the meantime, with the necessity of supervision. It is not for nothing that the invention of means of destruction has become the prototype of the new quality of technics. By contrast, the potential of those which distance themselves from domination, centralization, and violence against nature, and which would also probably permit the healing of much of what is literally and figuratively is damaged by technics, is left to die on the vine.
Contemporary society exhibits, in spite of all assertions to the contrary, as its dynamism and increase of production, static aspects. These include the relations of production. These are no longer merely the property of the owner, but of the administration, all the way to the role of the state as total capitalist. To the extent that its rationalization converges with technical rationality, a.k.a. the productive forces, they've undeniably become more flexible. This has created the illusion that the universal interest has its ideal as the status quo and universal employment, not the liberation of heteronomous work. But this condition, from an external political position quite labile, is a merely temporary balance, the result of forces, whose tension threatens to disrupt it. Inside the dominant relations of production, humanity is virtually its own reserve army of labor and is fed through as such. Marx’s expectation, that the primacy of the productive forces was certain to explode the relations of production, was all too optimistic. To that extent Marx remained, as the sworn enemy of German idealism, true to its affirmative construction of history. Trusting in the world-spirit benefited the justification of later versions of that world-order which, according to the eleventh thesis on Feuerbach, was to have been changed. The relations of production have out of sheer self-preservation continued to subjugate the unbound forces of production, through piecework and particular measures. The signature of the epoch is the preponderance of the relations of production over the productive forces, which have nonetheless mocked these relations for some time. That the extended arm of humanity can reach to distant and empty planets, but that it cannot create peace on Earth, highlights the absurdity, towards which the social dialectic is moving. That things happened otherwise than was hoped for is not least due to the fact that the society has ingested what Veblen called the “underlying population.” But the only ones who could wish that this be undone, are those who put the happiness of the abstract totality over that of living individual beings. This development depends for its part once again on that of the productive forces. It was never identical, though, with its primacy over the relations of production. This was never imagined as something mechanical. Its realization had for its precondition the spontaneity of those who were interested in the transformation of the relations, and their number has surpassed the actual industrial proletariat several times over. Objective interest and subjective spontaneity yawn wide from each other; these wither under the disproportionate hegemony of the existent. The sentence of Marx, that theory, too, becomes a genuine force as soon as it seizes the masses, has been turned flagrantly upside down by the course of the world. If the constitution of the world, through planned measures or automatically, hinders the simplest cognition and experience of the most threatening events and indispensable critical ideas and theorems by means of the culture- and consciousness-industries; if it hamstrings, far beyond this, even the basic capacity to imagine the world differently than it overwhelmingly appears to be to those who constitute this world, then these locked-up and manipulated intellectual and spiritual conditions become indeed a genuine power, that of repression, just what its opposite, the emancipated Mind [Geist: mind, spirit, intellect], once wished to combat.
By contrast, the terminus industrial society suggests, to a certain degree, that it’s a question of the technocratic moment in Marx, which this term would like to show the way out of the world, immediately in itself; as if the essence of society followed the level of the productive forces in lockstep, independent of its social conditions. It’s astonishing, how rarely the sociological establishment actually considers this, how rarely it is analyzed. The best part, which by no means needs to be the best, is forgotten, namely the totality, or in Hegel’s words the all-penetrating ether of society. This however is anything but ethereal, but on the contrary an ens realissimum [Latin: that which is real, materially existent]. Insofar as it is abstractly veiled, the fault of its abstraction is not to be blamed on a solipsistic and reality-distant thinking, but on the exchange-relationships, the objective abstractions, which belongs to the social life-process. The power of that abstraction over humanity is far more corporeal than that of any single institution, which silently constitutes itself in advance according to the scheme of things and beats itself into human beings. The powerlessness which the individual experiences in the face of the totality is the most drastic expression of this. Admittedly in sociology the leading social relations realize themselves in the social conditions of production, in accordance with their logical-extensive classificatory nature, far less palpably than in that concrete generality. They become neutralized into concepts of power or social control. In such categories, the point of the spike vanishes and thereby, one would like to say, that which is actually social in society, its structure. It is one of the tasks of today’s sociological congress, to work towards changing this.
It is least of all permissible for dialectical theory to simply set up the productive forces and relations of production as polar opposites. They are delimited by each another, each contains the other in itself. Exactly this leads to the bland recurrence of the productive forces, where the relations of production have the upper hand. The productive forces are, more than ever before, mediated through the relations of production; so completely perhaps, that these appear exactly for that reason as their essence; they have completely become a second nature. Their responsibility lies in this, that in an insane contradiction to what is possible, human beings across great stretches of the Earth live in misery. Even where an abundance of goods is the norm, this stands as if under a curse. The necessity which extends deep into the illusionary appearance [Schein], infects goods with its illusionary character. Objectively true and false needs can indeed be differentiated, though nowhere in the world ought to be signed over to bureaucratic regimentation for this reason. In needs exist always what is good and what is bad in the entire society; they may be the next best thing to market surveys, but they are not in the administered world in themselves the first thing. To judge between true and false consciousness would, according to the insight into the structure of society, require that of all its mediations. That which is fictitious, which distorts all satiation of necessities nowadays, is undoubtedly perceived unconsciously; this contributes significantly to the contemporary discontent in culture. More important than even the almost impenetrable quid pro quo of need, satisfaction and profit- or power-motive is the unrelieved and continuing threat of one need, on which all others depend on, the motive of simple survival. Delimited to a horizon in which at any moment the bomb can fall, even the most riotous display of consumer goods contains an element of self-mockery. The international antagonisms which, however, for the first time are building to a truly total war, stand in flagrant context with the relations of production, in the most literal sense imaginable. The threat of one catastrophe is displaced by the catastrophe of the other. The relations of production could scarcely maintain themselves without the apocalyptic earthquake of renewed economic crises as tenaciously as they do, if an inordinate share of the social product, which would otherwise be unsaleable, were not dedicated to the production of the means of destruction. In the Soviet Union something similar is at work, despite the removal of the market economy. The economic reasons for this are obvious: the requirement for speedy increases in production in the underdeveloped lands necessitates tight, dictatorial administration. Out of the unfettering of the forces of production emerged renewed fetters, those of the relations of production: production became its own end and hindered the purpose of such, i.e. undiminished and fully-realized freedom. Under both systems, the capitalist concept of socially essential work is reduced to a satanic parody: in the marketplace it is based on profit, never on self-evident utility for human beings themselves or their happiness. Such domination of the relations of production over human beings requires above all the fully-matured state of development of the forces of production. While both need to be differentiated, those who wish to grasp the merest part of the baleful spell cast on the situation must constantly use one as a means of understanding the other. The overproduction which drives that expansion, through which the apparently subjective need is received and substituted for, is spit out from a technical apparatus which has come so far towards realizing itself, that it has become, under a certain volume of production, irrational - that is, unprofitable; it is necessarily realized by the relations of production. It is solely from the viewpoint of total annihilation that the relations of production have not fettered the forces of production. The dirigiste methods, however, with which in spite of everything the masses are kept in line, presuppose a kind of concentration and centralization which has not only an economic side but also a technological one, as the mass-media go to show; i.e. that it has become possible to homogenize the consciousness of countless individuals from just a few points, through the selection and presentation of news and commentary.
The power of the relations of production, which were not overthrown, is greater than ever, and yet at the same time they are, as objectively anachronistic, everywhere diseased, damaged, riddled with holes. They do not function by themselves. Economic interventionism is not, as the older liberal school thought, something cobbled together from outside the system, but is rather system-immanent, the embodiment of self-defense; nothing could illuminate the category of dialectics with greater clarity. This is analogous to what became of the erstwhile Hegelian philosophy of law, wherein bourgeois ideology and the dialectic of bourgeois society are so deeply interwoven, in that the state, presumably intervening from beyond the reach of society’s power-struggles, had to be conjured up out of the immanent dialectic of society in order to damper and police the antagonisms of such, lest society, following Hegel’s insight, disintegrate. The invasion of that which is not system-immanent is at the same time also a piece of immanent dialectics, just as, on the opposite end of the spectrum, Marx thought of the overthrow of the relations of production as something compelled by the course of history, and nevertheless as something to be realized outside the closure of the system, as a qualitatively different action. If one argued, on the grounds of interventionism and from the standpoint of large-scale planning, that late capitalism [consumer capitalism] has moved beyond the anarchy of commodity production and is therefore no longer really capitalism, the response must be that the social destiny of the particular within this latter is more contingent than ever before. The model of capitalism never applied so purely as its liberal apologists wished to think. It was already in Marx’s day a critique of ideology, which was supposed to reveal how little the concept which capitalist society had of itself had to do with reality. Not the least of the ironies of this critical motif is that liberalism, which even in its heyday was nothing of the sort, has today been refunctioned in support of the thesis that capitalism is actually not what it is. This, too, points to a transformation. What since time immemorial in capitalist society was, in relation to free and fair exchange, and indeed by consequence of its own implications, irrational (that is to say, unfree and unjust) has increased to the point that its model has collapsed. Exactly this has become a condition, whose integration has turned into the prototype of disintegration, which is appraised as an asset. That which is alien to the system reveals itself to be the inner essence of the system, all the way into its political tendencies. In interventionism the power of resistance of the system has confirmed itself, indirectly in the theory of economic crisis; the transition to domination independent of market forces is its telos. The catchphrase of the “prefab society” is unwitting testament to this. Such a reconfiguration of liberal capitalism has its correlate in the reconfiguration of consciousness, a regression of human beings behind the objective possibility, which today would be open to them. Human beings are sacrificing the characteristics which they no longer need and which only hinder them; the kernel of individuation is beginning to come apart. It’s only in recent times that signs of a counter-tendency are becoming visible in various groups of young people: resistance against blind adjustment, freedom for rationally chosen goals, disgust before the world of swindles and illusions, meditations on the possibility of transformation. Whether the socially ever-increasing drive towards destruction triumphs in spite of this, only time will tell. Subjective regression favors once again the regression of the system. To borrow a phrase which Merton employed in a somewhat different context, because it became dysfunctional, the consciousness of the masses flattened out the system, such that it increasingly divested itself [sich entaeussern: to relinquish, divest oneself of; also to conceptually disclose, to realize] of that rationality of the fixed, identical ego, which was still implicit in the idea of a functional society.
That the forces of production and the relations of production are one nowadays, and that one could immediately construe society from the standpoint of the productive forces alone, says that the current society is socially necessary appearance. It is socially necessary because in fact previously separated moments of the social process, which living human beings incarnate, are being brought into a kind of overall equivalence. Material production, distribution, consumption are administered in common. Their borders, which once separated from inside the total process of externally separated spheres, and thereby respected that which was qualitatively different, are melting away. Everything is one. The totality of the process of mediation, in truth that of the exchange-principle, produces a second and deceptive immediacy. It makes it possible for that which is separate and antagonistic to be, against its own appearance, forgotten or to be repressed from consciousness. This consciousness of society is however an illusion, because it represents the consequences of technological and organizational homogenization, but nonetheless fails to see that this homogenization is not truly rational, but remains itself subordinated itself to a blind, irrational nomothetism [Gesetzmaessigkeit: lawfulness, juridicality]. No truly total subject of society yet exists. The mere appearance ought to be formulated as follows, that everything socially existent today is so thoroughly mediated, that even the moment of mediation is itself distorted by the totality. There is no standpoint outside of the whole affair which can be referred to, from which the ghost could be called by its name; the lever can be deployed only by means of its own incoherence. That is what Horkheimer and I described decades ago as the concept of the technological veil. The false identity between the constitution of the world and its inhabitants through the total expansion of technics is leading in the direction of the confirmation of the relations of production, whose true beneficiaries one searches for in vain, just as proletarians have become invisible. The self-realization of the system in relation to everyone, even functionaries, has reached a limit. It has turned into that fatality, which finds its expression in the current situation, to use Freud’s words, in free-floating angst; free-floating, because it can no longer be fixed on living beings, people or classes. The only relationships ultimately realized between people, however, are those buried under the relations of production. This is why the overwhelming organization of things remains at the same time its own ideology, virtually powerless. As impenetrable as the bane [Bann] is, it’s only a spell [Bann]. If sociology is to do more than just furnish welcome information to agents and interests, by fulfilling those tasks for which it was once conceived, then it is up to it, with means which do not themselves fall prey to the universal character of the fetish, to ensure, be it to ever so modest an extent, that the spell dissolves itself.


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Tha TAO of NSA

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THE ABSURD TIMES


THE TAO OF NSA, PART ONE







OMMM


     In a Zen lesson, or talk, or tale, two monks leave one retreat just before dawn to walk to their home retreat, about a day's walk ahead.  Along the way, about noon, they have to cross a river.  Standing at the river, afraid to cross, is a young girl.  One of the monks picks her up, carries her across the river, and then puts her down.
    The walking continues until they reach the end of the journey when the other monk berates him: "Why did you do that?  You know that it is forbidden to touch a girl lest your mind be distracted from the true path."
    The other monk looked at him, a bit perplexed, and then asked "I left the girl at the river.  Are you still carrying her?"


    NG!

    And so seems the NSA.  We have talked so much about the Constitution and the violations thereof, it is obvious that we are no longer using it.  Egypt is trying to write and pass a Constitution and, since we no longer have any use for ours, why not give it to them? 

    NSA has a program or operation called TAO.  It is still carrying 9/11 with it, even into the new year. 

    Here is the first of some interviews on the subject.  You may also wish to consult Der Spiegel, available in English I believe, for more detail.  This, however, will give you an idea:



MONDAY, DECEMBER 30, 2013

Glenn Greenwald: The NSA Can "Literally Watch Every Keystroke You Make"

The German publication Der Spiegel has revealed new details about a secretive hacking unit inside the National Security Agency called the Office of Tailored Access Operations, or TAO. The unit was created in 1997 to hack into global communications traffic. Hackers inside the TAO have developed a way to break into computers running Microsoft Windows by gaining passive access to machines when users report program crashes to Microsoft. In addition, with help from the CIA and FBI, the NSAhas the ability to intercept computers and other electronic accessories purchased online in order to secretly insert spyware and components that can provide backdoor access for the intelligence agencies. American Civil Liberties Union Deputy Legal Director Jameel Jaffer and journalist Glenn Greenwald join us to discuss the latest revelations, along with the future of Edward Snowden.

TRANSCRIPT

This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report. I’m Amy Goodman, as we continue our conversation about the National Security Agency. On Sunday, the German publication Der Spiegel revealed new details about secretive hacking—a secretive hacking unit inside the NSA called the Office of Tailored Access Operations, or TAO. The unit was created in 1997 to hack into global communications traffic. Still with us, Jameel Jaffer, deputy legal director of the ACLU, director of the ACLU’s Center for Democracy, and Glenn Greenwald, the journalist who first broke the story about Edward Snowden. Glenn, can you just talk about the revelations in Der Spiegel?
GLENN GREENWALD: Sure. I think everybody knows by now, or at least I hope they do after the last seven months reporting, that the goal of the NSA really is the elimination of privacy worldwide—not hyperbole, not metaphor, that’s literally their goal, is to make sure that all human communications that take place electronically are collected and then stored by the NSA and susceptible to being monitored and analyzed. But the specifics are still really important to illustrate just the scope and invasiveness and the dangers presented by this secret surveillance system.
And what the Der Spiegel article details is that one of the things that the NSA is really adept at doing is implanting in various machines—computers, laptops, even cellphones and the like—malware. And malware is essentially a program that allows the NSA, in the terminology that hackers use, to own the machine. So, no matter how much encryption you use, no matter how much you safeguard your communication with passwords and other things, this malware allows the NSA to literally watch every keystroke that you make, to get screen captures of what it is that you’re doing, to circumvent all forms of encryption and other barriers to your communications.
And one of the ways that they’re doing it is that they intercept products in transit, such as if you order a laptop or other forms of Internet routers or servers and the like, they intercept it in transit, open the box, implant the malware, factory-seal it and then send it back to the user. They also exploit weaknesses in Google and YouTube and Yahoo and other services, as well, in order to implant these devices. It’s unclear to what extent, if at all, the companies even know about it, let alone cooperate in it. But what is clear is that they’ve been able to compromise the physical machines themselves, so that it makes no difference what precautions you take in terms of safeguarding the sanctity of your online activity.
AMY GOODMAN: So, I mean, just to be really specific, you order a computer, and it’s coming UPS, or it’s coming FedEx, and they have it redirected to their own—you know, to the NSA, and they put in the malware, the spyware, and then send it on to you?
GLENN GREENWALD: Correct. That’s what the Der Spiegel report indicates, based on the documents that they’ve published. But we’ve actually been working, ourselves, on certain stories that should be published soon regarding similar interdiction efforts. And one of the things that I think is so amazing about this, Amy, is that the U.S. government has spent the last three or four years shrilly, vehemently warning the world that Chinese technology companies are unsafe to purchase products from, because they claim the Chinese government interdicts these products and installs surveillance, backdoors and other forms of malware onto the machinery so that when you get them, immediately your privacy is compromised. And they’ve actually driven Chinese firms out of the U.S. market and elsewhere with these kinds of accusations. Congress has convened committees to issue reports making these kind of accusations about Chinese companies. And yet, at the same time, the NSA is doing exactly that which they accuse these Chinese companies of doing. And there’s a real question, which is: Are these warnings designed to steer people away from purchasing Chinese products into the arms of the American industry so that the NSA’s ability to implant these devices becomes even greater, since now everybody is buying American products out of fear that they can no longer buy Chinese products because this will happen to them?
AMY GOODMAN: The story is reported by Jacob Appelbaum, Laura Poitras and a group of Der Spiegel reporters. Is this based, Glenn, on Edward Snowden’s revelations, the documents that he got out and shared with you and Laura Poitras?
GLENN GREENWALD: Der Spiegel doesn’t actually indicate the origin of the documents, so I’m going to go ahead and let them speak to that themselves. What I can tell you is that there are documents in the archive that was provided to us by Edward Snowden that detail similar programs. Whether these specific documents that Der Spiegel published come from them or from a different source is something I’m going to go ahead and let them address.
AMY GOODMAN: Talk about the beginning of this piece. "In January 2010, numerous homeowners in San Antonio, Texas, stood baffled in front of their closed garage doors." Take it from there, Glenn. Glenn, are you still with us? We may have just lost Glenn. I’ll just read a little more, until we reconnect with Glenn.
“In January 2010, numerous homeowners in San Antonio, Texas, stood baffled in front of their closed garage doors. They wanted to drive to work or head off to do their grocery shopping, but their garage door openers had gone dead, leaving them stranded. No matter how many times they pressed the buttons, the doors didn’t budge. The problem primarily affected residents in the western part of the city, around Military Drive and the interstate highway known as Loop 410.
“In the United States, a country of cars and commuters, the mysterious garage door problem quickly became an issue for local politicians. Ultimately, the municipal government solved the riddle. Fault for the error lay with the United States’ foreign intelligence service, the National Security Agency, which has offices in San Antonio. Officials at the agency were forced to admit that one of the NSA’s radio antennas was broadcasting at the same frequency as the garage door openers. Embarrassed officials at the intelligence agency promised to resolve the issue as quickly as possible, and soon the doors began opening again.
"It was thanks to the garage door opener episode that Texans learned just how far the NSA’s work had encroached upon their daily lives. For quite some time now, the intelligence agency has maintained a branch with around 2,000 employees at Lackland Air Force Base, also in San Antonio."
Jameel Jaffer, the significance of this, and the legality of what is happening here?
JAMEEL JAFFER: You know, I think that what bothers me most about these programs is the bulk aspect of it or the dragnet aspect of it. When the NSA has good reason to believe probable cause that a specific person is engaged in terrorism or something like that, it doesn’t bother me that much that the NSA is surveilling that person. I think that’s the NSA’s job. The problem with a lot of these programs is that they are not directed at people thought to be doing something wrong. They’re not directed at suspected terrorists or even suspected criminals. These programs are directed at everybody. Or, to say that a different way, they’re not directed at all. They’re indiscriminate.
And if you think about what the Fourth Amendment was meant to do, what the Constitution was meant to do, it was meant to ensure that the government couldn’t engage in surveillance without some reason. And all of this, all of this surveillance that the NSA is engaged in, essentially flips that on its head. It collects information about everybody in the hope that the surveillance will lead to suspicion about somebody. It’s supposed to be doing it the other way around, starting with the suspicion and then going to the search. It’s starting with the search and going to suspicion. And I think that that’s really, really dangerous, and it’s exactly what the Fourth Amendment was meant to prohibit.
AMY GOODMAN: You know, when it came to the judge’s decision recently, you have the judge that says that this is constitutional, but it followed the judge saying this is Orwellian and likely unconstitutional. Why the difference of opinion between these two judges?
JAMEEL JAFFER: Well, I think one judge got it right, and the other one got it wrong. I mean, I think that, you know, Judge Pauley—Judge Pauley was not very skeptical towards the government’s claims. The government made claims about the effectiveness of the program, about the necessity of the program, claims that were contradicted by information already in the public record, information put into the public record by government officials. And Judge Pauley nonetheless deferred to the government’s claims in court, which is a disappointment to us.
AMY GOODMAN: Let’s get back to Glenn Greenwald. Glenn, I just read the first couple of paragraphs of the piece in Der Spiegel about the garage doors that wouldn’t open because the garage door openers were actually operating on the same frequency of the NSA, which was really vastly expanding in San Antonio at the time. But could you take it from there? The significance of this and this Tailored Access Operations, this particular unit, and how significant it is?
GLENN GREENWALD: Yeah, one thing I think that it underscores, this was in a community that had no idea that there was this gargantuan NSA hacking unit that had sprawled up in its community, and it shows just the power of how much they’re doing, that they just simply shut down the electric devices of an entire community that didn’t know that they were even there.
But the TAO, the Tailored Access Operations unit, is really remarkable because the government, the U.S. government, has been warning for many years now about the dangers of hackers, both stateless hackers as well as state-sponsored hackers from China and from Iran and from elsewhere. And the reality is that nobody is as advanced or as prolific when it comes into hacking into computer networks, into computer systems, than the NSA. And TAO is basically a unit that is designed to cultivate the most advanced hacking operations and skills of any unit, any entity on the Earth. And so, yet again, what we find is that exactly the dangers about which the U.S. government is shrilly warning when it comes to other people, they’re actually doing themselves to a much greater and more menacing degree than anybody else is. And that’s the significance of this particular unit inside of the NSA, is they do all of the most malicious hacking techniques that hackers who have been prosecuted by this very same government do and much, much more.
AMY GOODMAN: Talk about White Tamale, Glenn Greenwald.
GLENN GREENWALD: Well, I mean, I think that—you know, a lot of the—one of the good things about this particular story is that it was—the lead writer on it was Jake Appelbaum, who is, you know, one of the world’s leading experts when it comes to computer program. He’s the developer of the Tor Project, one of the developers of the Tor Project, which is designed to safeguard anonymity on online browsing, to make it impossible for hostile states to be able to trace where people are. And one of the things he did was take some very technical documents and translated it into a way that the public should be able to understand it.
And so, several of these programs, including White Tamale, are about insertions of malware into various forms of electronics. And he actually gave a speech this morning explaining some of this. And what he essentially said is that, with these programs, the government is able to literally control human beings through control of their machines. We hear all of this—these stories about the NSA being very targeted in the kinds of communications that they want to collect and store, and the types of people whom they’re targeting that are very specific and discriminating, and yet what several of these programs are, that are revealed by Der Spiegel, are highly sophisticated means for collecting everything that a user does, and it implicates the people with whom they’re communicating and a whole variety of other types of online activity in which they’re engaging.
AMY GOODMAN: I want to turn to computer security researcher Jacob Appelbaum, who you were just talking about, who co-wrote the piece for Der Spiegel, who was speaking, as you just said, in Hamburg, Germany, at this conference, the Chaos Communication Congress.
JACOB APPELBAUM: Basically, their goal is to have total surveillance of everything that they are interested in. So there really is no boundary to what they want to do. There is only sometimes a boundary of what they are funded to be able to do and to the amount of things they’re able to do at scale. They seem to just do those things without thinking too much about it. And there are specific tactical things where they have to target a group or an individual, and those things seem limited either by budget or simply by their time.
And as we have released today on Der Spiegel's website, which it should be live—I just checked; it should be live for everyone here—we actually show a whole bunch of details about their budgets, as well as the individuals involved with the NSA and the Tailored Access Operations group, in terms of numbers. So it should give you a rough idea, showing that there was a small period of time in which the Internet was really free and we did not have people from the U.S. military that were watching over it and exploiting everyone on it, and now we see, every year, that the number of people who are hired to break into people's computers as part of grand operations, those people are growing day by day.
AMY GOODMAN: Also speaking in Hamburg, Germany, at the Chaos Communication Congress this weekend was WikiLeaks’ Sarah Harrison, who accompanied Edward Snowden to Russia and spent four months with him. She spoke after receiving a long standing ovation.
SARAH HARRISON: My name is Sarah Harrison, as you all appear to know. I’m a journalist working for WikiLeaks. This year I was part, as Jacob just said, of the WikiLeaks team that saved Snowden from a life in prison. This act in my job has meant that our legal advice is that I do not return to my home, the United Kingdom, due to the ongoing terrorism investigation there in relation to the movement of Edward Snowden documents. The U.K. government has chosen to define disclosing classified documents with an intent to influence government behavior as terrorism.
AMY GOODMAN: That was Sarah Harrison. Glenn Greenwald, talk more about her significance. She isn’t talked about as much, but she said at this conference that after leaving Russia, she’s now in Germany and cannot go back to England, where she lives, for fear of being arrested.
GLENN GREENWALD: Yeah, there’s a lot of people who debate WikiLeaks and the like, but there is no question that WikiLeaks deserves a huge amount of credit for the work they did in saving Edward Snowden from what probably would have been, certainly, ultimate detention by the authorities in Hong Kong, and then extradition or handing over to the United States, which would have put him in prison and silenced him, as Daniel Ellsberg said, pending a trial, and then almost certainly convicted him, given the oppressive laws that prevent whistleblowers who are charged with Espionage Act violations from raising the defense that what they did was justified and they were actually blowing the whistle and not engaged in espionage.
And the person at WikiLeaks who sacrificed the most and who was the most heroic was Sarah Harrison, who flew to Hong Kong, who met Snowden, who traveled with him to Moscow, who stayed with him for several months while first he was in the airport and then he was—he was getting acclimated to his life in Moscow. And not only did she give up those months of her life and put herself at risk, but she’s now in danger of not being able, as she just said in that clip, to return to her own home.
And the terrorism investigation that she was referencing is the one that has arisen and that the U.K. government is conducting in the context of its detention of my partner, David Miranda, at Heathrow Airport. And we’ve challenged that detention in court. And in response, the U.K. government has said, number one, they are conducting an investigation, a criminal investigation, under terrorism laws against him, against Laura Poitras and myself, and against anybody at The Guardian involved in the reporting of these stories. And that means that everybody implicated in the reporting of the story, which has caused a global debate around the world and worldwide reform, is now a suspect in a terrorism investigation. That is how radical and extreme the U.K. government, working in partnership with the U.S. government, has become. And every lawyer that Laura and I have talked to has said, "You should not, in any way, put yourself at risk of getting apprehended by the U.K. government." And obviously, as a British citizen, she is well advised not to return to the U.K., for the crime of working in a journalistic capacity to bring these stories to the world. And of all the criminals that we—of all the criminality that we’ve exposed in this case, I think the most egregious is the attempt by the U.S. and the U.K. government to convert journalism not only into crime and not only into espionage, but into actual terrorism. It’s a real menace to a free press in an ongoing way.
AMY GOODMAN: Glenn, you addressed this congress, the Chaos Congress in Hamburg, but you didn’t go. You did it by Skype or by some form of video communication. Do you feel you can travel to Europe? Do you feel you can travel to the United States?
GLENN GREENWALD: You know, there’s clearly risk for my doing either. I think the big risk—I mean, I would feel completely free to travel to a country like Germany. The problem is, is that Germany is in the EU, along with the U.K., and there are all kinds of laws and other conventions that govern the ability of the U.K. to claim that somebody has engaged in terrorism and then force other EU states to turn them over. And so, I have very good lawyers who are working to resolve all of these various risks, but every lawyer that I’ve spoken with over the past four months has said that "You would be well advised not to travel until these legal issues are resolved." Laura Poitras has gotten the same advice. Obviously, Sarah Harrison has gotten the same advice.
There are very genuine legal threats that are deliberately being hung over the heads of those of us who have worked on these stories and are continuing to work on these stories, in an attempt to intimidate us and deter us from continuing to report. It’s not going to work. We’re going to report as aggressively as if these threats didn’t exist. But their mere existence does provide all sorts of limitations, not only on us, but other journalists who now and in the future will work on similar stories. It is designed to create a climate of fear to squash a free press.
AMY GOODMAN: Former NSA director, General Michael Hayden, appeared onFace the Nation Sunday and accused Edward Snowden of being a traitor.
GEN. MICHAEL HAYDEN: I used to say he was a defector, you know, and there’s a history of defection. Actually, there’s a history of defection to Moscow, and that he seems to be part of that stream. I’m now kind of drifting in the direction of perhaps more harsh language.
MAJOR ELLIOTT GARRETT: Such as?
GEN. MICHAEL HAYDEN: Such as "traitor." I mean—
MAJOR ELLIOTT GARRETT: Based on what?
GEN. MICHAEL HAYDEN: Well, in the past two weeks, in open letters to the German and the Brazilian government, he has offered to reveal more American secrets to those governments in return for something. And in return was for asylum. I think there’s an English word that describes selling American secrets to another government, and I do think it’s treason.
AMY GOODMAN: Hayden also responded to questions about the impact of Snowden’s revelations on the NSA. He was being interviewed by Major Garrett.
MAJOR ELLIOTT GARRETT: Is the NSA stronger or weaker as a result of Edward Snowden’s disclosures?
GEN. MICHAEL HAYDEN: It’s infinitely weaker.
MAJOR ELLIOTT GARRETT: Infinitely?
GEN. MICHAEL HAYDEN: Infinitely. This is the most serious hemorrhaging of American secrets in the history of American espionage. Look, we’ve had other spies. We can talk about Hanssen and Aldrich Ames, but their damage, as bad as it was, was fairly limited, even though in those—both of those cases, human beings actually lost their lives. But they were specific sources, all right? There’s a reason we call these leaks, all right? And if you extend the metaphor, Hanssen and Ames, you could argue whether that was a cup of water that was leaked or a bucket of water that was leaked. What Snowden is revealing, Major, is the plumbing. He’s revealing how we acquire this information. It will take years, if not decades, for us to return to the position that we had prior to his disclosures.
AMY GOODMAN: Glenn Greenwald, I wanted you to respond to that and also the latest request by Edward Snowden to get asylum in, well, the country where you now live, in Brazil, and the significance of the debate, at least reported by The New York Times that’s going on within the intelligence community and the White House about whether Edward Snowden should possibly be granted amnesty.
GLENN GREENWALD: First of all, Michael Hayden, in that clip, as he so often does, just told outright lies. Just anyone who has any doubts should go read the letter that Edward Snowden wrote to the people of Brazil, as well as to the people of Germany, and compare it to what Michael Hayden lied and said that he actually did. He never offered to give documents in exchange for asylum or anything like that. He did the opposite. He has been repeatedly pursued by officials of both countries asking him to participate in the criminal investigations that they are conducting about spying on their citizens. And he was essentially writing a letter to say, "Unfortunately, I’m not able to help, even though I would like to help in any legal and appropriate way, because I don’t actually have permanent asylum anywhere, and the U.S. government is still trying to imprison me. And until my situation is more secure, I’m not able to help." He was writing a letter explaining why he can’t and won’t participate in those investigations, not offering anything in return for asylum or anything else like that.
Secondly, just let me make this point about the complete ignorance of Michael Hayden. He said in that clip that Edward Snowden should now be deemed to be a traitor because he’s engaged in treason by virtue of having offered asylum in exchange for documents. Let’s assume he really did do that. Go and look at what the Constitution defines treason as being. It is very clear. It says treason is the giving of aid and comfort to the enemies of the United States—the enemies of the United States. So, even if you want to believe Michael Hayden’s lie that Edward Snowden offered information and documents in exchange for asylum to Germany and Brazil, are Germany and Brazil enemies of the United States? It’s not treason even if you believe the lies of Michael Hayden.
Thirdly, I think the real question here is: Why do we even have to have the discussion of Edward Snowden needing amnesty and asylum from other countries or needing amnesty from the United States? What he did is not like Aldrich Ames or Hanssen or anybody else like that. He didn’t sell these documents to foreign adversary governments, as he could have, and lived the rest of his life extremely rich. He brought them to some of the leading journalistic organizations in the world and asked that they be published only in a way that will inform his fellow citizens and the rest of the world about what is being done to their privacy. It is classic whistleblowing behavior. And the real question is: Why are whistleblowers in the United States either prosecuted vindictively and extremely or forced to flee the country in order to avoid being in a cage for the rest of their life? That’s the real question.
And the final thing I want to say is, you know, all this talk about amnesty for Edward Snowden, and it’s so important that the rule of law be applied to him, it’s really quite amazing. Here’s Michael Hayden. He oversaw the illegal warrantless eavesdropping program implemented under the Bush administration. He oversaw torture and rendition as the head of the CIA. James Clapper lied to the face of Congress. These are felonies at least as bad, and I would say much worse, than anything Edward Snowden is accused of doing, and yet they’re not prosecuted. They’re free to appear on television programs. The United States government in Washington constantly gives amnesty to its highest officials, even when they commit the most egregious crimes. And yet the idea of amnesty for a whistleblower is considered radical and extreme. And that’s why a hardened felon like Michael Hayden is free to walk around on the street and is treated on American media outlets as though he’s some learned, wisdom-drenched elder statesman, rather than what he is, which is a chronic criminal.
AMY GOODMAN: Finally, Jameel Jaffer, the ACLU is the legal adviser for Edward Snowden—Ben Wizner of the ACLU. What is going on behind the scenes right now? Is there a discussion between Snowden and the U.S. government around the issue of amnesty?
JAMEEL JAFFER: Well, I think that Edward Snowden has been very direct and very open about his intentions and what he wants from the U.S. government. He would like to come back to the United States. Obviously, he doesn’t want to come back under the conditions that are being offered right now.
I think that Michael Hayden’s statements were really irresponsible and outrageous. I mean, the idea that Edward Snowden has damaged national security is ludicrous. And it’s not that Edward Snowden has exposed just secrets of the NSA; he has exposed, as Glenn says, the lies of the NSA. James—the director of national intelligence, Mr. Clapper, testified to Congress that the NSA wasn’t collecting information about millions of Americans. It turns out that they were. The solicitor general told the Supreme Court that the NSA was providing notice to criminal defendants who had been surveilled. Turns out they weren’t. So it’s all these misrepresentations about the NSA’s activities that Edward Snowden has exposed, and I think that’s a great public service. I think it’s a travesty that Edward Snowden is in Russia. And we’re hopeful that he’ll be able to return to the United States, not in—not to face criminal charges, but rather with the kind of amnesty that he deserves.
AMY GOODMAN: I want to thank you both for being with us, Jameel Jaffer, deputy legal director of the ACLU, director of the ACLU’s Center for Democracy, and Glenn Greenwald, who broke the story about Edward Snowden, speaking to us from Brazil, now creating a new media venture with Laura Poitras and Jeremy Scahill and eBay’s Pierre Omidyar.
This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report. Tune in, by the way, to our New Year’s Day show, when we go through the major stories of 2013. Of course, the story about the NSA is top of the list. This is Democracy Now! We’ll be back in a minute.


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The TAO of NSA, Part II

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The Tao of NSA, Yang


Be sure you spell it right.

          So now, the Chaos Conference in German (where else?) is meeting and discussing further the Fourth Amendment, also the First and the Fifth are involved.  Well, also the Sixth, although our current Attorney General has specifically stated the “due process” does not require “adjudication,” which is a polite form of double-talk for “Get Screwed.”

          We also have something for you tort lovers.  Yes, NSA is committing Tortfeasence (hey, you try spelling it).  See, I’m told it is called “conversion,” which has a long tradition in law.  Essentially, the NSA intercepts computer ordered online and then puts a chip of some sort inside.  With that, it can monitor your keystrokes, no matter what sort of encryption you use.  You might screw with them for awhile by using a Dvorak keyboard, but they would catch on anyway.  This “conversion” is a kind of theft.  A simple example would be some kids taking a neighbor’s car out for a couple house without telling them and returning it before they catch on.  This, however, leads to an great deal more.

          See, awhile ago, Bush II had allowed an embargo on any encryption of over 32 bits and it has 64.  64 beats 32.  Certainly this makes perfect sense.  But then anyone who is a terrorist isn’t going to be stopped by only having a mere 32 bits.  I mean, what self-respecting terrorist would be seen dead with only 32 bits?  No, they’d have 128, perhaps double, triple that.  Even more.  Now, 8 bytes to a bit, 8 bits to a letter, 26 letters in the alphabet, plus all the numbers you can think of, to the 32nd power times 32! = well, who the hell cares?  It really reminds me of little old ladies trying to listen in on a party line back in the 30s.  Grow up!











TUESDAY, DECEMBER 31, 2013

WikiLeaks’ Julian Assange Calls on Computer Hackers to Unite Against NSA Surveillance

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange addressed a major gathering of computer experts Monday at the Chaos Communication Congress in Hamburg, Germany, calling on them to join forces in resisting government intrusions on Internet freedom and privacy. We play highlights from Assange’s speech, as well as the one given by Sarah Harrison, the WikiLeaks member who accompanied Edward Snowden to Russia. We also hear from independent journalist and security expert Jacob Appelbaum, who reveals a spying tool used by the National Security Agency known as a "portable continuous wave generator." The remote-controlled device works in tandem with tiny electronic implants to bounce invisible waves of energy off keyboards and monitors to see what is being typed. It works even if the target computer is not connected to the Internet.

TRANSCRIPT

This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
AMY GOODMAN: We turn now to the Chaos Communication Congress, or CCC, in Hamburg, Germany. One of the speakers at the conference was WikiLeaks’ Sarah Harrison, who accompanied Edward Snowden to Russia and spent four months with him. Harrison addressed the audience after receiving a long standing ovation.
SARAH HARRISON: Together with the Center for Constitutional Rights, we filed a suit against the U.S. military, against the unprecedented secrecy applied to Chelsea Manning’s trial. Yet through these attacks, we have continued our publishing work. In April of this year, we launched the Public Library of US Diplomacy, the largest and most comprehensive searchable database of U.S. diplomatic cables in the world. This coincided with our release of 1.7 million U.S. cables from the Kissinger period. We launched our third Spy Files, 249 documents from 92 global intelligence contractors, exposing their technology, methods and contracts. We completed releasing the Global Intelligence Files, over five million emails from U.S. intelligence firm Stratfor, the revelations from which included documenting their spying on activists around the globe. We published the primary negotiating positions for 14 countries of the Trans-Pacific Partnership, a new international legal regime that would control 40 percent of the world’s GDP.
As well as getting Snowden asylum, we set up Mr. Snowden’s defense fund, part of a broader endeavor, the Journalistic Source Protection Defence Fund, which aims to protect and fund sources in trouble. This will be an important fund for future sources, especially when we look at the U.S. crackdown on whistleblowers like Snowden and alleged WikiLeaks source Chelsea Manning, who was sentenced this year to 35 years in prison, and another alleged WikiLeaks source, Jeremy Hammond, who was sentenced to 10 years in prison this November. These men, Snowden, Manning and Hammond, are prime examples of a politicized youth who have grown up with a free Internet and want to keep it that way. It is this class of people that we are here to discuss this evening, the powers they and we all have and can have.
AMY GOODMAN: WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange also addressed the Chaos Communication Congress via video. Speaking from the Ecuadorean embassy in London, Assange urged information technology specialists to join forces to resist government encroachments on Internet freedom.
JULIAN ASSANGE: Those high-tech workers, we are a particular class, and it’s time that we recognized that we are a class and looked back in history and understood that the great gains in human rights and education and so on that were gained through powerful industrial work as we formed the backbone of the economy of the 20th century, I think we have that same ability, but even more so, because of the greater interconnection that exists now, economically and politically, which is all underpinned by system administrators. And we should understand that system administrators are not just those people who administer one unique system or another; they are the people who administer systems. And the system that exists globally now is created by the interconnection of many individual systems. And we are all, or many of us, are part of administering that system, and have extraordinary power, in a way that is really an order of magnitude different to the power industrial workers had back in the 20th century.
And we can see that in the cases of the famous leaks that WikiLeaks has done or the recent Edward Snowden revelations, that it’s possible now for even a single system administrator to have a very significant change to the—or rather, apply a very significant constraint, a constructive constraint, to the behavior of these organizations, not merely wrecking or disabling them, not merely going out on strikes to change policy, but rather shifting information from an information apartheid system, which we’re developing, from those with extraordinary power and extraordinary information, into the knowledge commons, where it can be used to—not only as a disciplining force, but it can be used to construct and understand the new world that we’re entering into.
Now, Hayden, the former director of the CIA and NSA, is terrified of this. In Cypherpunks, we called for this directly last year. But to give you an interesting quote from Hayden, possibly following up on those words of mine and others: "We need to recruit from Snowden’s generation," says Hayden. "We need to recruit from this group because they have the skills that we require. So the challenge is how to recruit this talent while also protecting ourselves from the small fraction of the population that has this romantic attachment to absolute transparency at all costs." And that’s us, right?
So, what we need to do is spread that message and go into all those organizations—in fact, deal with them. I’m not saying don’t join the CIA. No, go and join the CIA. Go in there. Go into the ballpark and get the ball and bring it out—with the understanding, with the paranoia, that all those organizations will be infiltrated by this generation, by an ideology that is spread across the Internet. And every young person is educated on the Internet. There will be no person that has not been exposed to this ideology of transparency and understanding of wanting to keep the Internet, which we were born into, free. This is the last free generation.
The coming together of the systems of governments, the new information apartheid across the world, the linking together, is such that none of us will be able to escape it in just a decade. Our identities will be coupled to it, the information sharing such that none of us will be able to escape it. We are all becoming part of the state, whether we like it or not, so our only hope is to determine what sort of state it is that we are going to become part of. And we can do that by looking and being inspired by some of the actions that produced human rights and free education and so on, by people recognizing that they were part of the state, recognizing their own power, and taking concrete and robust action to make sure they lived in the sort of society that they wanted to, and not in a hellhole dystopia.
AMY GOODMAN: WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange addressing the Chaos Communication Congress that’s taking place in Hamburg, Germany. He, of course, was speaking from the Ecuadorean embassy in London. He fears if he steps foot outside that embassy, where he’s been for a year, that he will be arrested by British authorities, that he would be extradited to Sweden, and he most fears being extradited to the United States.


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KILLING KENNEDY FOR PROFIT

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Note: I came across this and wondered why it had never been posted or published.  It was not doing any good sitting in a cue in draft status, so I've decided to publish it.  Why not?  Perhaps the information has already been made available, but this couldn't hurt, could it?

So, for what it's worth:





          Nobody believes the Warren Report anymore.  In fact, even their lead investigator had his doubts early, but he wisely shut up.  Twenty-two key witnesses died within two years.  RFK actually did investigate for awhile, moved off, and was killed himself when it became possible that he would become president.  It is in the past.

          So, how does the cover-up continue?  It continues by overload.  So much is published on the subject with so many conflicting theories that the role of the military-industrial-corporate complex is pretty well obfuscated.  The authors who do point to that answer are most vigorously labeled as “conspiracy theorists,” while others are free to disseminate their ideas with abandon. 

          One of the main alternative theories is organized crime and there is certainly enough evidence to support them.  It is more likely, however, that any hand the “Mob” had in it was as an instrument, not as planners.  Bobby had long investigated the Mob and that gives even more credence to the idea.

          Actually, you can see the relationship between these corporate interests, the mob, and Cuba in Godfather II– the group sitting around the table with Battista before Castro’s revolution represent a good cross-section.  There are a couple members of organized crime present, but the rest are all corporate interests.

          You can also see one other aspect of this in the following interview:  The Sherman Anti-Trust Act.  The act has been tacitly ignored since Kennedy with the single exception of Carter who broke up the phone company.  That, along with his sympathy for the Palestinians, has ensured that he be marginalized at any function of ex-Presidents.  (Johnson was wise enough to keep his mouth shut when Israel attacked our USS Liberty in 1967.)

          So, we have two things below: one is a list of sources on the JFK Assassination, especially on TV, and the other an interview with Thom Hartmann who at least shows insight into the Anti-Trust situation:



RELATED NEWS COVERAGE

Broadway World, History to Premiere Two Specials Commemorating JFK Assassination, 11/22, Staff report, Oct. 15, 2013. Fifty years after the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, about which conspiracy theories still run rampant, there appears to be one thing most Americans now agree on: that shooter Lee Harvey Oswald was telling the truth. According to an eye-opening national survey conducted by History 74% of Americans believe that Oswald was the fall guy for a larger alternate theory. That's just one of the eye-opening findings revealed in "JFK Assassination: The Definitive Guide, a provocative two-hour special that premieres Nov. 22. History polled thousands of Americans -- the most expansive survey on the Kennedy assassination ever attempted, and the first in nearly a decade, representing citizens of every state and covering a wide range of ages and ethnic, economic and educational backgrounds -- to learn exactly what the country does and doesn't believe regarding the shooting on that fateful day in Dallas and who was responsible. Public skepticism of the so-called "Lone Gunman Theory," supported by the Warren Commission in 1964, is shockingly high. A total of 71% of Americans polled now don't believe that explanation. The show explores the myriad alternative theories that Americans find more plausible. It's an entirely new way to look at the assassination: through the eyes of the American people.
New York Daily News, ‘JFK: The Smoking Gun,’ TV review: David Hinckley, Nov. 2, 2013. An Australian detective concludes that Kennedy died from friendly fire. Reelz puts forward detective Colin McLaren's case that JFK died from an errant Secret Service shot.
Daily Mail, John Kerry doesn't believe that Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone when he shot President Kennedy as he says the government investigation didn't 'get to the bottom' of the assassination, Meghan Keneally Nov. 8, 2013. John Kerry has revealed that he does not believe that President Kennedy's assassin worked alone as the government claimed in their official finding. The Secretary of State added more credibility to conspiracy theories surrounding the former president's death by becoming one of the highest-ranking politicians to openly admit to being suspicious of the official finding. 'To this day, I have serious doubts that Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone,' Kerry told NBC's Tom Brokaw in an interview timed with the 50th anniversary of Kennedy's death.
·                          Secretary of State John Kerry thinks that the shooter was influenced
·                          Suggests it has something to do with the time Oswald spent in the Soviet Union and his connections to communist sympathizers
·                          Does not support the 'grassy knoll' theory or the idea that the CIA was involved
Parkland -- The Movie -- A Review, Roger Stone, Oct. 30, 2013. I went to see Parklandthis past weekend because I was hopeful that director Tom Hanks and his account of the JFK assassination would become as powerful and influential as Oliver Stone's. Parklanddeeply upset me. The movie bends the facts and disposes of the evidence. The Warren Commission would be proud of Tom Hanks and this subtle, manipulative, fictional version of JFK's assassination. 
USA Today, 'Parkland' shines new light on Kennedy assassination, Bryan Alexander, July 28, 2013. The 1963 assassination of President John F. Kennedy continues to prompt controversy regarding motives and means for the killing -- and the implications for history since then to the present.
National Enquirer, 2nd Gunman Named In JFK Assassination! John Blosser and Robert Hartlein, Oct. 23, 2013. Lee Harvey Oswald did not act alone – and the Enquirer can finally name the second gunman who fired the fatal shot at President John F. Kennedy from the grassy knoll in Dallas 50 years ago! In a blockbuster exclusive, the Enquirer has learned that a Cuban exile with ties to both the Mafia and the CIA confessed to being involved in a conspiracy to kill America’s beloved 35th president. The startling new evidence was uncovered by re­spected author Anthony Summers, who revealed the assassin’s identity in an update to his classic 1998 book on Kennedy’s slaying, Not In Your Lifetime.
FireDogLake, “Oops I Shot the President” and Other JFK Conspiracies, Lisa Derrick, Nov. 6, 2013. November is conspiracy month, at least on cable TV, and this November there is a richer crop than ever since this is the 50th anniversary of the assassination of President John Fitzgerald Kennedy in Dallas Texas at Dealey Plaza. Piers Morgan has already blown CNN’s Kennedy wad by having Oliver Stone as a guest, but expect more from the cable and networks – both pro-conspiracy and pro-lone-nut–later in the month. Cable channel Reelz has taken over from The History Channel and Discovery as the super-conspiracy channel, running a series of documentaries starting out with JFK: The Smoking Gun, which is running through the next two weeks. JFK: TSG‘s theory bolsters the Warren Commission by saying Oswald acted alone to purposefully kill Kennedy, but adds that the shot that shattered the president’s skull was from a different gun using a hollow point fragmentation bullet. Only, that shot wasn’t on purpose.

SELECTED JFK FILMS AND VIDEOS

Evidence of Revision. Terrence Redmond. Etymon Productions, 2011.
Executive Action. Starring Burt Lancaster and Robert Ryan, written by Dalton Trumbo, Donald Freed and Mark Lane, and directed by David Miller. 1973. As described in Wikipedia: The film opened to a storm of controversy over the depiction of the assassination: in some places in the U.S., the film ran only 1 to 2 weeks in movie theaters or got pulled from them altogether. The movie was part fiction, but it would contest other reports of the assassination, including the controversial Warren Commission report of 1964, which led to attacks against the film. The trailers for the film never ran on certain television stations, including WNBC-TV in New York City. The criticism of the film and its suggestion of a Military-industrial complex conspiracy led to the film being removed totally from the movie theaters by early December 1973 and getting no TV/Video runs until the 1980s and mid-1990s, when it got legal release and distribution for TV and video. The film was originally released on November 7, 1973, almost two weeks before the tenth anniversary of the JFK Assassination. Donald Sutherland has been credited as having the idea for the film and for hiring Freed and Lane to write the screenplay.
Into Evidence, Forensic Sciences and Law Education Group, Duquesne University, a Corton Production, 2004.
JFK. Producer and Director Susan Bellows. JFK premieres on American Experience on Monday and Tuesday, Nov. 11-12, 2013, 9:00-11:00 p.m. ET on PBS.
JFK, Producer and Director Oliver Stone, starring Kevin Costner, 1991. The movie's popularity led to the passage of the President John F. Kennedy Assassination Records Collection Act of 1992.
Jim Garrison Tapes, The. John Barbour, Blue Ridge/Film Trust, 1992.
JFK: The Smoking Gun. Reelz, 2013. This is based on Mortal Error: The Shot That Killed JFK, a 1992 non-fiction book by Bonar Menninger reporting a theory by sharpshooter, gunsmith and ballistics expert Howard Donahue that a Secret Service agent accidentally fired the shot that actually killed President John F. Kennedy.
I Shot JFK: The Shocking Truth. 2013. Convicted felon James E Files, speaking from prison, admits he pulled the trigger from the grassy knoll, and that organized crime figures Sam Giancana, Johnny Roselli and Chuckie Nicoletti were behind the hit. This is one of trilogy of Shocking Truth documentaries from producer Wim Dankbaar that includesConfessions from the Grassy Knoll: The Shocking Truth and Spooks, Hoods and JFK: The Shocking Truth.
Men Who Killed Kennedy, The. Actors: Hilary Minster and Robert J. Groden. History Channel, 1988.
Mysterious Death of Number 35, The. Directed by Braddon Mendelson. Noisevision Productions, 2008.
Parkland is a 2013 American historical drama film that recounts the chaotic events that occurred following John F. Kennedy's assassination. From Wikipedia description: The film is written and directed by Peter Landesman, produced by Playtone's Tom Hanks and Gary Goetzman, and Bill Paxton with Exclusive Media’s Nigel Sinclair and Matt Sinclair. The film is based on the bookReclaiming History: The Assassination of President John F. Kennedy, by Vincent Bugliosi. Parkland weaves together the perspectives of a handful of ordinary individuals suddenly thrust into extraordinary circumstances: the young doctors and nurses at Parkland Hospital; Dallas’s chief of the Secret Service; an unwitting cameraman who captured what became the most famous home movie in history; the FBI agents who were visited by Lee Harvey Oswald before the shooting; the brother of Lee Harvey Oswald, left to deal with his shattered family; and JFK’s security team, witnesses to both the president’s death and Vice President Lyndon Johnson’s rise to power. Peter Landesman had an ambitious task with his film Parkland -- finding a fresh look at the thoroughly examined assassination of President John F. Kennedy. The screenwriter and first-time director focused on the smaller players with vital but overlooked roles in the chaotic drama which played out on Nov. 22, 1963.
Untold History of the United States, The, Director: Oliver Stone. Writers: Oliver Stone, Peter Kuznick, Matt Graham. Producers: Oliver Stone, Tara Tremaine, Rob Wilson, Carlos Guillermo, Chris Hanley.

 



TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 12, 2013

Thom Hartmann on "The Crash of 2016: The Plot to Destroy America—and What We Can Do to Stop It"

Could the United States face another economic collapse? Writer and broadcaster Thom Hartmann looks back at past financial crises and comes to a startling conclusion. "As long as you don’t look too closely at our nation, things seem under control — the United States looks whole … but when you go around to the 'dark back side' of the nation, you see the shocking truth. There you see a nation whose core fundamentals have been hollowed out," writes Hartmann in his new book, "The Crash of 2016: The Plot to Destroy America — And What We Can Do to Stop It."

TRANSCRIPT

This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
AMY GOODMAN: A new analysis by the Associated Press finds that budget cuts imposed this year under sequestration promise to to be far more painful in 2014. Spending is already frozen at 2013 sequestration levels, and the operating budgets of federal agencies could shrink by billions more. The cuts now in place will remain in effect for the next eight years unless Congress acts to change them. Federal funding for food stamps alone could face a nearly $10 billion reduction over the next decade as part of a compromise bill to break a House-Senate deadlock on spending.
Meanwhile, a new report by the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities finds the cuts outlined in the House Republicans’ version of the bill would disqualify some 170,000 U.S. military veterans from the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, known as SNAP, which provides food aid to one-in-seven Americans. All of this follows the so-called "Great Recession," which began in 2007 and is the longest, deepest economic downturn since the Great Depression of the ’30s. Meanwhile, income inequality is at levels not seen since just before the 1929 Wall Street crash.
Well, our next guest argues in his new book that the country’s past financial crashes—in 1770, in 1856, in 1929—offer valuable insight into how the wealthy have hijacked the government’s response to the most recent crash. Thom Hartmann is the author ofThe Crash of 2016: The Plot to Destroy America—and What We Can Do to Stop It. He’s written more than two dozen best-selling books. He’s the host of the nationally syndicated show, The Thom Hartmann Program.
We welcome you to Democracy Now!, Thom.
THOM HARTMANN: Thank you.
AMY GOODMAN: And congratulations on the book today. So, the title is The Crash of 2016. Why 2016?
THOM HARTMANN: Well, we’re actually in this crash. It really started in 2006 when the housing market started falling apart, just like in 1927 when the housing market fell apart. And that crash lasted for quite some time, as Hoover did nothing. Now we have a situation where it’s not just do nothing. Obama was successful in the first few months of his administration at putting enough of a band-aid on it that they’re holding it back with baling wire and bubble gum. But Bush had hoped—he saw this coming. The Bush administration had hoped that they could wait until November of 2008, so it would be after the elections, so it wouldn’t hurt the Republican candidates. He was unsuccessful. The Obama administration is now—because they’re not doing the real structural change necessary, they’re hoping they can push it off to 2016. And that’s why we chose that date. There’s an enormous amount of effort in our government and in the Fed to try to hold this off until after the elections of 2016. Whether they’re going to be successful or not, I don’t know. It literally could happen next week.
AMY GOODMAN: What’s the royalist conspiracy?
THOM HARTMANN: We are seeing a repeat of what we saw in the 1920s, what we saw in the 1850s, what we saw in the 1760s and 1770s, which is, basically, very wealthy, very powerful interests rising up and—you know, they’re anti—fundamentally anti-democratic. They’re trying to create an oligarchic form of government, and in many cases succeeding. It’s the war of the rich against the poor and the working—the working people, the middle class, in short summary.
AMY GOODMAN: Name names.
THOM HARTMANN: Well, in this generation, you know, we see the Kochs and the Adelsons, and they’re the more visible ones. There are many more who are far less visible. You have—last year on Wall Street alone, you had 10 people who took over $2 billion in income. You’ve got—you know, the president of UnitedHealthcare has taken over a billion dollars in income, Stephen Hemsley. The guy before him, Bill McGuire, took over a billion-and-a-half dollars in income. There’s—there are a number of people, since the rules got changed during the Reagan administration. It was a real—a genuine revolution that set this up, and then the big changes at the end of the Clinton administration that Phil Gramm pushed through, the Gramm-Leach-Bliley and the Commodity Futures Modernization Act. Since then, these people have basically been unleashed. I mean, in the '20s it was the DuPonts and the Morgans and the Rockefellers, and now it's this new bunch. But it’s always the same group.
AMY GOODMAN: And how did they gain by the recession?
THOM HARTMANN: Well, the—some of the biggest fortunes in America over the last century were made during the last Great Depression. If you’re cash rich and everybody is desperately selling everything they have for almost nothing, because they—you know, they’re facing tax liens and they’re going out of business and things, it’s an enormous opportunity to get even richer. So, that’s—they’re benefiting—they are and will benefit from [inaudible].
AMY GOODMAN: In your intro, you’ve got several interesting stories, like about Joe Stack.
THOM HARTMANN: Yeah. Joe Stack flew—infamously or famously, I suppose—his plane into the IRS—into an IRS building and killed an IRS worker. He was a small businessperson who just got basically eaten by the recession. And we describe him as America’s first suicide bomber. I think that Joe Stack, on the one hand, the Occupy movement, and in some ways the tea party movement, at least at the grassroots where people don’t realize who’s pulling the strings, are all signs of this growing populist rage of a nation that is pregnant with, to paraphrase Jefferson, revolution—I’m not talking violent revolution; as I said, the Reagan revolution was a revolution, the FDR revolution, you know—that there is so much pressure right now to—you know, for something to happen. And we’re seeing this. We’re seeing this in the rise of suicides all across the United States. We’re seeing it in the rise of homelessness.
In 1920—in 1932, when Franklin Roosevelt came into office, the White House was occupied. There was an Occupy movement then; it was called the Bonus Army. And literally, from the edge of the White House all the way down to the Potomac River was a sea of people. FDR confronted this enormous occupation. It was the consequence, of course, of three years of the crash not being addressed. I would guess, had he not been able to get this very small stimulus, that stopped us from losing 700,000 jobs a month and took us to kind of a flat level—flat painful, but flat—that there would—you know, that the Occupy movement would have been 10 times larger now, and we’d be looking at something like that.
AMY GOODMAN: Let’s go back to FDR, his inaugural address in 1933.
THOM HARTMANN: Yes.
PRESIDENT FRANKLIN DELANO ROOSEVELT: Our greatest primary task is to put people to work. This is no unsolvable problem if we face it wisely and courageously. It can be accomplished in part by direct recruiting by the government itself, treating the task as we would treat the emergency of a war, but at the same time, through this employment, accomplishing greatly needed projects to stimulate and reorganize the use of our great natural resources.
AMY GOODMAN: That was President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, his inaugural address in 1933. You say President Obama is missing the FDR moment.
THOM HARTMANN: He missed it. I mean, he had—he had that during the first few months of his presidency. And before Scott Brown was put in in the Senate, he had a—I don’t know, I think it was about 13 weeks with a filibuster-proof Senate, and had an opportunity to do these things. But basic—in all probability, he got the same speech Bill Clinton got from Rubin and Summers—or Rubin and Greenspan, rather, when he—when he was installed after running on his "New Covenant" speech, which was a very FDR speech, and then governing as a—as basically an Eisenhower Republican.
The—on the one hand, it’s fairly easy to blame Obama for that. On the other hand, I don’t think that any president in a long, long time has faced such an implacable wall of opposition. And now, because of Citizens United, Buckley v. Valeo, First National Bank, because of these Supreme Court decisions, these politicians on the right—the Republicans, by and large—are funded massively, massively by these billionaires. And so, I think, much like in the '30s, much like in the 1850s, much like in the 1770s, it's going to take a major economic crisis to produce the political will necessary to create the fundamental changes, structural changes in our political and economic system that can make this country work again.
AMY GOODMAN: You relate crashes in the economy with war.
THOM HARTMANN: Yeah, I do. Arnold Toybee—it may be an apocryphal quote, but it’s often attributed to him—said that when the last man who remembers the horrors of the last great war dies, the next great war becomes inevitable, that we remember the glories but not the horrors. And you could say the same of economic disasters, when, you know, we’ve forgotten not only the horrors of the Great Depression, in many ways, but also the lessons that we learned out of them. Every one in the past, every one of these economic disasters, has been followed by a war—the Revolutionary War, the Civil War, World War II. Whether this one is—and each war has been horribly more destructive, because technology improves. Whether this one is is going to depend probably a lot on what is going on around the rest of the world.
AMY GOODMAN: Of course, it was a Republican president, President Dwight Eisenhower, who said in his famous farewell speech to the nation, January 17th, 1961:
PRESIDENT DWIGHT EISENHOWER: My fellow Americans, this evening I come to you with a message of leave-taking and farewell and to share a few final thoughts with you, my countrymen. We have been compelled to create a permanent armaments industry of vast proportions. Three-and-a-half million men and women are directly engaged in the defense establishment. The total influence—economic, political, even spiritual—is felt in every city, every statehouse, every office of the federal government. We recognize the imperative need for this development, yet we must not fail to comprehend its grave implications. In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.
AMY GOODMAN: That was President Eisenhower’s farewell address, January 17th, 1961. That’s an excerpt from the documentary Why We Fight. More than 50 years later, that speech, many argue, is—well, the arguments of the military-industrial complex are more relevant than ever.
THOM HARTMANN: And there’s what’s referred to in economics as a perverse incentive built into this, just like we see with the private prison industry arguing for longer drug sentences and laws because they want to fill up more beds. Ed Snowden worked for a company, Booz Allen, which was owned at one point in time by the Carlyle Group, which was in part owned at one time, ironically, by the bin Laden family. I mean, figure this one out. And we find that, you know, roughly 70 percent, apparently, of the intelligence budget of the United States has been outsourced. Massive chunks of the Pentagon have been outsourced.
So it’s not just, you know, is there going to be a war like, you know, military conflict, intra-country stuff, but we have an industry in the United States that is so powerful and that the Supreme Court has empowered to behave as if they were citizen lobbyists in ways that were unthinkable in—well, actually, has happened in past, but during Eisenhower’s day would have been much more difficult, and certainly after Nixon, that—I mean, for example, the wealthiest zip code in the United States is no longer Beverly Hills. It’s just north of Washington, D.C., where all the mansions of these defense contractors are.
So, there’s an enormous pressure to do something. And I was surprised that we didn’t go to war with Syria. I think the country has been so badly burned by George Bush’s lies and wars that—and that’s another thing that gives me some hope that this depression, this crash, might not be followed by a war. But we’re going to have to wait and see what happens in the Middle East and what happens with Taiwan and China and all these other things.
AMY GOODMAN: And what about the issue of climate change, that you also focus on and just made a video about—
THOM HARTMANN: Yeah, yeah.
AMY GOODMAN: —how this fits into the coming crash of 2016?
THOM HARTMANN: It’s another stressor. There—it’s a very, very significant stressor. And the video that we just did, Last Hours, which is over at lasthours.org, in that, we point out the thing that the IPCC is not talking about right now, but the scientists are, people are hysterical about, is the—or very concerned about, is that there are trillions of tons of methane hydrate, methane frozen up in ice in the Arctic and around continental shelves. If that melts, then there will be a sudden global warming. And when you look at the five past extinctions on the planet Earth, every single one was triggered by one of these methane releases. And that is the worst-case scenario. We’re hopeful that we can avoid it.
AMY GOODMAN: How does Arctic drilling fit into that? Because, of course, the Greenpeace, the Arctic 30, the 28 Greenpeace activists and the two journalists who are now being shipped across Russia, jailed, they were protesting Russia engaging in Arctic drilling.
THOM HARTMANN: Yes, and we’re also on the edge of doing that same thing, and other countries are, as well. The—NASA right now has an experiment called CARVE, Carbon in Arctic Reservoir Vulnerability Experiment. And in our video, we have Charles Miller, one of—the head researcher. And he pointed out to us that there’s over—they’re quite sure there’s over a trillion tons of methane in the Arctic, maybe as much as two and two and change in the Arctic; worldwide, somewhere between four and seven trillion tons. To trigger an extinction might take as little as one to two trillion tons being released. So, when you do away with the ice sheet, and then you—and the Arctic Ocean is rather shallow, frankly—and then you start running ships through there that are stirring the warm waters in, you’re playing with fire.
AMY GOODMAN: So how do you change all this? How do you prevent the crash of 2016? You have a chapter called "Democratize the Economy."
THOM HARTMANN: Yes. To prevent the crash of 2016, we would have to make the fundamental changes that we’re going to have to make afterward. You would have to start enforcing the Sherman [Antitrust] Act again. You would have to—
AMY GOODMAN: Which is?
THOM HARTMANN: Which says that—right now—it was passed in the 1880s, and it says that basically any company that gets so large that they dominate an industry is illegal. And not only the company gets broken up, but people in the company can go to jail, in the Sherman Act. And Reagan, in his second year of his presidency, stopped enforcement of it, functionally, and no president since then has made a serious effort. The last one was Jimmy Carter breaking up AT&T. So, now we have not just the media, but every significant industry in the United States controlled by two, three, four, five at the most, companies. This is—you know, when you look at biological systems, broad and diverse is strong. Top-heavy and narrow is fragile. So, our economy is insanely fragile in that regard.
So, bring back the enforcement of the Sherman Act, thus break up the big banks. Bring back Glass-Steagall, separate commercial banking from gambling banking. Do away with the Commodity Futures Modernization Act. Phil Gramm took us from virtually no gray or black market in these bets on bets on bets, these CDOs, to $800 trillion worth in 2008. And, you know, his wife Wendy was on the board of Enron. Ken Lay desperately wanted to be able to play these games. Phil Gramm got his legislation in 1999 and 2000. Bill Clinton, I think, had no idea what this would mean, just happily signed it. And that was when this was set. So, if we did these things, we could prevent this. There’s clearly not the political will, which is why I’m asserting that the crash will happen, and that will generate the political will.
AMY GOODMAN: What gives you the most hope, when you see grassroots movements, which you cover, too, on The Thom Hartmann [Program]?
THOM HARTMANN: Yeah. Oh, yeah. What gives me the most hope is the fact that young people are waking up. They’re getting it, particularly—I mean, you see it just on the ground in their student loans, that their parents, grandparents and great-grandparents never experienced, that the predator class in this country is eating everything in its path. And the Occupy movement was a great beginning for that. We’ll see what’s next. And then, on the other hand, you’ve got a lot of boomers who are still very politically active. It’s the people in the middle who are just desperately trying to raise a family and work that are—
AMY GOODMAN: You focus a good deal on the Koch brothers and what you call the Kochtopus.
THOM HARTMANN: Yeah, yeah. Well—
AMY GOODMAN: Why are they so significant today?
THOM HARTMANN: Because they fund so many different pieces of what has become the Libertarian/Republican machine, this notion that government is bad somehow, that Reagan introduced in his first inaugural. The thing that people have to get is, you know, if you don’t like government, that’s fine, but if you take government out of the way, if you take—if you stop administering the commons by the government, there’s an enormous vacuum. And there’s a whole lot of billionaires who are just waiting to step into that vacuum. So, if we don’t have government regulation, for example, of, you know, smokestack things, then the Kochs make more money, but all the rest of us get more cancers.
AMY GOODMAN: And their wealth comes from?
THOM HARTMANN: It’s interesting. Their father, you know, cut a deal with Joe Stalin to develop the oil fields in Russia. So—and today—I mean, there was a report a few weeks ago—we haven’t been able to confirm all of it—that if the Keystone pipeline is built, it goes to refineries in part owned by the Koch brothers, that they could make as much as $100 billion. That’s more than they’re actually worth right now.
AMY GOODMAN: Tell us the story of James Richard Verone.
THOM HARTMANN: The fellow who committed suicide?
AMY GOODMAN: The—he robbed the bank for one dollar.
THOM HARTMANN: Oh, yes! Yes, I’m sorry, there’s—
AMY GOODMAN: Many stories in the book.
THOM HARTMANN: I know the stories; I’m terrible with names. Yeah, this was a—this was a fellow who—he couldn’t find a job. He had a growth in his chest. He was concerned about, you know, "Where do I go? What do I do?" And he walked into a bank and gave the teller a—you know, "I’m robbing this bank for one dollar." And then he sat down and waited to be arrested. And it was because he needed medical care. And he said, you know, "If you don’t have your health, you have nothing. I’d rather be alive and in jail than be dying."
AMY GOODMAN: And get healthcare in prison.
THOM HARTMANN: Yeah, yeah. And he did, by the way. He got healthcare as soon as he was arrested.
AMY GOODMAN: We’re going to break. When we come back, I want to ask you about the secretary of state, John Kerry’s comments that he doesn’t think Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone, on this 50th anniversary of the assassination of John Kennedy. You wrote a whole book about this. We’re talking to Thom Hartmann, the nationally syndicated talk show host of The Thom Hartmann [Program]. His new book, out just today, The Crash of 2016: The Plot to Destroy America—and What We Can Do to Stop It. Stay with us.


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TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 12, 2013

As John Kerry Questions Official Story of JFK Killing, Thom Hartmann Discusses "Legacy of Secrecy"

This month marks the 50th anniversary of the assassination of President John F. Kennedy in 1963. It is a topic our guest Thom Hartmann wrote about the 2009 book, "Legacy of Secrecy: The Long Shadow of the JFK Assassination," co-authored with Lamar Waldron. Warner Brothers is now making the book into a movie, starring Leonardo DiCaprio in the role of FBI informant Jack Van Laningham. The topic of JFK’s assassination has also been in the news after last week’s interview with Secretary of State John Kerry on NBC, in which he expressed doubts about whether JFK’s accused shooter acted alone. Kerry was questioned about those remarks Sunday by NBC’s David Gregory. Kerry declined to elaborate on his beliefs about a possible conspiracy surrounding the assassination.

TRANSCRIPT

This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
AMY GOODMAN: Next week, November 22nd marks the 50th anniversary of the assassination of John F. Kennedy, 1963. It’s a topic our guest, Thom Hartmann, wrote about in his 2009 book that he co-authored, Legacy of Secrecy: The Long Shadow of the JFK Assassination. Warner Brothers is now making the book into a movie, starring Leonardo DiCaprio in the role of FBI informant Jack Van Langingham.
Well, the topic of JFK’s assassination has also been in the news after last week’s interview with Secretary of State John Kerry on NBC, in which he expressed doubts about whether JFK’s accused shooter, Lee Harvey Oswald, acted alone. Kerry was questioned about those remarks Sunday by NBC’s David Gregory.
DAVID GREGORY: Mr. Secretary, a final question before you go. You gave some comments in light of the 50th anniversary of the assassination of President Kennedy to NBC News that have now been widely broadcast and reported on. And in those comments, you said this: "To this day, I have serious doubts that Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone." That certainly would be surprising to a lot of people that those are your views. Would you care to elaborate?
SECRETARY OF STATE JOHN KERRY: No. I just have a point of view. And I’m not going to get into that. It’s—you know, it’s not something that I think needs to be commented on, and certainly not at this time.
DAVID GREGORY: Do you think the conspiracy theories—his involvement with Russia, motivation from the Soviet Union or Cuba—are valid at some level?
SECRETARY OF STATE JOHN KERRY: David, I’m not going to go into it. It’s just inappropriate, and I’m not going to do more than say that it’s a point of view that I have. But it’s not ripe or worthy or appropriate for me to comment further.
AMY GOODMAN: That was John Kerry this weekend on—speaking to NBC’s David Gregory. Your response to this, Thom Hartmann, and why you think this is at all interesting to look at 50 years later?
THOM HARTMANN: Yeah, well, John Kerry’s saying, you know, it probably wasn’t Oswald and maybe it was a conspiracy, it’s like, surprise, surprise! The House Committee on Assassinations did an exhaustive look at this, and they concluded not only, you know, that Oswald did not act alone, but that all the evidence indicated that there was a conspiracy, and that, in all probability, Carlos Marcello and Santo Trafficante, the two big mob bosses that Bobby was aggressively prosecuting, had the motive, means and opportunity—phrase of the House Select Committee—to have committed the crime. So, you have that. Secondly, you have—you know, naval intelligence did an exhaustive look at Lee Oswald, specifically, after all this, and concluded that there was no possibility that he could have been the shooter.
AMY GOODMAN: And yet you have the Warren Commission that said not only was he the shooter, but that he acted alone.
THOM HARTMANN: Yeah, yes.
AMY GOODMAN: Talk about who was on that commission and when they came out with their findings.
THOM HARTMANN: Yeah, there’s a reason for this. Jack and Bobby Kennedy, just before the assassination, were doing two simultaneous things. One, they were very aggressively—and very, very close to successfully—trying to negotiate peace and rapprochement with Castro. At the same time, they were planning an assassination of Castro. It was going to be on December 5th of 1963. And the assassination—that plot to assassinate Castro was found out about and somewhat infiltrated by the mob, by Trafficante and Marcello. And they turned—they used—how to say this? When the assassination happened, LBJ concluded, very quickly—in fact, a number of people in the government concluded very quickly, because of the apparent involvement of Oswald—that Castro was somehow involved.
Now, right after the Cuban missile crisis, we almost had World War III. If the American people thought that Castro had killed the president of the United States, there would have been such a hue and cry for a war against Cuba, which Kennedy knew would cause Khrushchev to very probably start World War III, and it would be a nuclear war, and civilization might not even survive, that the American people had to be convinced, at all costs, that Castro had nothing to do with this. And yet, at that point in time, many of the people, senior people in the government, were convinced that Castro was responsible. So, the Warren Commission report—I mean, this is why Earl Warren had the tears running out of his eyes when Jack—when President Johnson commissioned him to do it, because he basically said, "We’ve got to cover this thing up." And so, the Warren Commission report was largely a whitewash to avoid that from coming out.
AMY GOODMAN: And what about the significance of today’s secretary of state, John Kerry, saying, "I don’t want to talk about it, but I think it involves Russia and Cuba, and I think that the story that we know, the establishment story, is not true."
THOM HARTMANN: Yeah, yeah. The—with virtual certainty, I can say that, you know, it was the mob who killed Jack Kennedy. At that—in that context, I mean, there was involvement of others within our government and whatnot, but principally it was the mob. The FBI was following these people. You know, the FBI failed, in many ways, hugely, and to this day they would really rather not own up to that. Jack Van Laningham, for example—
AMY GOODMAN: Explain who he is. You know, he’s going to—
THOM HARTMANN: Jack—
AMY GOODMAN: This is—he’s the focus of—
THOM HARTMANN: He’s the character for this movie, yeah.
AMY GOODMAN: —the film that—
THOM HARTMANN: Jack’s still alive. He lives in Los Angeles.
AMY GOODMAN: —Leonardo DiCaprio’s going to play.
THOM HARTMANN: Yeah. And Jack was the cellmate with Carlos Marcello for a number of years, and he was an informant for the FBI. And they were audio-taping his conversations with Marcello, where Marcello basically laid out they did everything. I mean, this—it’s just—it was fairly straightforward.
AMY GOODMAN: And why does it matter now?
THOM HARTMANN: It matters now, I think, because—well, for two reasons. One, the killing of Jack Kennedy was a consequential change in the direction, the political direction, of America. And number two, I think it’s really important that we know our own history, even when it’s unpleasant, even when it involves our own government agencies screwing up or even worse.
AMY GOODMAN: And when is the movie coming out?
THOM HARTMANN: We’ll see. Hopefully next year.
AMY GOODMAN: Well, Thom Hartmann, I want to thank you very much for being with us. Thom Hartmann is the nationally syndicated TV and radio talk show host ofThe Thom Hartmann Program. He’s the New York Times best-selling author of two dozen books. Today’s book, that was just published, is called The Crash of 2016: The Plot to Destroy America—and What We Can Do to Stop It. His book about the Kennedy assassination is called Legacy of Secrecy: The Long Shadow of the JFKAssassination.
And that does it for our broadcast. If you’d like to get a copy of today’s show, you can go to our website at democracynow.org. Again, we’re headed to Warsaw, Poland, at the end of this week. We’re the only global broadcast to be broadcasting daily hour throughout next week, from Warsaw, from the United [Nations] climate change summit in Poland.


The original content of this program is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License. Please attribute legal copies of this work to democracynow.org. Some of the work(s) that this program incorporates, however, may be separately licensed. For further information or additional permissions, contact us.


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'The Country You Destroyed': A Letter to George W. Bush

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This is perfect just as it is, so we reprint in accordance with creative commons:



'The Country You Destroyed': A Letter to George W. Bush

U.S. President George W. Bush addresses the nation March 19, 2003 in the Oval Office of the White House in Washington, DC. Bush announced that the U.S. military struck at “targets of opportunity” in Iraq March 19, 2003 in Washington, DC. (Alex Wong/Getty Images)George W. Bush
George W. Bush Presidential Center
PO Box 560887
Dallas, Texas, 57356
Dear Mr. Bush:
A few days ago I received a personalized letter from your Presidential Center which included a solicitation card for donations that actually provided words for my reply. They included “I’m honored to help tell the story of the Bush Presidency” and “I’m thrilled that the Bush Institute is advancing timeless principles and practical solutions to the challenges facing our world.” (Below were categories of “tax-deductible contributions” starting with $25 and going upward.)
Did you mean the “timeless principles” that drove you and Mr. Cheney to invade the country of Iraq which, contrary to your fabrications, deceptions and cover-ups, never threatened the United States? Nor could Iraq [under its dictator and his dilapidated military] threaten its far more powerful neighbors, even if the Iraqi regime wanted to do so.
Today, Iraq remains a country (roughly the size and population of Texas) you destroyed, a country where over a million Iraqis, including many children and infants (remember Fallujah?) lost their lives, millions more were sickened or injured, and millions more were forced to become refugees, including most of the Iraqi Christians. Iraq is a country rife with sectarian strife that your prolonged invasion provoked into what is now open warfare. Iraq is a country where al-Qaeda is spreading with explosions taking 20, 30, 40, 50 or 60 lives per day. Just this week, it was reported that the U.S. has sent Hellfire air-to-ground missiles to Iraq’s air force to be used against encampments of “the country’s branch of al-Qaeda.” There was no al-Qaeda in Iraq before your invasion. Al-Qaeda and Saddam Hussein were mortal enemies.
The Bush/Cheney sociocide of Iraq, together with the loss of tens of thousands of U.S. soldiers’ lives, countless injuries and illnesses, registers, with the passage of time, no recognition by you that you did anything wrong nor have you accepted responsibility for the illegality of your military actions without a Congressional declaration of war. You even turned your back on Iraqis who worked with U.S. military occupation forces as drivers, translators etc. at great risk to themselves and their families and were desperately requesting visas to the U.S., often with the backing of U.S. military personnel. Your administration allowed fewer Iraqis into the U.S. than did Sweden in that same period and far, far fewer than Vietnamese refugees coming to the U.S. during the nineteen seventies.
When you were a candidate, I called you a corporation running for the Presidency masquerading as a human being. In time you turned a metaphor into a reality. As a corporation, you express no remorse, no shame, no compassion and a resistance to admit anything other than that you have done nothing wrong.
Day after day Iraqis, including children, continue to die or suffer terribly. When the paraplegic, U.S. army veteran, Tomas Young, wrote you last year seeking some kind of recognition that many things went horribly criminal for many American soldiers and Iraqis, you did not deign to reply, as you did not deign to reply to Cindy Sheehan, who lost her son, Casey, in Iraq. As you said, “the interesting thing about being the president” is that you “don’t feel like [you] owe anybody an explanation.” As a former President, nothing has changed as you make very lucrative speeches before business groups and, remarkably, ask Americans for money to support your “continued work in public service.”
Pollsters have said that they believe a majority of Iraqis would say that life today is worse for them than under the brutal dictatorship of Saddam Hussein. They would also say George W. Bush left Iraq worse off than when he entered it, despite the U.S. led sanctions prior to 2003 that took so many lives of Iraqi children and damaged the health of so many civilian families.
Your national security advisor, Condoleezza Rice, said publically in 2012 that while “the arc of history” may well turn out better for post-invasion Iraq than the present day violent chaos, she did “take personal responsibility” for the casualties and the wreckage. Do you?
Can you, at the very least, publically urge the federal government to admit more civilian Iraqis, who served in the U.S. military occupation, to this country to escape the retaliation that has been visited on their similarly-situated colleagues? Isn’t that the minimum you can do to very slightly lessen the multiple, massive blowbacks that your reckless military policies have caused? It was your own anti-terrorism White House adviser, Richard Clarke, who wrote in his book, Against All Enemies: Inside America’s War on Terror, soon after leaving his post, that the U.S. played right into Osama bin Laden’s hands by invading Iraq.
Are you privately pondering what your invasion of Iraq did to the Iraqis and American military families, the economy and to the spread of al-Qaeda attacks in numerous countries?
Sincerely yours,
Ralph Nader
P.S. I am enclosing as a contribution in kind to your presidential center library the bookRogue Nation: American Unilateralism and the Failure of Good Intentions by Clyde Prestowitz (2003) whom I’m sure you know. Note the positive remark on the back cover by General Wesley Clark.

Dennis Rodman, the Force, and Korea

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Dennis Rodman, the Force, and Korea


THE ABSURD TIMES






 


Illustration: The Worm


More about the worm:



 
People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals 
    Drunk in Public Newport Beach, CA (Aug-1999)
    Battery Miami, FL (5-Nov-1999)
    Driving without a License Costa Mesa, CA (Dec-1999), pled guilty (Jul-2000)
    Driving While Intoxicated Costa Mesa, CA (Dec-1999), pled guilty (Jul-2000)
    Disturbing the Peace (Jun-2001)
    Drunk in Public Newport Beach, CA (Sep-2003)
    Driving While Intoxicated Las Vegas, NV (Oct-2003), pled no contest (Apr-2004)
    Reckless Driving Breckenridge, CO (26-Jul-2005)
    Failure to Appear Breckenridge, CO (14-Sep-2005)
    Brandishing a Weapon Century City, CA (30-Apr-2008), charge dismissed
    Domestic Violence Century City, CA (30-Apr-2008), pled no contest (24-Jun-2008)
    Witness Tampering dissuading a witness, Century City, CA (30-Apr-2008), charge dismissed
    Failure to Pay Child Support 2010
    Contempt of Court 
    Traveled to North Korea Feb-2013


          I’m not sure why there is so much coverage of this event.  We keep hearing some rather conventional questions about his trip to Korea and whether he is working for our government, perhaps on some humanitarian mission, or whatever.

          Folks, these media people (sounds like enemies in a Flash Gordon movie, like the Clay People) have no idea as to the character of this guy.  His nickname is “The Worm,” having to do with his way of playing defense in professional Basketball.  In the United States, among basketball fans, he was universally hated by everyone except the people in the city he was playing for.  To them, he became a hero.  When he was traded from Detroit to Chicago, all of a sudden he became loved in Chicago.

          I have absolutely no interest in basketball, but while the Chicago Bulls were a championship team, including Michael Jordan and Scotty Pippen, Rodman was a key player.  The only reason the assemblage of characters that comprised that team was the manipulation of their Coach, Phil Jackson, a great devotee of Zen Buddhism.  Phil Jackson seemed more proud of certificates sent to him by Zen Monks than the championship ring, or trophy, or whatever it is the championship team gets.

          Rodman, in addition to his defensive skills, was a surreal force of strangeness that worked against opposing teams.  His multi-colored tattoos and variously colored hair combined to present a strangeness that the game has never seen before.

          He often sat with a hood, recalling Star Wars, and referring to himself as “The Wizard.”  This guy is so far out that any attempt to get into his head would result in instant Alzheimer’s.   

          Now, there is the current leader who reportedly feeds his political opponents to hungry dogs, but who is a great fan of basketball.  He is short, chubby, and also quite strange.  Our media spends a great deal of its time criticizing him, as if such coverage would affect anything other than nodded agreements for an uneducated viewing public. 

          That is really all that anyone needs to know about this situation. 

          Next time, I think it’s time for Habermas.
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Habermas

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We said we would post Habermas soon, so here he is.

I have serious doubts whether many readers will have the patience to read this essay all the way through, much less try to come to term with it.  I have a few thoughts that I might share.
It starts out with a reference to Kant’s Critique of Practical Reason and already I am skeptical, especially as he is taking exception to it.  Kant’s most brilliant work is his Critique of Pure Reason, which offended many at the time.  In it, he uses what is in effect a Reducto ad Absurdum to show that the human mind is unable to determine truth in any absolute sense concerning the external world.  As difficult to believe as it may seem today, this work caused many German intellectuals to commit suicide, deeply offended religious forces (who are quite offended by many things), and caused Kant no end of discomfort.  In fact, he apologized for the conclusions, and wrote the Practical Reason as a counter to it.  Habermas himself comes to the conclusion that no honest agreement or conclusions can be reached if coercion is involved.  It is best to simply ignore any discussion of “practical reason” (which amounts to the time worn “golden rule”) and live a much simpler life as a result.

I understand that personally Habermas is quite unassuming and on the right side of things, so to speak, and so there is no reason to doubt his sincerity.  However, there is also no reason to seek edification in his writings.  I assure you that most of them, if not all, are similar in nature.

The conclusion he seems to reach is that societal norms can only be tolerated through dialogue or communication, that all parties need to be afforded a say, that what they say in such forums much be truthful, and that no coercion should be involved.

If anyone has anything more to add to this, simply respond and we will be happy to reprint it.  I should add that, according to Wikipedia (“Wiki” being Latin for “internet”), Habermas is considered one of the most distinguished and important intellectuals today and he has received numerous accolades and awards.  He has also published extensively.

Jurgen Habermas 1998

Communicative Ethics


Source: The inclusion of the Other. Studies in Political Theory. Jürgen Habermas. MIT Press, 1998, parts VIII and IX of Chapter 1 only, reproduced here;
Transcribed by: Andy Blunden.

It is no accident that the categorical imperative is directed to the second person singular and that it creates the impression that each individual could undertake the required test of norms for himself in foro interno. But in fact the reflexive application of the universalisation test calls for a form of deliberation in which each participant is compelled to adopt the perspective of all others in order to examine whether a norm could be willed by all from the perspective of each person. This is the situation of a rational discourse oriented to reaching understanding in which all those concerned participate. This idea of a discursively produced understanding also imposes a greater burden of justification on the isolated judging subject than would a monologically applied universalisation test.
Kant may have been so readily inclined to foreshorten an intersubjective concept of autonomy in an individualistic direction because he failed to distinguish ethical questions sufficiently from pragmatic questions. Anyone who takes seriously questions of ethical self-understanding runs up against the stubborn cultural meaning of an individual’s or a group’s historically changing interpretations of the world and of themselves. As a child of the eighteenth century, Kant still thinks in an unhistorical way and consequently overlooks the layer of traditions in which identities are formed. He tacitly assumes that in making moral judgments each individual can project himself into the situation of everyone else through his own imagination. But when the participants can no longer rely on a transcendental preunderstanding grounded in more or less homogeneous conditions of life and interests, the moral point of view can only be realised under conditions of communication that ensure that everyone tests the acceptability of a norm, implemented in a general practice, also from the perspective of his own understanding of himself and of the world ... in this way the categorical imperative receives a discourse-theoretical interpretation in which its place is taken by the discourse principle (D), according to which only those norms can claim validity that could meet with the agreement of all those concerned in their capacity as participants in a practical discourse.
I began with the question of whether the cognitive content of a morality of equal respect and solidaristic responsibility for everybody can still be justified after the collapse of its religious foundation. In conclusion, I would like to examine what the intersubjectivistic interpretation of the categorical imperative can contribute to answering the question. Here we must treat two problems separately: First, we must clarify how much of the original intuitions a discourse ethics salvages in the disenchanted universe of postmetaphysical justification and in what sense one can still speak of the cognitive validity of moral judgments and positions (VIII). Second, there is the final question of whether the content of a morality that results from the rational reconstruction of traditional, religious intuitions remains bound, in spite of its procedural character, to it original context (IX)

VIII

With the devaluation of the epistemic authority of the God’s eye view, moral commands lose their religious as well as their metaphysical foundation. This development also has implications for discourse ethics; it can neither defend the full moral contents of religious intuitions (1) nor can it represent the validity of moral norms in realist terms (2).
(1) The fact that moral practice is no longer tied to the individual’s expectation of salvation and an exemplary conduct of life through the person of a redemptive God and the divine plan for salvation has two unwelcome consequences. On the one hand, moral knowledge becomes detached from moral motivation, and on the other, the concept of morally right action becomes differentiated from the conception of a good or godly life.
Discourse ethics correlates ethical and moral questions with different forms of argumentation, namely, with discourses of self-clarification and discourses of normative justification (and application), respectively. But it does not thereby reduce morality to equal treatment; rather, it takes account of both the aspects of justice and that of solidarity. A discursive agreement depends simultaneously on the nonsubstitutable “yes” or “no” responses of each individual and on overcoming the egocentric perspective, something that all participants are constrained to do by an argumentative practice designed to produce agreement of an epistemic kind. If the pragmatic features of discourse make possible an insightful process of opinion- and will-formation that guarantees both of these conditions, then the rationally motivated “yes” or “no” responses can take the interests of each individual into consideration without breaking the prior social bond that joins all those who are oriented toward reaching understanding in a transsubjective attitude.
However, uncoupling morality from questions of the good life leads to a motivational deficit. Because there is no profane substitute for the hope of personal salvation, we lose the strongest motive for obeying moral commands. Discourse ethics intensifies the intellectualistic separation of moral judgment from action even further by locating the moral point of view in rational discourse. There is no direct route from discursively achieved consensus to action. Certainly, moral judgments tell us what we should do, and good reasons affect our will; this is shown by the bad conscience that “plagues” us when we act against our better judgment. But the problem of weakness of will also shows that moral insight is based on the weak force of epistemic reasons and, in contrast with pragmatic reasons, does not itself constitute a rational motive. When we know what it is morally right for us to do, we know that there are no good (epistemic) reasons to act otherwise. But that does not mean that other motives will not prevail.
With the loss of its foundation in the religious promise of salvation, the meaning of normative obligation also changes. The differentiation between strict duties and less binding values, between what is morally right and what is ethically worth striving for, already sharpens moral validity into a normativity to which impartial judgment alone is adequate. The shift in perspective from God to human beings has a further consequence. “Validity” now signifies that moral norms could win the agreement of all concerned, on the condition that they jointly examine in practical discourse whether a corresponding practice is in the equal interest of all. This agreement expresses two things: the fallible reason of deliberating subjects who convince one another that a hypothetically introduced norm is worthy of being recognized, and the freedom of legislating subjects who understand themselves as the authors of the norms to which they subject themselves as addressees. The mode of validity of moral norms now bears the traces both of the fallibility of the discovering mind and of the creativity of the constructing mind.
(2) The problem of in which sense moral judgments and attitudes can claim validity reveals another aspect when we reflect on the essentialist statements through which moral commands were previously justified in a metaphysical fashion as elements of a rationally ordered world. As long as the cognitive content of morality could be expressed in assertoric statements, moral judgments could be viewed as true or false. But if moral realism can no longer be defended by appealing to a creationist metaphysics and to natural law (or their surrogates), the validity of moral statements can no longer be assimilated to the truth of assertoric statements. The latter state how things are in the world; the former state what we should do.
If one assumes that, in general, sentences can be valid only in the sense of being “true” or “false” and further that “truth” is to be understood as correspondence between sentences and facts, then every validity claim that is raised for a nondescriptive sentence necessarily appears problematic. In fact, modern moral scepticism is based on the thesis that normative statements cannot be true or false, and hence cannot be justified, because there is no moral order, no such things as moral objects or facts. On this received account, the concept of the world as the totality of facts is connected with a correspondence notion of truth and a semantic conception of justification. I will very briefly discuss these questionable premises in reverse order.
A sentence or proposition is justified on the semantic conception if it can be derived from basic sentences according to valid rules of inference, where a class of basic sentences is distinguished by specific (logical, epistemological, or psychological) criteria. But the foundationalist assumption that there exists such a class of basic sentences whose truth is immediately accessible to perception or to intuition has not withstood linguistic arguments for the holistic character of language and interpretation: every justification must at least proceed from a pre-understood context or background understanding. This failure of foundationalism recommends a pragmatic conception of justification as a public practice in which criticizable validity claims can be defended with good reasons. Of course, the criteria of rationality that determine which reasons count as good reasons can themselves be made a matter for discussion. Hence procedural characteristics of the process of argumentation itself must ultimately bear the burden of explaining why results achieved in a procedurally correct manner enjoy the presumption of validity. For example, the communicative structure of rational discourse can ensure that all relevant contributions are heard and that the unforced force of the better argument alone determines the “yes” or “no” responses of the participants.
The pragmatic conception of justification opens the way for an epistemic concept of truth that overcomes the well-known problems with the correspondence theory. The truth predicate refers to the language game of justification, that is, to the public redemption of validity claims. On the other hand, truth cannot be identified with justifiability or warranted assertability. The “cautionary” use of the truth predicate — regardless of how well “p” is justified, it still may not be true — highlights the difference in meaning between “truth” as an irreducible property of statements and “rational acceptability” as a context-dependent property of utterances. This difference can be understood within the horizon of possible justifications in terms of the distinction between “justified in our context” and “justified in every context.” This difference can be cashed out in turn through a weak idealization of our processes of argumentation, understood as capable of being extended indefinitely over time. When we assert “p” and thereby claim truth for “p” we accept the obligation to defend “p” in argumentation — in full awareness of its fallibility — against all future objections.
In the present context I am less interested in the complex relation between truth and justification than in the possibility of conceiving truth, purified of all connotations of correspondence, as a special case of validity, where this general concept of validity is introduced in connection with the discursive redemption of validity claims. In this way we open up a conceptual space in which the concept of normative, and in particular moral, validity can be situated. The rightness of moral norms (or of general normative statements) and of particular normative injunctions based on them can then be understood as analogous to the truth of descriptive statements. What unites these two concepts of validity is the procedure of discursively redeeming the corresponding validity claims. What separates them is the fact that they refer, respectively, to the social and the objective worlds.
The social world, as the totality of legitimately ordered interpersonal relations, is accessible only from the participant’s perspective; it is intrinsically historical and hence has, if you will, an ontological constitution different from that of the objective world which can be described from the observer’s perspective. The social world is inextricably interwoven with the intentions and beliefs, the practices and languages of its members. This holds in a similar way for descriptions of the objective world but not for this world itself. Hence the discursive redemption of truth claims has a different meaning from that of moral validity claims: in the former case, discursive agreement signifies that the truth conditions of an assertoric proposition, interpreted in terms of assertability conditions, are fulfilled; in the latter case, discursive agreement justifies the claim that a norm is worthy of recognition and thereby itself contributes to the fulfillment of its conditions of validity. Whereas rational acceptability merely points to the truth of assertoric propositions, it makes a constructive contribution to the validity of moral norms. The moments of construction and discovery are interwoven in moral insight differently than they are in theoretical knowledge.
What is not at our disposal here is the moral point of view that imposes itself upon us, not an objective moral order assumed to exist independently of our descriptions. It is not the social world as such that is not at our disposal but the structure and procedure of a process of argumentation that facilitates both the production and the discovery of the norms of well-ordered interpersonal relations.
The constructivist meaning of moral judgments, understood on the model of self-legislation, must not be forgotten; but it must not obliterate the epistemic meaning of moral justifications either.

IX

Discourse ethics defends a morality of equal respect and solidaristic responsibility for everybody. But it does this in the first instance through a rational reconstruction of the contents of a moral tradition whose religious foundations have been undermined. If the discourse-theoretical interpretation of the categorical imperative remained bound to the tradition in which it originates, this genealogy would represent an obstacle to the goal of demonstrating the cognitive content of moral judgments as such. Thus it remains to provide a theoretical justification of the moral point of view itself.
The discourse principle provides an answer to the predicament in which the members of any moral community find themselves when, in making the transition to a modern, pluralistic society, they find themselves faced with the dilemma that though they still argue with reasons about moral judgments and beliefs, their substantive background consensus on the underlying moral norms has been shattered. They find themselves embroiled in global and domestic practical conflicts in need of regulation that they continue to regard as moral, and hence as rationally resolvable, conflicts; but their shared ethos has disintegrated. The following scenario does not depict an “original position” but an ideal-typical development that could have taken place under real conditions.
I proceed on the assumption that the participants do not wish to resolve their conflicts through violence, or even compromise, but through communication. Thus their initial impulse is to engage in deliberation and work out a shared ethical self-understanding on a secular basis. But given the differentiated forms of life characteristic of pluralistic societies, such an effort is doomed to failure. The participants will soon realize that the critical appropriation of their strong evaluations leads to competing conceptions of the good. Let us assume that they nevertheless remain resolved to engage in deliberation and not to fall back on a mere modus vivendi as a substitute for the threatened moral way of life.
In the absence of a substantive agreement on particular norms, the participants must now rely on the “neutral” fact that each of them participates in some communicative form of life which is structured by linguistically mediated understanding. Since communicative processes and forms of life have certain structural features in common, they could ask themselves whether these features harbor normative contents that could provide a basis for shared orientations. Taking this as a clue, theories in the tradition of Hegel, Humboldt, and G. H. Mead have shown that communicative actions involve shared presuppositions and that communicative forms of life are interwoven with relations of reciprocal recognition, and to this extent, both have a normative content. These analyses demonstrate that morality derives a genuine meaning, independent of the various conceptions of the good, from the form and perspectival structure of unimpaired, intersubjective socialization.
To be sure, structural features of communicative forms of life alone are not sufficient to justify the claim that members of a particular historical community ought to transcend their particularistic value-orientations and make the transition to the fully symmetrical and inclusive relations of an egalitarian universalism. On the other hand, a universalistic conception that wants to avoid false abstractions must draw on insights from the theory of communication. From the fact that persons can only be individuated through socialization it follows that moral concern is owed equally to persons both as irreplaceable individuals and as members of the community, and hence it connects justice with solidarity. Equal treatment means equal treatment of unequals who are nonetheless aware of their interdependence. Moral universalism must not take into account the aspect of equality — the fact that persons as such are equal to all other persons — at the expense of the aspect of individuality — the fact that as individuals they are at the same time absolutely different from all others. The equal respect for everyone else demanded by a moral universalism sensitive to difference thus takes the form of a nonleveling and nonappropriating inclusion of the other in his otherness.
But how can the transition to a posttraditional morality as such be justified? Traditionally established obligations rooted in communicative action do not of themselves reach beyond the limits of the family, the tribe, the city, or the nation. However, the reflexive form of communicative action behaves differently: argumentation of its very nature points beyond all particular forms of life. For in the pragmatic presuppositions of rational discourse or deliberation the normative content of the implicit assumptions of communicative action is generalized, abstracted, and freed from all limits— the practice of deliberation is extended to an inclusive community that does not in principle exclude any subject capable of speech and action who can make relevant contributions. This idea points to a way out of the modern dilemma, since the participants have lost their metaphysical guarantees and must so to speak derive their normative orientations from themselves alone. As we have seen, the participants can only draw on those features of a common practice they already currently share. Given the failure to identify a shared good, such features shrink to the fund of formal features of the performatively shared situation of deliberation. The bottom line is that the participants have all already entered into the cooperative enterprise of rational discourse.
Although it is a rather meager basis for justification, the neutral content of this common store may provide an opportunity, given the predicament posed by the pluralism of worldviews. A prospect of finding an equivalent for the traditional, substantive grounding of a normative consensus would exist if the form of communication in which joint practical deliberation takes place were such that it makes possible a justification of moral norms convincing to all participants because of its impartiality. The missing “transcendent good” can be replaced in an “immanent” fashion only by appeal to the intrinsic constitution of the practice of deliberation. From here, I suggest, three steps lead to a theoretical justification of the moral point of view.
(a) If the practice of deliberation itself is regarded as the only possible resource for a standpoint of impartial justification of moral questions, then the appeal to moral content must be replaced by the self-referential appeal to the form of this practice. This is precisely what is captured by:
(D) Only those norms can claim validity that could meet with the acceptance of all concerned in practical discourse.
Here the “acceptance” (Zustimmung)achieved under conditions of rational discourse signifies an agreement (Einverstandnis)motivated by epistemic reasons; it should not be understood as a contract (Vereinbarung)that is rationally motivated from the egocentric perspective of each participant. On the other hand, the principle of discourse leaves open the type of argumentation, and hence the route, by which a discursive agreement can be reached. (D) does not by itself state that a justification of moral norms is possible without recourse to a substantive background consensus.
(b) The hypothetically introduced principle (D) specifies the condition that valid norms would fulfill if they could be justified. For the moment we are only assuming that the concept of a moral norm is clear. The participants also have an intuitive understanding of how one engages in argumentation. Though they are assumed only to be familiar with the justification of descriptive sentences and not yet to know whether moral validity claims can be judged in a similar way, they can form a conception (without prejudging the issue) of what it would mean to justify a norm. But what is still needed for the operationalization of (D) is a rule of argumentation specifying how moral norms can be justified.
The principle of universalization (U) is indeed inspired by (D), but initially it is nothing more than a proposal arrived at abductively.
(U) A norm is valid when the foreseeable consequences and side effects of its general observance for the interests and value-orientations of each individual could be jointly accepted by all concerned without coercion.
Three aspects of this formulation are in need of clarification. The phrase “interests and value-orientations” points to the role played by the pragmatic and ethical reasons of the individual participants in practical discourse. These inputs are designed to prevent the marginalization of the self-understanding and worldviews of particular individuals or groups and, in general, to foster a hermeneutic sensitivity to a sufficiently broad spectrum of contributions. Second, generalized reciprocal perspective-taking (“of each,” “jointly by all”) requires not just empathy for, but also interpretive intervention into, the self-understanding of participants who must be willing to revise their descriptions of themselves and others (and the language in which they are formulated). Finally, the goal of “uncoerced joint acceptance” specifies the respect in which the reasons presented in discourse cast off their agent-relative meaning and take on an epistemic meaning from the standpoint of symmetrical consideration.
(c) The participants themselves will perhaps be satisfied with this (or a similar) rule of argumentation as long as it proves useful and does not lead to counterintuitive results. It must turn out that a practice of justification conducted in this manner selects norms that are capable of commanding universal agreement — for example, norms expressing human rights. But from the perspective of the moral theorist there still remains one final justificatory step.
We may assume that the practice of deliberation and justification we call “argumentation” is to be found in all cultures and societies (if not in institutionalized form, then at least as an informal practice) and that there is no functionally equivalent alternative to this mode of problem solving. In view of the universality and nonsubsititutibility of the practice of argumentation, it would be difficult to dispute the neutrality of the discourse principle (D). But ethnocentric assumptions, and hence a specific conception of the good that is not shared by other cultures, may have insinuated themselves into the abduction of (U). The suspicion that the understanding of morality operationalized in (U) reflects eurocentric prejudices could be dispelled through an “immanent” defense of this account of the moral point of view, that is, by appealing to knowledge of what it means to engage in the practice of argumentation as such. Thus the discourse-ethical model of justification consists in the derivation of the basic principle (U) from the implicit content of universal presuppositions of argumentation in conjunction with the conception of normative justification in general expressed in (D).
This is easy to understand in an intuitive way (though any attempt to provide a formal justification would require involved discussions of the meaning and feasibility of “transcendental arguments”). Here I will limit myself to the observation that we engage in argumentation with the intention of convincing one another of the validity claims that proponents raise for their statements and are ready to defend against opponents. The practice of argumentation sets in motion a cooperative competition for the better argument, where the orientation to the goal of a communicatively reached agreement unites the participants from the outset. The assumption that the competition can lead to “rationally acceptable,” hence “convincing,” results is based on the rational force of arguments. Of course, what counts as a good or a bad argument can itself become a topic for discussion. Thus the rational acceptability of a statement ultimately rests on reasons in conjunction with specific features of the process of argumentation itself. The four most important features are: (i) that nobody who could make a relevant contribution may be excluded; (ii) that all participants are granted an equal opportunity to make contributions; (iii) that the participants must mean what they say; and (iv) that communication must be freed from external and internal coercion so that the “yes” or “no” stances that participants adopt on criticizable validity claims are motivated solely by the rational force of the better reasons. If everyone who engages in argumentation must make at least these pragmatic presuppositions, then in virtue of (i) the public character of practical discourses and the inclusion of all concerned and (ii) the equal communicative rights of all participants, only reasons that give equal weight to the interests and evaluative orientations of everybody can influence the outcome of practical discourses; and because of the absence of (iii) deception and (iv) coercion, nothing but reasons can tip the balance in favor of the acceptance of a controversial norm. Finally, on the assumption that participants reciprocally impute an orientation to communicative agreement to one another, this “uncoerced” acceptance can only occur “jointly” or collectively.
Against the frequently raised objection that this justification is circular I would note that the content of the universal presuppositions of argumentation is by no means “normative” in the moral sense. For inclusivity only signifies that access to discourse is unrestricted; it does not imply the universality of binding norms of action. The equal distribution of communicative freedoms and the requirement of truthfulness in discourse have the status of argumentative duties and rights, not of moral duties and rights. So too, the absence of coercion refers to the process of argumentation itself, not to interpersonal relations outside of this practice. These constitutive rules of the language game of argumentation govern the exchange of arguments and of “yes” or “no” responses; they have the epistemic force of enabling conditions for the justification of statements but do not have any immediate practical effects in motivating actions and interactions outside of discourse.
The point of such a justification of the moral point of view is that the normative content of this epistemic language game is transmitted only by a rule of argumentation to the selection of norms of action, which together with their moral validity claim provide the input into practical discourses. A moral obligation cannot follow from the so to speak transcendental constraint of unavoidable presuppositions of argumentation alone; rather it attaches to the specific objects of practical discourse, namely, to the norms introduced into discourse to which the reasons mobilized in deliberation refer. I emphasize this when I specify that (U) can be rendered plausible in connection with a (weak, hence nonprejudicial) concept of normative justification.
This justification strategy, which I have here merely sketched, must be supplemented with genealogical arguments drawing on premises of modernization theory, if (U) is to be rendered plausible. With (U) we reassure ourselves in a reflexive manner of a residual normative substance which is preserved in posttraditional societies by the formal features of argumentation and action oriented to reaching a shared understanding. This is also shown by the procedure of establishing universal presuppositions of argumentation by demonstrating performative self-contradictions, which I cannot go into here.
The question of the application of norms arises as an additional problem. The principle of appropriateness developed by Hans Günther first brings the moral point of view to bear on singular moral judgments in a complete manner. The outcome of successful discourses of justification and application shows that practical questions are differentiated by the sharply defined moral point of view; moral questions of well-ordered interpersonal relations are separated from pragmatic questions of rational choice, on the one hand, and from ethical questions of the good or not misspent life on the other. It has become clear to me in retrospect that (U) only operationalized a more comprehensive principle of discourse with reference to a particular subject matter, namely, morality. The principle of discourse can also be operationalized for other kinds of questions, for example, for the deliberations of political legislators or for legal discourses.

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A response to Habbermas--Una revisión al análisis de Theodor Adorno sobre el jazz

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Actually, it is all about Adorno, but I did promise, so:


Una revisión al análisis de Theodor Adorno sobre el jazz

El presente trabajo apunta a poner de manifiesto algunas cuestiones que permitan comprender un poco mejor las reflexiones de Theodor Wiesengrund Adorno referidas al rol socio-político de la música en general y del jazz en particular, en la sociedad capitalista moderna. El camino a seguir para cumplir con este propósito comienza por señalar condiciones que permitieron el acercamiento de este autor al ambiente musical, para luego presentar una breve referencia al surgimiento y a la evolución del jazz, y finalmente poder llegar a analizar críticamente y con mayor profundidad algunos postulados precisos de Adorno. Por último se presentan algunas conclusiones preliminares que, se espera sirvan como disparadores de futuras investigaciones.
ADORNO Y LA MÚSICA
La música se hizo presente en la vida de Adorno en su más tierna infancia y, desde entonces, desarrolló un importante papel en su vida y en su obra. Su madre, Maria Calvelli Adorno, era cantante profesional y junto con su hermana, que era pianista, se ocuparon de la instrucción musical temprana de Theodor. Más tarde su educación se formalizó con su ingreso en el Kaiser Wilhelm Gymnasium, en la universidad Johann Wolfgang Goethe y en la universidad de Frankfurt, con las lecciones de piano de Bernhard Sekles, con las lecciones de composición musical de Alban Berg, y con sus frecuentes contactos con músicos y compositores de la época.
Huyendo del nazismo y luego de pasar por distintas ciudades, se estableció en New York en 1938 donde continuó el desarrollo de su teoría crítica. Sin embargo, su residencia en esta ciudad no modificó considerablemente sus primeras impresiones sobre el jazz que dejó inscritas en su ensayo “Über Jazz” de 1936[1].
En sus escritos reconoció dos esferas en el ámbito musical: La música popular y la música seria. Afirmaba que mientras en la primera la característica fundamental es la estandarización y la relación entre la parte y el todo es fortuita; en la segunda la parte es expresión del todo y por tanto no es posible la sustitución mecánica de segmentos con patrones estereotipados[2]. Esta música seria fue definida posteriormente en su Teoría Estética como música genuina, definida como una herramienta que permite el tránsito del estado sentido por el artista individual a su expresión directa y personal[3]. Para Adorno no existía una clara división entre el jazz y la música popular, sostenía que no era una música genuina y que en vez de representar los sentimientos de estos artistas, representaba los intereses del estado capitalista. Era, para él, un producto más de la industria cultural, definida como un elemento del estado totalitario fascista, adoptado luego por el capitalismo, que utiliza principios de organización fabril para la producción de bienes intangibles (valores, ideologías, contenidos simbólicos, pautas de conducta, costumbres, etc.) con el objeto de dar forma a un estilo particular de cultura denominado “cultura de masas”.
Adorno pensaba que el jazz era una especie de “Gebrauchsmusik”, es decir música de consumo para acompañar el baile y para entretener; y que por esto contribuía a consolidar la industria cultural, que según el autor es también la industria del entretenimiento[4]. La diversión promovida tenía un aspecto negativo, ya que implicaba una adhesión al régimen: “Divertirse significa estar de acuerdo. La diversión sólo es posible en cuanto se aisla y se separa de la totalidad del proceso social, en cuanto renuncia absurdamente desde el principio a la pretensión ineluctable de toda obra (…) Divertirse significa siempre que no hay que pensar”[5]. El jazz, según Adorno, estaba orientado al control manipulativo de las subjetividades e identificaba a los consumidores de esta música con aquellos hombres que debían matar el tiempo porque no toleraban dar cuenta de su situación social, de la que no podían escapar.
ORIGEN Y EVOLUCIÓN DEL JAZZ
Muchos autores concuerdan en definir el jazz como el fruto del encuentro de la tradición musical africana y la europea en un escenario particular que fue Estados Unidos, que desde su nacimiento se convirtió en un importante comprador de esclavos con el objeto de saciar la necesidad de mano de obra que tenían las plantaciones agrícolas (principalmente algodoneras, tabacaleras y azucareras) de las colonias del sudeste[6].
La música de África occidental era marcadamente funcional y carecía del “arte musical” que alegaba el barroco europeo. Hentoff y Mc.Carthy[7], siguiendo investigaciones antropológicas, reconocen ocho tipos básicos de canciones que regularon la pauta cultural africana. Entre ellas se encuentran las canciones de las madres para educar a sus hijos, las canciones de cortesía de los jóvenes para influir sobre las muchachas, las canciones de los jefes religiosos para guiar la comunidad, las canciones de los guerreros para promover valentía, y las canciones de los trabajadores para volver soportables sus tareas.
La música “culta” europea, en contraposición, requería de sus ejecutantes, autores y oyentes una excesiva formación, lo que derivaba en que sólo una elite limitada podía disfrutar de ella. Su objetivo era expresar a través del arte el sentido de la perfección.
Para el negro africano, forzado a trabajar en las plantaciones estadounidenses a cambio de comida y techo, la música era fundamental: Le ayudaba a sobrellevar las angustias del régimen opresivo al mismo tiempo que le servían para reducir el
aburrimiento de su rutina[8]. Ya en 1860, Richard F. Burton, cónsul británico famoso por sus exploraciones en África y Asia, sostenía que “el pescador acompaña su remo, el porteador su carga y el ama de casa su tarea de limpiar el grano con canciones”[9]. En los cinturones agrícolas, en las zonas portuarias y alrededor de toda labor forzosa, surgieron estas “canciones de trabajo”, poderosamente rítmicas y sincopadas (en muchos casos los esclavos encadenados debían trabajar al unísono rítmico, y estas canciones marcaban el movimiento).
Por otro lado los africanos que llegaban a América, cargaban con sus tradiciones paganas y se encontraron con la religión cristiana que les era impuesta. Acostumbrados a sus ritos que incluían canciones y bailes, comenzaron a incluir palmas, movimientos rítmicos y las voces negras de un timbre muy particular a las celebraciones eclesiásticas. Así fue como nacieron los “Spirituals” (antecedentes del gospel) como expresiones de fe.
Al finalizar la guerra civil muchos esclavos fueron liberados y se trasladaron a las zonas urbanas en busca de empleo y de una mejor calidad de vida (comenzaba la fase industrializadora de la economía estadounidense en la que la demanda de mano de obra era mayor en las zonas urbanas que en las agrícolas). Uno de los principales asentamientos urbanos para estos ciudadanos afro-americanos libres fue Nueva Orleáns, ex capital del estado de Luisiana. Esta ciudad tenía un carácter multicultural y flexible: Fue fundada por colonizadores franceses, cedida al imperio español, recuperada por el control galo de la época de Napoleón y finalmente vendida a los Estados Unidos. Aquí fue donde descubrieron los instrumentos musicales y donde sus primeros jornales les permitieron adquirirlos (hasta entonces su producción musical había estado limitada por instrumentos precarios que ellos mismos fabricaban con elementos que tenían a su alcance como huesos, latas, calabazas, maderas, etc.[10]).
La profesión de “entretener a blancos” fue lógicamente preferida, en parte porque eran buenos en ello y en parte porque les permitía salir de peores formas de trabajo o esclavitud. Sin embargo, estos hombres liberados permanecieron ajenos a toda educación musical formal, por lo que para abordar estos instrumentos optaron por tocar como cantaban. En vez de estructurar sus canciones en función de los principios organizativos clásicos de melodía, armonía y ritmo, improvisaban, hacían que los instrumentos fueran una extensión de su voz.
Este conglomerado de condiciones, junto con tantas otras espontáneas que escapan al análisis, confluyeron en el nacimiento del jazz y del estilo “Nueva Orleáns” hacia 1910, que se diferenciaba del “ragtime”[11] por aventurarse más libremente a la improvisación rítmica y por el uso de las “blue notes”[12].
En poco tiempo fueron surgiendo numerosos grupos de jazz y comenzaron a emigrar a otras ciudades, extendiendo su influencia hacia el norte y llegando a New York y Chicago. Estas metrópolis habían experimentado un incremento notable de su población negra producto de la bonanza de la economía, gracias a la cual crecía también la industria del entretenimiento y con ella los locales de traficantes de alcohol, juego clandestino y prostitución que le brindaron cobijo a las nuevas bandas. En estos locales nocturnos del estilo “Cotton Club”[13], la música era interpretada por negros para la audiencia blanca. Son los años signados por el estilo “Chicago” (que reemplazó al estilo “Nueva Orleáns” y al estilo “dixieland”), en el que se destacaron las grandes orquestas (como las de King Oliver, Jerry Roll Morton, Paul Whiteman y Duke Ellington) más que la expresión personal de los grandes solistas (como Louis Armstrong al frente de sus “Hot Five” y “Hot Seven”, Rex Stewart, y Coleman Hawkins).
Durante los años de la depresión posteriores al crac económico de 1929 se vio diezmada la industria del espectáculo, por lo que, con el agravante de la gran influencia que adquiría la radio, cerraron muchos clubes nocturnos. El jazz de Chicago se convirtió en un círculo íntimo de jazzmen que se visitan unos a otros y organizan reuniones privadas en sus casas. Muchos músicos se alejaron para siempre de los escenarios y otros emigraron a Europa en busca de trabajo. Allí surgieron los “hot clubs”, locales que brindaron cobijo a los aficionados al jazz y que, contagiados por la presencia de músicos como Benny Carter o Sidney Bechet, vieron emerger a los primeros grandes jazzistas europeos de la talla de Django Reinhardt y Stéphane Grappelli.
Ya en este período, extinta la prohibición del alcohol y acompañado por el aumento de popularidad de músicos blancos como Benny Goodman y Glen Miller, el jazz deja de considerarse una música marginal. Comenzaba la “era del swing”, en la que las orquestas se transformaron en el marco ideal para el lucimiento de los solistas y que hicieron florecer las primeras grandes voces femeninas: Billie Holiday y Ella Fitzgerald.
Los años de la segunda guerra mundial fueron espinosos para el desarrollo del jazz: mientras que en Estados Unidos los músicos se veían forzados a alistarse en el ejército, en Europa eran perseguidos por los nacionalsocialistas que lo definían como “entartete musik” (música decadente)[14].
En 1938 el saxofonista Henry Minton abrió un bar en el primer piso del hotel Cecil ubicado en el barrio Harlem de Manhattan en New York. El lugar se llamó “Minton´s Playhouse” y se prestó como espacio para las “jam sessions” que jugarían un rol primordial en la evolución del jazz desde el swing hasta el bebop. Estas sesiones de improvisación comenzaron a principios de los 40 y formaron parte de ellas Thelonious Monk, Kenny Clarke, Charlie Christian, Dizzy Gillespie y músicos invitados provenientes de otros clubes como el “Savoy Ballroom”, el “Apollo Theater” y el “Clark Monroe´s Uptown House” de donde provenía Charlie Parker[15].
Este nuevo estilo se presentó como revolucionario en una época de por sí convulsionada. La Federación Norteamericana de Músicos (A.F.M. según sus siglas en inglés) había prohibido hacer grabaciones durante la guerra, lo que sumado a que la gente no concurría con la misma asiduidad a clubes y salones, la eclosión del bebop tuvo que esperar hasta 1945. No obstante el retraso no aminoró la convulsión que desató, sólo comparable con las innovaciones de Armstrong sobre el ragtime. Estos músicos desenfrenados abogaban por una toma de conciencia mucho más amplia. “Se mostraban intemperantes y a la defensiva, y revelaban cierta ignorancia e ingenuidad: Hablaban como si el bop hubiera descubierto la armonía, comparaban a Stravinsky con Parker, hablaban del nuevo papel melódico del baterista”, aseveraban Hentoff y Mc.Carthy [16]. Había nuevas cosas para decir después de la guerra y el jazz  aprendió a decirlas.
El bebop fue en parte una respuesta al aburrimiento de la rutina del swing, tocando a un ritmo furioso y llenando los breves espacios que concedía la orquesta al solo con la mayor cantidad posible de ideas armónicas y melódicas. Parece que hubiera tomado los elementos musicales existentes y los hubiera liberado. A diferencia del swing era interpretado por grupos pequeños (declinación de las grandes bandas), en los que la batería y el bajo estaban equiparados musicalmente con la trompeta y el piano en la ejecución de solos. Era un estilo mucho más complejo, ponía mucho mayor énfasis en la elaboración de diferentes ritmos a la vez, mostraba excitación y frenesí, y la improvisación era esencial.
Se definía por sus tiempos más rápidos y armonías más complejas. Apuntaba a la circunlocución antes que a la definición exacta (la enunciación directa se consideraba cruda y falta de imaginación, no se atacaba en forma directa a ninguna nota). Los solos y los acompañamientos eran intencionalmente torpes y discordantes. La música a oídos del público era notablemente diferente de aquellos tonos bailables de Benny Goodman y Glenn Miller. El bebop aparecía acelerado, nervioso y fragmentado. Melódicamente este estilo se caracterizaba por el uso de la quinta disminuida (una de las disonancias hechas sobre la escala diatónica). En la práctica tendía a ascender en arpegios para descender luego por la escala. Los arpegios ascendentes que utilizaba se caracterizan por tener la séptima nota disminuida y la escala utilizada era una escala diatónica a la que se le agrega una nota cromática entre el quinto y el sexto grado (escala bebop). Las series de cadencias perfectas eran reemplazadas, por lo que los compases no se resolvían como deberían: Las progresiones armónicas elementales II – V – I (supertónica – dominante – tónica) o IV – V – I (subdominante – dominante – tónica) sufrían variaciones y la V (dominante) se reemplazaba, por ejemplo, por una bII7 (supertónica menor con séptima aumentada). Frecuentemente ocurría también que el patrón formado no se resolvía en la tónica, sino en otra dominante, dando pie a la repetición de una secuencia armónica que iba transitando por diferentes tonalidades.
Otra esencia significativa del estilo era su distensión estructural, ya que en lugar de tocarse una nota en su tiempo debido, a menudo se tocaba antes o después, creando disonancia. De esta forma el ritmo fluía con suavidad y era más importante que el tiempo.
Entre enero de 1949 y marzo de 1950 y como producto de sesiones conducidas por el trompetista Miles Davis (que incluyeron a Charlie Parker, Gerry Mulligan, Max Roach y Lee Konitz), aparece un nuevo estilo denominado “cool jazz”[17]. Estas sesiones se realizaron en el club “Royal Roost” de New York (conocido como “Metropolitan Bopera House”) y se denominaron “Birth of the Cool” (con este mismo nombre fueron grabadas y serían editadas en 1957 por el sello discográfico “Capitol”).
Miles Davis estableció una nueva tendencia musical al incluir importantes modificaciones en el jazz, partiendo de la técnica del bebop y combinándola con aspectos melódicos del swing. El cool conserva el sentimiento revolucionario de su antecesor pero en un estado maduro y desarrollado: eliminaba las disonancias, ponía énfasis en los tonos suaves y reducía los acentos de la sección rítmica dándoles un enfoque más suave, al mismo tiempo que le daba más importancia a los arreglos.
A medida que este estilo se difundía entre los jóvenes blancos de la costa oeste de la mano de músicos también blancos como Chet Baker y Stan Getz, surgía una nueva generación de músicos negros intentaron recuperar las raíces del jazz que consideraban que se estaban perdiendo. Así nace el “hard bop” de la mano de artistas como Clifford Brown, Charles Mingus, Cannonball Adderley y John Coltrane, y se diferenciaba del bebop al componerse de melodías más simples y de secciones rítmicas más relajadas.
A principios de la década del sesenta se introduce el “free jazz”, en el que la atonalidad es regla y una nueva concepción rítmica destruye el concepto de tempo. El jazzmen de este estilo intenta evitar todo tipo de progresión, y apuesta por seguir una trayectoria de improvisación basándose exclusivamente en su imaginación. En la década del setenta aparece el estilo “fusion”, donde se experimenta la integración con elementos provenientes del blues, del rock y del pop. En los ochenta una variante, el “acid jazz” conjugaría sonidos de funk, soul y jazz.
Desde entonces hasta la actualidad conviven estos y otros estilos, con mayor o menor predominio de unos sobre otros conforme a la época.
LA EMBESTIDA ADORNIANA
¿Por qué razón Adorno se empeñaba tanto en criticar esta música? ¿Cuáles fueron los argumentos que esgrimía para incluir al jazz dentro de la industria cultural musical?
A continuación se presentan cuestiones puntuales para brindar pruebas de sus argumentos e intentar analizarlos en función de la breve reseña de la evolución del jazz anteriormente expuesta.
El jazz como manifiesto de esclavitud
Eugene Lunn, en su libro “Marxismo y Modernismo” recoge una cita del texto de Adorno “Perennial Fashion – Jazz” de 1953 donde este autor sostiene que “El Jazz era menos la expresión de necesidades primitivas y arcaicas que la música de esclavos con características sadomasoquistas”[18]. Adorno intentaba explicar este fenómeno musical a través de la psicología. Para él existía una identificación del agredido con el agresor. Cuando las orquestas de negros recientemente liberados se ocupaban del entretenimiento de blancos, para Adorno, se demostraba que se aceptaba una relación de dominación. Sin embargo cabe mencionar que la subordinación ya estaba presente con anterioridad y que los primeros jazzmen eran hombres libres, recientemente emancipados, que elegían autónomamente esta forma de vida antes que otro tipo de trabajo más duro, alienante y opresor.
Dice Hobsbawm “El jazz es música de diáspora, entre otras cosas. Su historia forma parte de la migración en masa desde el viejo sur y, por razones económicas y a menudo también psicológicas, el jazz lo hacen personas libres y sin compromiso que pasan mucho tiempo en la carretera”[19]. Para estos jóvenes negros tocar jazz fue la única forma de libertad que tenían a su alcance. La vida del espectáculo les permitía sobrevivir en una sociedad que, aunque había abolido la esclavitud, el racismo no permitía la inserción social de los hombres de color y les permitía también lograr una mínima independencia. “El objetivo era la liberación y no el dinero (…) El keynesianismo municipal, nocturno y dirigido por gángsteres hizo que durante la depresión Kansas City fuera un oasis donde los músicos negros al menos podía comer (sería demasiado llamar prosperidad a una vida de hot dogs, platos de alubias, jarras de whisky, quizá con una pequeña gratificación por parte de una chica)”[20].
¿Arte auténtico o música de opresión de masas?
La estandarización del jazz representaba, para Adorno, la reproducción de los procesos repetitivos de la industria capitalista. Sostenía que “en el capitalismo tardío, sólo se puede escapar de lo que pasa en el trabajo, en la fábrica o en la oficina, aproximándose a ello en el tiempo libre”[21]. Creía que a falsa ilusión de libertad que prometía era sólo un fetiche, y ocultaba en su interior los procesos mecánicos de la máquina fordista. Afirmaba que “la repetición ininterrumpida sirve para recalcar en el oyente el ritual de la identificación y adecuación, hasta que se le convierte en una segunda naturaleza”[22].
Mientras que el arte auténtico, conforme a su juicio, debía proporcionar una vía de liberación que permita escapar de la opresión y no podía ser usado por la industria cultural, el jazz cumplía el objetivo de adoctrinar a la masa e inculcarle la metodología de trabajo de la industria capitalista. “La fórmula del jazz es la de la inserción, en el movimiento general, de ese sujeto representado por ritmos irregulares, que se alinea junto a la regularidad del todo, aún en su debilidad y en su embarazo, gracias a la admisión figurada de su impotencia; de tal manera es tomado y premiado por el colectivo. Por consiguiente, el jazz formula un esquema de identificación; en compensación de su autolimitación y del reconocimiento de su nulidad, el individuo se ve obligado a participar vicariamente en el poderío y magnificencia de lo colectivo, en cuyo círculo mágico es ubicado”[23].
Sin embargo la única maquinaria vinculada al jazz es el ferrocarril, en el que para su construcción se sometió a negros a trabajos forzados quienes revivieron las canciones de trabajo de las plantaciones de los primero tiempos. En las ciudades más industrializadas, como Detroit o Cleveland, el jazz no se desarrolló tan fructíferamente como en otras metrópolis, a pesar de la fuerte concentración de población negra.
Contrariamente con aquellas canciones de trabajo primitivas que marcaban el ritmo para trabajar al unísono, el jazz, con sus alteraciones, no podía servir de entrenamiento para la precisión de los aparatos fabriles. Incuestionablemente, la representación musical de la línea de montaje del fordismo estaba encarnada mucho más en la canción pop (y posteriormente en el rock and roll) que en el jazz.
Por otro lado, como recuerda Hobsbawm, “el jazz es importante en la historia del arte contemporáneo porque aportó una forma de crear arte que era distinta de la vanguardia de la alta cultura”[24]. Aunque Adorno se empeñaba en demostrar que los ejecutantes de jazz no podrían tocar “música seria” (refiriendo a la música clásica) y que debían conformarse con esa “barbarie estilizada”[25], no tomaba en cuenta que este estilo musical permitió que estos hombres, con las limitaciones que tenían por carecer de todo tipo de educación musical (y en muchos casos, educación de todo tipo), pudieran hacer un aporte significativo a la música. Hizo que “personas sin interés por la cultura, se conviertan en creadores de un arte serio”[26].
Si bien la sociedad capitalista moderna intenta confundir arte con industria cultural, el primer concepto es creación y expresión de un sentimiento vivido por un  artista, mientras que el segundo es negocio consistente en suministrar el ocio y la diversión a las masas y, agrega Adorno, “los motivos son en el fondo económicos. Es demasiado evidente que se podría vivir sin la entera industria cultural”[27]. El jazz maduro (a partir del estilo bebop) no mostraba ningún interés por conquistar un público numeroso. Existía un implícito rechazo a la popularidad. Agregaba Hobsbawm: “Rechazar el éxito (excepto si éste se ajusta a las condiciones inflexibles que pone el artista) es una actitud característica de las vanguardias, y en el jazz, que siempre ha vivido del cliente que paga, las concesiones a la taquilla parecían especialmente peligrosas para el intérprete que aspiraba a la condición de <artista>”[28].
Música para acompañar el baile
Adorno calificaba al jazz como Gebrauchsmusik o música de consumo, para acompañar el baile. Explicaba que el vicio que provocaba el entretenimiento de masas radicaba en que la distracción generada suponía conformidad con el sistema: “Divertirse significa siempre que no hay que pensar, que hay que olvidar el dolor incluso allí donde es mostrado. En la base de la diversión está la impotencia”[29].
Si bien claramente los estilos más primitivos eran esencialmente bailables no dejaban de ser expresión de una situación social de clase: Sus temas referían a la vida en las plantaciones y en las minas, a denunciar los abusos de los amos sobre los esclavos, a exigir la igualdad de los negros, entre otros. Por otro lado, a partir de 1940, el jazz se acercó a las vanguardias intelectuales, el público comenzó a analizar esta música y a reflexionar sobre ella.
Esas sesiones de improvisación (jam sessions) a las que concurrían los músicos luego de sus actuaciones en público, son evidencia de que, “aunque se ganaban la vida tocando en bailes, no tocaban para los que bailaban. Los músicos de la orquesta tocaban unos para otros.” [30] Su vida transcurría escindida en esos dos mundos musicales[31].
¿Liberación sexual o castración?
Adorno observaba que, en su desarrollo, la cultura industrializada prometía una forma de vida que en la realidad era imposible de alcanzar. “La industria cultural pone la frustración jovial en el puesto del dolor presente tanto en la ebriedad como en la ascesis. La ley suprema es que sus súbditos no alcancen jamás aquello que desean, y justamente con ello deben reír y contentarse”[32], afirmaba. Esta situación, analizada desde un costado psicológico, representaba para el autor una relación sexual que no llega a concretarse. Esta maquinaria que desplegó la sociedad capitalista funciona como un aparato erótico que se ofrece y se niega en el mismo acto: ofrece la imagen de liberación y niega la realidad de la libertad. Agregaba: “ese es el efecto de todo el aparato erótico. Todo gira en torno al coito, justamente porque éste no puede cumplirse jamás”[33]. La falta de realización está garantizada por el temor a la castración, que es el temor a perder algo más (que por cierto, ya no se tiene). En psicología la idea de castración representa lo que falta, y como toda carencia es fuente genuina de angustia.
Este escenario se repetía para Adorno en el jazz. En su primer ensayo sobre esta música (“Farewell to Jazz”, 1933), denunció que se trataba de una “emasculation music” (música de castración) y comparó las notas altas de la trompeta de Armstrong con los tonos agudos de los cantores castrados[34]. Eugene Lunn trascribió otro pasaje del autor, quien en “Über Jazz” proclamaba: “La liberación sexual prometida por el hot jazz oculta un verdadero temor de la castración implícito en la actuación del solista, la amenaza de impotencia que produce la identificación con la colectividad a la que se teme”[35]. Adorno infería que las secuencias sincopadas propias del jazz, eran la expresión del mensaje de impotencia que pretendía transmitir: “Es en efecto fuga pero no -como pretende- fuga de la realidad mala, sino fuga respecto al último pensamiento de resistencia que la realidad puede haber dejado aún”[36]. El frenesí generado, propio de la relación sexual no llegaba a resolverse, no había liberación: “Mientras para la conciencia ingenua el jazz se aparece en ocasiones, aunque se encuentre standardizado desde hace mucho tiempo, como expresión de impulsos eróticos irrefrenados, en realidad abre el camino para dichos impulsos, sólo para decapitarlos y reconfirmar de tal modo el sistema”[37].
Sin embargo, Adorno no tomaba en cuenta las intervenciones improvisadas del solista, presentes ya en los estilos más prematuros, y preponderantes en el bebop y el cool. A través de ellas los músicos se lanzan a la creación y se emancipan de las rígidas estructuras existentes. La realización puede estar presente entonces, en esta libertad creadora; en la diferencia innegable entre lo escrito y lo tocado, en la autonomía para modificar lo establecido.
¿Revolución o sometimiento?
Sostenía Adorno: “El jazz es todo aquello que se dice en su elogio, es decir, <expresión de nuestro tiempo>, sólo en la medida en que, una vez alejado de sus orígenes rebeldes y tomado por la gran organización de la industria cultural, se ha ido envileciendo, siendo introducido bajo esa forma en la cabeza de los hombres, al servicio de flagrantes intereses comerciales”[38]. No obstante es preciso revisar hasta que punto ha servido esta música a los intereses comerciales y no por el contrario se ha opuesto a ellos.
El jazz, como se mencionó anteriormente, nace como la expresión genuina de una clase oprimida que exigía la libertad: los estadounidenses negros. La revolución planteada por el bebop, fue tanto un manifiesto musical como político: los jazzistas eran hombres marginales, tristes, vagabundos, proletarios, borrachos o drogadictos, que formaban una masa que se oponía a la ideología dominante. La gente que vivía para la música no se interesaba comúnmente de la política, pero el caso de los músicos negros, que sufrían la brutal y omnipresente discriminación racial, las cosas eran diferentes. “Charlie «Bird» Parker tocaba ´Now’s the Time´ insistiendo en que había llegado el momento del cambio social. Charles Mingus compuso ´Fable of Faubus´ en respuesta al racismo del gobernador de Arkansas, Orval Faubus[39]. John Coltrane grabó ´Alabama´ después de que cuatro muchachas negras muriesen al explotar una bomba en una iglesia de Birmingham. Cuando Martin Luther King inició su campaña a favor de los derechos civiles, toda la comunidad del jazz, blancos y negros, lo apoyó sin fisuras”[40].
Era música de protesta, música de gente oprimida que daba cuenta de su condición por fuera del sistema que la excluía. “Los bolcheviques culturales centroeuropeos lo asociaban con el proletariado y la revolución”[41]. Se manifestaba a favor de la libertad de oportunidades y en contra de la segregación racial. Promovía la unidad y la identificación de los negros, quienes se sentían profundamente orgullosos de este estilo musical que reconocían como propio, como lo único auténtico[42]. El jazz se convirtió en la música de la generación beat.
Conforme a Adorno “la cultura ha contribuido siempre a domar los instintos revolucionarios, así como los bárbaros. La cultura industrializada hace algo más. Enseña e inculca la condición necesaria para tolerar la vida despiadada”[43], sin embargo los hechos han demostrado que el mensaje del jazz promueve la intransigencia y la rebelión en lugar de la tolerancia y el apaciguamiento.
La dialéctica en el jazz
Adorno afirmaba que toda creación artística suponía un proceso dialéctico: “La relación dialéctica entre el artista y el material está vigente en verdad desde el momento en que el material artístico adquirió la independencia propia de las cosas”[44]. Este proceso marcaba la liberación de la antinomia de la sociedad burguesa: el conflicto entre libertad individual y el constreñimiento social.
En función de esto conjeturaba que el jazz no podrá nunca ser considerado un arte genuino, ya que no se producía en él ningún proceso dialéctico; en lugar de buscar una instancia superadora se limitaba a reproducir los intereses de la industria cultural. Sin embargo, es necesario observar como en esta música la obra trascendía los estándares clásicos al romper con las estructuras musicales preestablecidas. Se podría afirmar entonces, que se liberaba de los condicionantes del entorno.
Por otro lado, a partir de la revolución del bebop y de las particularidades de las “jam sessions”, se puede cuestionar el análisis que hacía Adorno en base a la “liquidación del sujeto” que, según sostenía, se producía en la sociedad occidental contemporánea a través de la industria cultural. Las sesiones de improvisación impedían la existencia de versiones definitivas de los temas, ya que se engendraban variaciones únicas de acuerdo a quienes eran los ejecutantes y cual era su estado de ánimo. Cada uno hacía una lectura propia, con un ritmo y un fraseo propio. Por lo tanto era difícil separar la obra del artista, ésta se hallaba siempre vinculada al sentimiento presente de los músicos. Esta particularidad hacía que el jazz se vuelva más estético y menos comercial. Se forjaba una interpretación subjetiva de una realidad objetivada que trascendía los límites de la banda y se extendía a los consumidores e incitaba la reflexión (contrariamente al consumo pasivo e irreflexivo estimulado por la industria cultural). El jazz sugería un escenario alternativo, proponía reinventar lo existente.
CONCLUSIONES PRELIMINARES
Los principales ataques de Adorno al jazz aluden al supuesto fetichismo de este estilo musical. Sostiene el autor que detrás de las intervenciones de los solistas, que pretenden demostrar un desarrollo libre e independiente, se esconde en la síncopa, la organización represiva y la ratificación de la subordinación al sistema[45]. “El jazz, como se sabe, se caracteriza por la síncopa, es decir, por los alejamientos de la medida obtenidos introduciendo compases similares, seudocompases, en modo comparable a tropezones voluntariamente tontos de los excentric-clowns, que se popularizaron gracias a las comedias cinematográficas norteamericanas, y que deben ofrecer el paradigma del sujeto turbado, impotente y, por lo demás, ridículo en sus reacciones expresivas”[46]. Considera que, con el objeto de huir de los patrones clásicos de la música, los intérpretes de jazz, terminaron por convertir en reglas (tan rígidas y estructuradas como las tradicionales) los nuevos patrones que crearon; y las intervenciones de los solistas están tan estandarizadas como el resto y cumplen sólo una función decorativa.
Sin embargo, a lo largo de este trabajo, se han expuesto razones que demuestran que existen diferencias entre el jazz y la música comercial del estilo del pop y del rock: el jazz no usa escalas de la escuela europea, el lugar del ritmo es fundamental, la improvisación y la creación es su esencia, es una música de minorías, etc. Las bases rítmicas no respetan lo patrones clásicos de repeticiones a intervalos regulares, sino que son inconstantes y las notas no se ubican en los lugares predeterminados por el compás sino que llegan más tarde o más temprano de lo esperado (generando la particularidad del estilo, el swing). De hecho la historia de la batería en el jazz es una historia de emancipación de las bandas militares que tocaban en Nueva Orleáns: si bien obtuvieron de ellas buena parte de sus instrumentos (para los esclavos recién liberados, uno de los pocos caminos para conseguirlos, eran las reventas del ejército que se desarmaba luego de la guerra civil), se esforzaron por diferenciarse completamente.
Asimismo resulta difícil comprender a este filósofo que alegaba que “la vida en el capitalismo tardío es un rito permanente de iniciación. Cada uno debe demostrar que se identifica sin residuos con el poder por el que es golpeado. Ello está en la base de las síncopas del jazz, que se burla de las trabas y al mismo tiempo las convierte en normas”[47], aunque si se siguen los análisis de Robert Witkin[48] y de Diedrich Diederichsen[49] se encuentra una inferencia significativa a la hora de intentar comprender el pensamiento de Adorno: Sus principales artículos sobre jazz fueron escritos en la década del treinta (“Farewell to Jazz”, 1933; “Über Jazz”, 1936), antes de su llegada a Estados Unidos, lo que conduce a suponer que refieren al estilo Nueva Orleáns, al estilo Chicago y al comienzo del estilo swing. Por otro lado, el jazz que escuchaba era el de las grandes bandas, y entre ellas la de Paul Whiteman[50]. Y por último, en contraposición a lo que sí realiza en sus trabajos sobre música clásica, no se dedica al estudio exhaustivo de ningún jazzmen, comparando su vida artística con su vida privada.
No obstante y sin desmerecer la importancia de esta apreciación, resulta casi inconcebible la idea de que Adorno, viviendo en New York, nunca haya escuchado a los grandes solistas de la era del bebop y el cool. Por otro lado en su artículo de 1953, “Perennial Fashion – Jazz”, y en las menciones que hace a este estilo musical en sus posteriores trabajos “Dialéctica de la Ilustración” e “Impromptus. Serie de artículos musicales impresos de nuevo” no demuestra haber cambiado su forma de pensar.
Siguiendo la concepción marxista que recogen Baxandall y Morawski, “el mejor arte desempeña la función cognoscitiva de penetrar a través de las nubes ideológicas que oscurecen las realidades sociales”[51]. Sería demasiado arriesgado afirmar que el jazz logró iluminar una realidad enturbiada; sin embargo, no caben dudas que aportó un poco de luz. Les permitió a las clases oprimidas ganarse un lugar en la historia de la música, y sobre todo, les permitió expresarse con sus propias palabras ante un sistema que procuraba silenciarlas.
No hay un veredicto determinante para refutar las sentencias de Adorno: Nada permite demostrar incuestionablemente que el jazz sea una música genuina y que no haya contribuido a reproducir la ideología de la clase dominante. Sin embargo es indudable que el desarrollo de este estilo musical permitió a una clase relegada desplegar una manifestación artística auténtica, que habilitó a personas sin recursos ni formación ser creadores de un arte serio, que sirvió como una forma de manifestarse en contra de un sistema racista y excluyente, que predispuso a cultivar de manera reflexiva la música, que propició desarrollar el aura estética y dejar de ser consumidores pasivos e irreflexivos de un arte de masas que les era ajeno y antagónico.
Si, siguiendo a Diederichsen, “La experiencia de la música, en Adorno, está siempre ligada a la felicidad. De su obra tardía se desprende que ese sentimiento de felicidad se relaciona filosóficamente con el concepto de negación, de anulación de la apariencia estética“[52], podemos suponer que el autor no logró dar cuenta de que el jazz no pretendía negar una realidad. Si bien la industria cultural propaga el entretenimiento para generar distracción, con el objeto de que los consumidores olviden todo lo que promete la sociedad capitalista moderna y no cumple, que se ilusionen con conseguir la infinidad de materiales que publicita y que no pueden comprar,  y que reconstruyan a través de  los personajes que crea, una forma de vida que nunca podrán alcanzar[53]; el jazz, por el contrario procuraba generar con su aporte creatividad, toma de conciencia y modificación de una situación de opresión, abuso y sometimiento.
NOTAS
[1] “Desde 1936 había condenado al jazz como la expresión estética de una <revuelta de la naturaleza>, que desembocaba en el fascismo”. TRAVERSO, Enzo (25/12/2003).
[2] ADORNO, Theodor W. (1941).
[3] ADORNO, Theodor W. (1980).
[4] “La industria cultural sigue siendo la industria del entretenimiento (…) La diversión es la prolongación del trabajo bajo el capitalismo tardío”. HORKHEIMER, Max y ADORNO, Theodor (1988).
[5] HORKHEIMER, Max y ADORNO, Theodor (1988).
[6] La exportación de esclavos hacia Estados Unidos se organizaba principalmente desde la Isla de Gore en Senegal, y esta práctica fue llevada a cabo desde el siglo XVII hasta el siglo XIX (la importación de esclavos fue proscrita en 1808 y en 1865 se abolió oficialmente la esclavitud a través de la Enmienda 13 de la Constitución de 1776). De acuerdo al censo de 1860, había 4 millones de esclavos en Estados Unidos.
[7] HENTOFF, Nat y MC.CARTHY, Albert J. (1968).
[8] “La canción de trabajo negra vino a ser otro ejemplo del esfuerzo del negro por volver soportables las agonías de la esclavitud, integrándolas con las imágenes del pasado africano. Como no había modo de eludir las miserias de la labor de la plantación, suavizaban el trabajo”, HENTOFF, Nat y MC.CARTHY, Albert J. (1968).
[9] NEWTON, Francis (1960).
[10] El uso de los tambores estaba prohibido para los esclavos en la mayoría de los estados, ya que se temía que pudieran ser usados para crear un sistema de comunicación entre ellos y organizar una rebelión.
[11] Estilo pianístico surgido en Saint Louis en 1870, cercano al jazz por su carácter dinámico, que se caracterizaba por la superposición de un ritmo regular tocado con la mano izquierda y un ritmo sincopado con la derecha. Uno de sus principales exponentes fue el pianista Scott Joplin (1867-1917).
[12] Las denominadas “blue notes” son alteraciones a la armonía tradicional de la escala mayor hechas disminuyendo un semitono la tercera y la séptima nota. De esta forma se obtiene una sonoridad particular que es característica del blues y que fue adoptada por el jazz. Las “blue notes” entonces transforman una escala mayor en la llamada escala de blues.
[13]“The Cotton Club” fue uno de los más conocidos clubes nocturnos de New York donde tocaron los más reconocidos jazzistas de la época de la talla de Duke Ellington.
[14] “Luego de la subida al poder de Hitler, la creciente y siempre productiva cultura musical alemana quedó totalmente paralizada: todo lo que tuviera siquiera un toque “moderno” o innovador era manifiestamente contrario a la nueva ideología imperante, y debía ser erradicado. Así fue prohibida la música atonal, estigmatizada como símbolo manifiesto del desorden, y todo aquéllo que no se ajustara a los rígidos cánones de lo clásico y lo romántico [...] Fueron varios los factores y elementos que hicieron que el jazz no permaneciera a salvo de los dictadores. En primer lugar, el espíritu propio del estilo, que propiciaba el desarrollo de las posibilidades individuales de los músicos involucrados en su ejecución (improvisación) y, sobre todo, el aire de rebeldía y libertad que había marcado al jazz desde su misma génesis.” BRONFMAN, Dr. Miguel (2001).
[15] Charlie Parker (1920-1955) considerado uno de los mejores saxofonistas de la historia fue clave en la evolución del jazz hacia el bebop y llevó el estandarte de este estilo luego de la muerte de Charlie Christian en 1942 por tuberculosis.
[16] HENTOFF, Nat y MC.CARTHY, Albert J. (1968).
[17] “Cool” literalmente “Frío” en inglés, no tenía el mismo significado en el mundo del jazz, donde significaba fino, trabajado.
[18] LUNN, Eugene (1986)..
[19] HOBSBAWM, Eric (1999).
[20] Op. cit.
[21] ADORNO, Theodor W. (1941).
[22] ADORNO, Theodor W. y HORKHEIMER, Max (1969).
[23] Op. cit.
[24] HOBSBAWM, Eric (1999).
[25] “Un ejecutante de jazz que debe tocar un trozo de música seria, el más simple minuet de Beethoven, lo sincopa involuntariamente y sólo accede a tocar las notas preliminares con una sonrisa de superioridad. Esta ´naturaleza´, complicada por las instancias siempre presentes y desarrolladas hasta el exceso del medio específico, constituye el nuevo estilo, es decir, un sistema de no-cultura, al que se le podría reconocer una cierta unidad estilística, si se concede que tiene sentido hablar de una barbarie estilizada”. HORKHEIMER, Max y ADORNO, Theodor W. (1987).
[26] HOBSBAWM, Eric (1999).
[27] HORKHEIMER, Max y ADORNO, Theodor W. (1987).
[28] HOBSBAWM, Eric (1999).
[29] HORKHEIMER, Max y ADORNO, Theodor W. (1987).
[30] HOBSBAWM, Eric (1999).
[31] The jazzmen learned to live in two musical worlds: the one in which the earned their living, and the one after hours in which they played to please themselves – the world of the ´jam session´”. NEWTON, Francis (1960).
[32] HORKHEIMER, Max y ADORNO, Theodor W. (1987).
[33] HORKHEIMER, Max y ADORNO, Theodor W. (1987).
[34] WITKIN, Robert W. (2000).
[35] LUNN, Eugene (1986).
[36] HORKHEIMER, Max y ADORNO, Theodor W. (1987).
[37] ADORNO, Theodor W. y HORKHEIMER, Max (1969).
[38] ADORNO, Theodor W. y HORKHEIMER, Max (1969).
[39] Orval Eugene Faubus (1910-1994), gobernador del estado norteamericano de Arkansas, envió las tropas de la Guardia Nacional para prohibir la entrada de nueve estudiantes afroamericanos a la escuela secundaria de Little Rock. En 1954 la Corte Suprema de Estados Unidos había declarado que la segregación en las escuelas públicas era inconstitucional.
[40] ATZMON, Gilad (15/11/2004)
[41] HOBSBAWM, Eric (1999).
[42] “you see we need music, we´ve always needed a music – our own. We have nothing else. Our writers write like the whites, our painters paint like them, our philosophers think like them. Only our musicians don´t play like the whites. So we created a music for ourselves”. NEWTON, Francis (1960).
[43] HORKHEIMER, Max y ADORNO, Theodor W. (1987).
[44] ADORNO, Theodor W. (1985)..
[45] “La sincopación en jazz carece de propósito y se revoca arbitrariamente, es un reflejo y un reforzamiento de las libertades falsas de individuos impotentes en la sociedad capitalista avanzada (…) Lo que parece ser un control liberador de lo arcaico es en efecto su subordinación a la lógica comercial moderna”. LUNN, Eugene (1986).
[46] ADORNO, Theodor W. y HORKHEIMER, Max (1969)
[47] HORKHEIMER, Max y ADORNO, Theodor W. (1987).
[48] WITKIN, Robert W. (Marzo 2000).
[49] DIEDERICHSEN, Diedrich (21/09/2003
[50] Paul Whiteman (1891-1967) violinista y director de orquesta. Luego de dirigir una banda militar durante la primera guerra fundial, fundó una de las orquestas más populares de la década del 20. Whiteman se autodenominaba “el rey del jazz”, aunque sus pares no lo reconocían como tal: la orquesta tocaba en los bailes una música dulce y suave interpretada con partitura. Se oponía al “hot jazz”.
[51] BAXANDALL, Lee y MORAWSKI, Stefan (1976).
[52] DIEDERICHSEN, Diedrich (21/09/2003)
[53] “La industria cultural vuelve a proporcionar como paraíso la vida cotidiana. Escape y elopement están destinados a priori a reconducir al punto de partida. La distracción promueve la resignación que quiere olvidarse en la primera”. HORKHEIMER, Max y ADORNO, Theodor W. (1987).

A response to Habermas, Google Translation

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This paper aims to highlight some issues for understanding a little better reflections of Theodor Adorno Wiesengrund referred to the socio-political role of music in general and jazz in particular, in modern capitalist society. The way forward to meet this purpose begins by noting conditions that allowed the approach to musical environment, and present a brief reference to the emergence and evolution of jazz, and finally get to analyze critically and in more depth some Adorno postulates accurate.Finally, some preliminary conclusions are expected to serve as triggers for future research are presented.
CHRISTMAS AND MUSIC
The music was present in the life of Adorno in his early childhood and has since developed an important role in his life and in his work. His mother, Maria Calvelli Adorno, was professional and singer along with her ​​sister, who was a pianist, taken care of early musical instruction Theodor. Later his education was formalized its entry into the Kaiser Wilhelm Gymnasium in college Johann Wolfgang Goethe University in Frankfurt, with piano lessons Sekles Bernhard, with the lessons of musical composition of Alban Berg, and their frequent contacts with musicians and composers of the time. 
Fleeing the Nazis and after passing through different cities, he settled in New York in 1938 where he continued to develop his critical theory. However, his residence in this city not significantly modified their first impressions of jazz that left inscribed in his essay " Über Jazz "1936 [1] .
In his writings he recognized two areas in music: Popular music and serious music. He claimed that while at first the key feature is the standardization and the relationship between the part and the whole is fortuitous, the second part is an expression of everything and therefore can not replace the mechanical segments stereotyped patterns [2] . This serious music later in his Aesthetic Theory defined as genuine music, defined as a tool to sense the passage of the state by the individual direct and personal expression artist [3] . For Adorno there was no clear division between jazz and popular music, held that it was not a genuine music and instead of representing the feelings of these artists, represented the interests of the capitalist state. It was, for him, another product of the culture industry, defined as an element of the fascist totalitarian state, then adopted by capitalism, which uses principles of factory organization for the production of intangible goods (values, ideologies, symbolic content guidelines behavior, customs, etc..) in order to shape a particular style of culture called "mass culture."
Adorno thought that jazz was a "Gebrauchsmusik", ie consumer music to accompany the dance and entertain, and that this contributed to strengthening the cultural industry, which the author is also the entertainment industry [4] . The fun had promoted a negative, since it implied an adherence to the regime: "Sporting mean agreeing. Fun is only possible as isolated and separated from the whole social process, as absurdly resignation from the beginning to the inevitable claim of any work (...) always means fun not to think " [5] . Jazz, according to Adorno, was oriented manipulative control of subjectivities and I identified consumers of this music with those men who were killing time tolerated because not account for their social status, which could not escape.
ORIGIN AND EVOLUTION OF JAZZ
Many authors agree define jazz as the result of the meeting of African and European musical tradition in a particular scenario that was the United States, which since its inception has become a major buyer of slaves in order to satisfy the need for hand having the force (mainly cotton, tobacco and sugar) colonies in Southeast agricultural plantations [6] .
The West African music was remarkably functional and lacked the "musical art" that claimed the European Baroque. Hentoff and Mc.Carthy [7] , following anthropological research, recognize eight basic types of songs that regulated the African cultural pattern. Among these are the songs of mothers to educate their children, lyrics courtesy to influence young girls, the songs of religious leaders to guide the community, the songs of the warriors to promote courage, and Songs of workers to return their tasks bearable.
The "cultured" Europe, in contrast, require their music performers, composers and listeners excessive training, which was derived in which only a limited elite could enjoy it. Its aim was to express through art the sense of perfection.
For the African black, forced to work on plantations U.S. in exchange for food and shelter, music was essential: It helped him cope with the anguish of the oppressive regime while it served to reduce
boredom of your routine [8] . Back in 1860, Richard F. Burton, British consul famous for his explorations in Africa and Asia, held that "the fisherman accompanies his oar, the carrier loading and the housewife his task of cleaning the grain songs" [9] . In agricultural belts, in port areas and around all forced labor, did these "work songs" powerfully rhythmic and syncopated (often chained slaves had to work the rhythmic unison, and these songs marked the movement).
Furthermore Africans who came to America, loaded with pagan traditions and found that the Christian religion was imposed them. Accustomed to their rites that included songs and dances, began to include clapping, rhythmic movements and black voices of a very particular celebrations church bell. That is how the "Spirituals" (history of gospel) were born as expressions of faith.
After the civil war, many slaves were freed and moved to urban areas in search of employment and a better quality of life (beginning the industrializing phase of the U.S. economy in which the demand for labor was higher in areas in urban agriculture). One of the main urban settlements for these free African American citizens was New Orleans, former capital of the state of Louisiana. This city had a multicultural and flexible: It was founded by French colonists, assigned to the Spanish empire, recovered by the French control of the time of Napoleon and finally sold to the United States. This is where discovered musical instruments and where their first wages allowed them to purchase (until then his output had been limited by precarious instruments themselves manufactured with elements at their disposal as bones, cans, gourds, wood, etc.. [ 10]).
The profession of "entertain white" was logically preferred, partly because they were good at it and partly because they allowed out of worst forms of labor or slavery. However, these freedmen remained outside any formal musical education, so to address these chose to play instruments as they sang. Instead of structuring their songs based on classical melody, harmony and rhythm, improvised organizational principles, made instruments were an extension of his voice.
This cluster of conditions, along with many other spontaneous beyond the analysis converged in the birth of jazz style and "New Orleans" by 1910, which differed from "ragtime" [11]  to venture more freely rhythmic improvisation and by use of the "blue notes" [12] .
In a short time emerged numerous jazz groups and began to migrate to other cities, extending its influence into the north and coming to New York and Chicago. These cities had experienced a significant increase in its black population product of the economic boom, thanks to which so did the entertainment industry and her local trafficking of alcohol, illegal gambling and prostitution that provided shelter to the new bands. At these nightclubs style "Cotton Club" [13] , the music was performed by blacks to white audiences. These are the years marked by the "Chicago" style (which replaced the style "New Orleans" and the style "Dixieland"), in which the great orchestras (such as King Oliver, Jerry Roll Morton, Paul Whiteman and Duke stood out Ellington) rather than personal expression of the great soloists (Louis Armstrong as the head of his "Hot Five" and "Hot Seven", Rex Stewart, and Coleman Hawkins).
During the subsequent economic depression 1929 crash was decimated the entertainment industry, so, with the aggravation of the great influence acquired the radio, many nightclubs closed. The Chicago Jazz became an intimate circle of jazzmen who visit each other and organize private meetings in their homes. Many musicians moved away forever from the stage and others migrated to Europe in search of work. There arose the "hot clubs" local who gave shelter to jazz fans and, infected by the presence of musicians like Benny Carter and Sidney Bechet, saw emerge the first great European jazz musicians the likes of Django Reinhardt and Stephane Grappelli . 
Already in this period, extinct alcohol prohibition and accompanied by the increasing popularity of white musicians as Benny Goodman and Glen Miller, jazz no longer considered a marginal music. Began the "swing era" in which the orchestra became the ideal for showcasing soloists and they did flourish under the first great female vocalists: Billie Holiday and Ella Fitzgerald.
The years of the Second World War were thorny for the development of jazz while U.S. musicians were forced to join the army in Europe were persecuted by the Nazis that defined as "entartete musik" (decadent music) [14] .
In 1938 saxophonist Henry Minton opened a bar on the first floor of the Cecil hotel located in the Harlem neighborhood of Manhattan in New York. The place was called "Minton's Playhouse" and served as a space for "jam sessions" that would play a major role in the evolution of jazz from swing to bebop. These jam sessions began early 40s and they were part of Thelonious Monk, Kenny Clarke, Charlie Christian, Dizzy Gillespie and guest musicians from other clubs such as the "Savoy Ballroom", the "Apollo Theater" and "Clark Monroe 's Uptown House "where he came from Charlie Parker [15] .
This new style was introduced as a revolutionary in an era convulsed itself. The American Federation of Musicians (AFM acronym in English) recordings were prohibited during the war, which added to people was not met with the same regularity to clubs and lounges, the emergence of bebop had to wait until 1945. But the delay did not slow upheaval unleashed, matched only by the innovations of Armstrong on the ragtime. These musicians rampant advocated a much broader decision-consciousness. "It showed intemperate and defensive, and revealed some ignorance and naivete: They talked as if he had discovered bop harmony, compared to Stravinsky with Parker, spoke of the role of new melodic drummer," asserted Mc.Carthy Hentoff and  [16] . There were new things to say after the war jazz and learned to say them.
Bebop was partly a response to the boredom of routine swing, playing at a furious pace and filling the spaces brief granted only with the orchestra to the widest possible harmonic and melodic ideas. Seems to have taken the existing musical elements and were released. Unlike the swing was played by small groups (decline of the big bands), where the drums and bass were matched musically with trumpet and piano solos in performing. It was a much more complex style, placed much greater emphasis on the development of different rhythms at once, showing excitement and frenzy, and improvisation was essential.
Was defined by their faster times and more complex harmonies. Pointed to the circumlocution rather than the exact definition (direct utterance was considered crude and unimaginative, not directly attacked any note). Solos and accompaniments were intentionally awkward and discordant. Music to the ears of the audience was noticeably different from those dance ringtones Benny Goodman and Glenn Miller. The bebop appeared accelerated nervous and fragmented. Melodically this style was characterized by the use of the diminished fifth (one of the dissonances made on the diatonic scale). In practice arpeggios tended to move up and then down the ladder. The ascending arpeggios used are characterized by the diminished seventh note and scale a diatonic scale was used to which is added a chromatic note between the fifth and sixth grade (bebop scale).The series of perfect cadences were replaced, so the bars were not resolved as they should: The basic harmonic progressions II - V - I (supertonic - dominant - tonic) or IV - V - I (subdominant - dominant - tonic) suffered variations and V (dominant) is replaced, for example, by a bII7 (lower supertonic augmented seventh). Also frequently occurred that was not resolved pattern formed on the tonic, but in another dominant, giving rise to the repetition of a harmonic sequence that was passing through different shades.
Another significant essence of style was structural relaxation, because instead of playing a note at its due time, often played before or after, creating dissonance. Thus the rhythm flowed smoothly and was more important than time. 
Between January 1949 and March 1950 and as a result of sessions led by trumpeter Miles Davis (which included Charlie Parker, Gerry Mulligan, Max Roach and Lee Konitz ), displayed a new style called "cool jazz" [17] . These sessions were held at the club "Royal Roost" of New York (known as "Metropolitan Bopera House") and called "Birth of the Cool" (with the same name were recorded and will be published in 1957 by the label "Capitol ").
Miles Davis established a new musical trend include major changes in jazz, based on the technique of bebop and combining with melodic aspects of the swing. The cool revolutionary sentiment retains its predecessor but in a mature and developed state: dissonance removed, placed emphasis on reducing the soft tones and accents of the rhythm section giving a softer approach, while giving it more importance arrangements.
As this style diffused among white youth of the west coast of the hand also white musicians like Chet Baker and Stan Getz, emerged a new generation of black musicians tried to recover the roots of jazz they felt they were missing. Thus was born the "hard bop" of artists such as Clifford Brown, Charles Mingus, Cannonball Adderley and John Coltrane, and differed from bebop to consist of simple melodies and more relaxed rhythm sections.
In the early sixties introduced the "free jazz", where atonality is a new rule and rhythmic conception destroys the concept of tempo. The jazzmen of this style tries to avoid any kind of progression, and commitment to follow a path of improvisation based solely on your imagination. In the seventies style "fusion", where integration with elements from the blues, rock and pop is experienced appears. In the eighties a variant, the "acid jazz" conjugaría sounds of funk, soul and jazz.
From then until now coexist these and other styles, with varying prevalence of each other according to the time.
THE ONSLAUGHT Adorno
Why Adorno insisted both criticize this music? What were the arguments wielded to include jazz in the music culture industry? 
Then specific issues are presented to provide evidence of their arguments and try to analyze them in terms of the brief history of the evolution of jazz forth above.
The jazz as slavery manifesto
Eugene Lunn, in his book "Marxism and Modernism" includes a quote from the text of Adorno, "Perennial Fashion - Jazz" in 1953 where he argues that "The Jazz was less expression of primitive needs and archaic music of slaves with features sadomasochistic " [18] . Adorno tried to explain this phenomenon through musical psychology. For him there was an identification with the aggressor attacked. When orchestras recently freed blacks occupied white entertainment, for Adorno, it was demonstrated that a relationship of domination is accepted. However it is noteworthy that the subordination was present previously and the first jazzmen were free men, emancipated recently that autonomously chose this way of life than other harder, alienating and oppressive work.
Hobsbawm says "Jazz is music diaspora, among other things. His story is part of the mass migration from the old south and, for economic reasons and often psychological, jazz make free and without commitment people who spend time on the road "[19] . For these young black men will play jazz was the only way to freedom at their disposal. The life of the show allowed them to survive in a society that, although slavery had been abolished, racism did not allow the social inclusion of men of color and also allowed them to achieve a minimum independence. "The goal was the liberation and not money (...) The city, night and run by gangsters Keynesianism made ​​during the depression Kansas City was an oasis where black musicians could at least eat (too would call to a life of prosperity hot dogs, bean dishes, jugs of whiskey, with perhaps a small stipend from a girl) " [20] .
Art or music? Authentic mass oppression?
Standardization of jazz represented, for Adorno, playing repetitive processes of capitalist industry. He argued that "in late capitalism, can only escape from what happens at work, in the factory or office, approaching it in time" [21] . He believed that illusion of freedom promised was just a fetish, and hidden inside the mechanical processes of Fordist machine. He claimed that "the continued repetition serves to emphasize the listener ritual identification and adaptation, until he becomes a second nature" [22] .
While true art, as in their view, should provide a means of liberation that allows escape oppression and could not be used by the culture industry, the jazz meet the goal of indoctrinating the masses and instill the work methodology capitalist industry."The formula of jazz is the insertion, in the general movement of the subject represented by irregular rhythms, which aligns with regularity at all, even in her weakness and her pregnancy, due to the admission of his figurative impotence so is taken and awarded by the collective. Therefore, the jazz makes an identification scheme, in compensation for their restraint and the recognition of its nullity, the individual is forced to participate vicariously in the power and magnificence of the collective, in which magic circle that is located " [23] .
However the only jazz machinery is linked to the railroad, which for its construction was subjected to forced labor blacks who revived the work songs of the first plantations times. In the most industrialized cities like Detroit or Cleveland, jazz was not developed as fruitfully as in other cities, despite the high concentration of black population.
Contrary to those primitive work songs that set the tempo to work in unison, jazz, with its alterations, could not serve as training for the accuracy of the manufacturing equipment. Unquestionably, the musical representation of the assembly line of Fordism was embodied more in the pop song (and subsequently in the rock and roll) than jazz.
Moreover, as Hobsbawm recalls, "jazz is important in the history of contemporary art because it provided a way to create art that was different from the forefront of high culture" [24] . Although Adorno was determined to prove that jazz performers could not play "serious music" (referring to classical music) and should comply with the "stylized barbarism," [25] , did not take into account that this musical style allowed these men, with the limitations were due to lack of any kind of musical education (and in many cases, education of all kinds), could make a significant contribution to music. Made "people without interest in culture, become creators of a serious art" [26] .
While modern capitalist society attempts to confuse art with cultural industry, the first concept is the creation and expression of a feeling experienced by an artist, while the latter is consistent in providing business entertainment and fun to the masses and adds Adorno, "The reasons are the economic background. It is too obvious that we could live without the whole culture industry " [27] . Mature jazz (from bebop style) did not show any interest in winning a large audience. There was an implicit rejection of popularity. Added Hobsbawm: "Reject the success (unless it meets the uncompromising conditions that puts the artist) is a characteristic attitude of the avant-garde, and jazz, has always lived the paying customer, concessions to the box office seemed especially dangerous for the performer who aspired to the condition " [28] .
Music to accompany the dance
Adorno Gebrauchsmusik qualified to jazz or music consumer, to accompany dance. He explained that the defect which caused the mass entertainment was that supposed distraction generated under the system: "Having fun always means not to think, to forget the pain even where it is shown. At the base of the fun is impotence " [29] . 
Though clearly the most primitive dance styles were essentially not stop being an expression of a social class position: His topics related to life in the plantations and mines, to report abuses of masters over slaves, to demand equality for blacks, among others. Moreover, since 1940, jazz came to the intellectual avant-garde, the public began to analyze the music and reflect on it. 
Such jam sessions (jam sessions) who attended the musicians after their public performances are evidence that "although their living playing dances, not touched for dancing. The musicians of the orchestra were playing for each other. "  [30]  His life was spent split into these two musical worlds [31] .
Sexual Liberation or neutering??
Adorno noted that, in its development, industrialized culture promised a way of life that in reality it was impossible to reach."The culture industry puts jovial frustration in this pain since both drunkenness and asceticism. The supreme law is that his subjects will never achieve what they want, and just laugh and thus must be content " [32] he said. This situation, analyzed from a psychological side, represented for the author a sexual relationship fails to materialize. This machinery deployed capitalist society works as an erotic device is offered and refuses in the act: the image of liberation and denies the reality of freedom. He added: "That's the effect of all the erotic device. Everything revolves around sex, precisely because it can never be fulfilled " [33] . A failure is guaranteed by the fear of castration, which is the fear of losing something else (which by the way, since you do not). In psychology the idea of castration is what is missing, and as all lack is genuine source of anguish.
This scenario was repeated for Adorno on jazz. In his first essay on this music (" Farewell to Jazz ", 1933), reported that it was a" emasculation music "(music by castration) and compared the high notes trumpet Armstrong with sharp tones of the singers castrated [34] . Eugene Lunn transcribed another passage the author, who in " Über Jazz "proclaimed:" Sexual liberation promised by the hot jazz hides a real fear of the implicit in the performance of solo castration threat of helplessness that results in identification with the community to the feared " [35] . Adorno inferred that own jazz syncopated sequences, were the expression of the message of powerlessness meant to convey: "It's on the run effect but not-as intended-leak bad reality but escape from the last thought of resistance that can actually have left yet " [36] . The generated self frenzy sex not reach solved, no release, "As for the naive consciousness jazz appear at times although standardizado be long, as an expression of irrefrenados erotic impulses, actually opens the way for these impulses, and reconfirm only to behead so the system " [37] .
However, Adorno did not take into account the interventions improvised solo, already present in the most premature styles, and preponderant in the bebop and cool. Through these musicians take to the creation and emancipate the rigid existing structures. The embodiment may be present then, in this creative freedom, in the undeniable difference between the written and the headdress, the autonomy to modify the provisions.
Revolution or submission?
Adorno argued: "Jazz is all that is said in his eulogy, ie , only to the extent that, once out of their rebellious origins and taken to the great organization of the cultural industry , has been debasing, being introduced in that form at the top of the men in the service of blatant commercial interests " [38] . However we need to review to what extent has served this music to commercial interests and not on the contrary has opposed them. 
's jazz, as mentioned above, was born as a genuine expression of an oppressed class that demanded freedom: black Americans. The revolution raised by bebop, was both a musical and political manifesto: jazzmen were marginal, sad, homeless men, proletarians, drunks or drug addicts, forming a mass that opposed the dominant ideology. People who lived for music is not commonly interested in politics, but for black musicians, who suffered the brutal and pervasive racial discrimination, things were different. "Charlie" Bird "Parker played ' Now's the Time 'insisting that the time had come for social change. Charles Mingus composed ' Fable of Faubus 'response to racism in the Arkansas Governor Orval Faubus [39] .John Coltrane recorded ' Alabama 'after four black girls should die in a bomb blast in a church in Birmingham. When Martin Luther King began his campaign for civil rights, the entire jazz community, black and white, seamless supported him " [40] .
It was protest music, music of oppressed people realized his condition outside the system that excluded. "The Central European cultural Bolsheviks associated with the proletariat and the revolution" [41] . Is in favor of freedom of opportunity and against racial segregation. Promoted unity and identification of blacks, who were deeply proud of this musical style that recognized as your own, as authentic [42] . Jazz became the music of the Beat Generation.
According to Adorno "culture has always helped to tame the revolutionary instincts and barbarians. The industrialized culture does more. Teaches and instills the necessary condition to tolerate the relentless life " [43] , however the facts show that the message of jazz promotes intransigence and rebellion rather than tolerance and appeasement.
Dialectics in jazz
Adorno claimed that all artistic creation involved a dialectical process: "The dialectical relationship between the artist and the material is really effective from the moment that the artistic material acquired own independence of things" [44] . This process marked the release of the antinomy of bourgeois society. Conflict between individual freedom and social constraint 
Based on this guessed that jazz can never be considered a genuine art because it was not produced in any dialectical process , instead of looking to an enhanced merely repeated the interests of the culture industry. However, it is necessary to see how the work in this music transcended classical standards with predetermined breaking musical structures. It could be said then, that was released from the constraints of the environment.
On the other hand, from the revolution of bebop and the particularities of the "jam sessions", one can question the analysis was Adorno based on the "liquidation of the subject" which, he argued, was produced in Western society through the contemporary cultural industry. The jam sessions prevented the existence of final versions of the songs, because only variations according to who the performers and what his mood is engendered. Each had its own reading, with its own rhythm and phrasing. Therefore it was difficult to separate the artist's work, it was always linked to this feeling of musicians. This feature made the jazz becomes more aesthetic and less commercial. A subjective interpretation of an objectified reality that transcended the boundaries of the band and stretched consumers and encouraged reflection (as opposed to passive and thoughtless consumption stimulated by the culture industry) was forged. Jazz suggested an alternative scenario, proposed reinvent what exists.
PRELIMINARY FINDINGS
Main attacks Adorno allude to jazz fetishism course of this musical style. He argues that behind the soloists interventions that seek to demonstrate a free and independent development, hides in syncopation, the repressive organization and ratification of subordination to the system [45] . "Jazz, as is known, is characterized by syncopation, ie, for departures from the measure obtained by introducing similar measures, seudocompases in comparably stumbled voluntarily fools of excentric-clowns, who became popular thanks to the comedies American film, and must provide the paradigm of embarrassed, helpless subject and, moreover, ridiculous in their expressive reactions " [46] . Considers that, in order to escape the classic patterns of music, jazz performers, eventually become rules (so rigid and structured as traditional) that created new patterns, and interventions soloists are standardized so like the rest and meet only a decorative function.
However, throughout this work, have been exposed reasons that demonstrate that there are differences between jazz and commercial music style pop and rock music: jazz does not use scales of the European school, the place of rhythm is essential , improvisation and creation is its essence, is a music of minorities. The rhythm section do not respect the classical patterns of repeats at regular intervals, they are fickle and the notes are not located in the default for the compass but arrive later or earlier than expected (generating the characteristic style, places the swing). In fact the history of jazz drummer is a story of emancipation from military bands playing in New Orleans: Although obtained from them much of their instruments (for the newly freed slaves, one of the few ways to get them, resales were then army disarmed the civil war), strove to fully differentiate.
Also difficult to understand this philosopher who argued that "life in late capitalism is a permanent rite of passage. Each must demonstrate that no residue is identified with the power by being hit. This is the basis of the syncopations of jazz, which mocks the obstacles and at the same time makes rules " [47] , although the analysis is still Robert Witkin [48]  and Diedrich Diederichsen [49]  is found a significant inference when trying to understand the thinking of Adorno: The main articles for jazz were written in the thirties (" Farewell to Jazz ", 1933," Über Jazz ", 1936), before coming to the United States, leading to assume that refer to the New Orleans style, Chicago style and the beginning of the swing style. On the other hand, was listening jazz big band, and including Paul Whiteman [50] . And finally, as opposed to what we do takes in his work on classical music, does not engage in any comprehensive study of jazzmen, comparing his artistic life with his private life.
However without detracting from the importance of this assessment, it is almost inconceivable the idea that Adorno, living in New York, has never heard the great soloists of the era of bebop and cool. On the other hand in his 1953 article, " Perennial Fashion - Jazz "and mentions makes this musical style in his later works" Dialectic of Enlightenment "and" Impromptus. Series of printed music items back "no shows have changed their thinking.
Following the Marxist conception collecting Baxandall and Morawski, "the best art plays cognitive function to penetrate through the clouds that obscure ideological social realities" [51] . It would be too risky to claim that jazz actually managed to light a clouded, however, no doubt that provided some light. Allowed the oppressed classes to gain a place in the history of music, and above all, let them express themselves in their own words to a system that sought to silence them.
No decisive verdict to refute Adorno Case: Nothing can prove unquestionably that jazz music is genuine and has not contributed to reproduce the ideology of the ruling class. However it is clear that the presence of this musical style allowed relegated to deploy a real art form, which enabled people without resources or training to be creators of a serious art, which served as a form of protest against a racist system class and exclusive, which predisposed to grow thoughtfully music, which led to developing the aesthetic aura and stop being passive and thoughtless consumers of a mass art who was alien and antagonistic.
If, following Diederichsen, "The experience of music, Adorno, is always linked to happiness. In his later work shows that the feeling of happiness is related philosophically with the concept of denial, cancellation of aesthetic appearance " [52] , we can assume that the author failed to realize that jazz was not intended to deny reality. While the culture industry propagates entertaining distraction to generate in order for consumers to forget everything it promises modern capitalist society and fails, which excite to get plenty of advertising material and can not buy, and rebuild through the characters he creates, a way of life that can never achieve [53] , the jazz, however their contribution sought generate creativity, awareness and modification of a situation of oppression, abuse and subjugation.
NOTES
[1]  "Since 1936 had condemned jazz as an aesthetic expression of , that led to fascism." Traverso, Enzo (25/12/2003). [2]  Adorno, Theodor W. (1941). [3]  Adorno, Theodor W. (1980). [4]  "The culture industry remains the entertainment industry (...) The fun is the prolongation of work under late capitalism." Horkheimer, Max and Adorno, Theodor (1988). [5]  Horkheimer, Max and Adorno, Theodor (1988). [6]  The export of slaves to the United States was organized mainly from Gore Island in Senegal, and this practice was conducted from the seventeenth to the nineteenth century (the importation of slaves was outlawed in 1808 and in 1865 slavery was officially abolished by the 13th Amendment of the Constitution of 1776). According to the census of 1860, there were 4 million slaves in the United States. [7]  Hentoff, Nat and MC.CARTHY, Albert J. (1968). [8]  "The black work song became another example of the effort to return bearable black agonies of slavery, integrating them with images of the African past. As he had no way of escaping the miseries of the work of planting, work softening "Hentoff, Nat and MC.CARTHY, Albert J. (1968). [9]  NEWTON, Francis (1960). [10]  The use of drums was forbidden for slaves in most states, as it was feared they could be used to create a communication system between them and organize a rebellion. [11]  pianistic style emerged in Saint Louis in 1870, close to jazz by its dynamic nature, which is characterized by the superposition of a regular rhythm played with the left hand and a syncopated rhythm right. One of its main exponents was the pianist Scott Joplin (1867-1917). [12]  The so-called "blue notes" are alterations to the traditional harmony of the major scale are decreasing semitone made ​​the third and seventh notes. Thus a particular sound that is characteristic of blues and was adopted by the jazz is obtained. The "blue notes" then become a larger scale in the so-called blues scale. [13] "The Cotton Club" was one of the most famous nightclubs in New York where they played the most famous jazz musicians of the era from the likes of Duke . Ellington [14]  "After the rise of Hitler, always growing and productive German musical culture was completely paralyzed: everything even had a touch of" modern "or innovative was manifestly contrary to the new prevailing ideology, and should be eradicated. So atonal music was forbidden, stigmatized as a manifest symbol of disorder, and anything else that does not conform to the rigid canons of classical and romantic [...] Several factors and elements that made ​​the jazz did not remain a safe from dictators. First, the very spirit of the style, which favored the development of the individual possibilities of the musicians involved in its execution (improvisation) and, above all, the air of rebellion and freedom that had characterized the jazz since its genesis. " BRONFMAN, Dr. Miguel (2001). [15]  Charlie Parker (1920-1955) considered one of the best saxophonists in history was instrumental in the evolution of jazz to bebop and took the banner of this style after the death of Charlie Christian in 1942 from tuberculosis. [16]  Hentoff, Nat and MC.CARTHY, Albert J. (1968). [17]  "Cool" literally "Cool" in English, did not have the same meaning in the world of jazz, which meant fine, worked. [18]  LUNN, Eugene (1986) ..[19]  Hobsbawm, Eric (1999). [20]  Op cit. [21]  Adorno, Theodor W. (1941). [22]  Adorno, Theodor W. and Horkheimer, Max (1969). [23]  Op cit. [24]  Hobsbawm, Eric (1999). [25]  "A jazz performer must touch a piece of serious music, the simplest minuet of Beethoven, the syncopation and only accessed unintentionally touching the preliminary notes with a smile superiority. This 'nature', complicated by instances always present and developed to excess the specific medium, constitutes the new style, that is, a system of non-culture, to which he could recognize a certain stylistic unity, if granted that makes sense to speak of stylized barbarity. " Horkheimer, Max and Adorno, Theodor W. (1987). [26]  Hobsbawm, Eric (1999). [27] Horkheimer, Max and Adorno, Theodor W. (1987). [28]  Hobsbawm, Eric (1999). [29]  Horkheimer, Max and Adorno, Theodor W. . (1987) [30]  . Hobsbawm, Eric (1999) [31]  The jazzmen musical learned to live in two worlds: the one in Which Their earned the living, and the one after hours in Which They played to please Themselves - the world of the 'jam session'. "NEWTON, Francis (1960). [32]  Horkheimer, Max and Adorno, Theodor W. (1987). [33]  Horkheimer, Max and Adorno, Theodor W. (1987). [34]  Witkin, Robert W. (2000). [35]  LUNN, Eugene (1986). [36]  Horkheimer, Max and Adorno, Theodor W. (1987).[37]  Adorno, Theodor W. and Horkheimer, Max (1969). [38]  Adorno, Theodor W. and Horkheimer, Max (1969). [39]  Orval Eugene Faubus (1910-1994), governor of the U.S. state of Arkansas, sent troops from the National Guard to prohibit the entry of nine African American students to high school in Little Rock. In 1954 the U.S. Supreme Court had declared segregation in public schools was unconstitutional. [40]  ATZMON, Gilad (15/11/2004) [41]  Hobsbawm, Eric (1999). [42]  "you see we need music, we've always needed a music - our own. We have nothing else. Our writers write like the whites, our painters paint like them, think like them our philosophers. Only our musicians do not play like the whites. So we created a music for ourselves. " NEWTON, Francis (1960). [43]  Horkheimer, Max and Adorno, Theodor W. (1987). [44]  Adorno, Theodor W. (1985) ..[45]  "The syncopation in jazz purposeless and arbitrarily revoked, is a reflection and a reinforcement of false freedoms of powerless individuals in advanced capitalist society (...) What seems to be a liberating control archaic is indeed its subordination to the modern business logic. " LUNN, Eugene (1986). [46]  Adorno, Theodor W. and Horkheimer, Max (1969)[47]  Horkheimer, Max and Adorno, Theodor W. (1987). [48]  Witkin, Robert W. (March 2000). [49]  Diederichsen, Diedrich (21/09/2003 [50]  Paul Whiteman (1891-1967) violinist and conductor. then lead a military band during the first fundial war, founded one of the orchestras . most popular of the 20 Whiteman "King of Jazz" called himself, though his peers did not recognize as such: the orchestra played at dances a sweet and soft music played score was opposed to "hot jazz".. [51] Baxandall, Lee and MORAWSKI, Stefan (1976). [52]  Diederichsen, Diedrich (21/09/2003) [53]  "The culture industry provide returns to everyday life as paradise. escape and elopement are designed a priori to bring back to the starting point. Distraction promotes resignation want to forget in the first. "Horkheimer, Max and Adorno, Theodor W. (1987).


















































Marcuse V. Utopia

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Marcuse v. Utopia

I found the One Dimensional Man to be one of the most important books of the second half of the 20th Century, so I looked forward with optimism to reading the following.  Frankly, I would not have troubled anyone with it except that I had already decided to reprint at least one thing from each of the Critical Theory adherents.  It seems to defeat itself, but then that may be because the very technological revolution he discusses overwhelmed his argument against an a-historical approach.  

It is probably a mistake to look back at his writings with the benefit (or curse) of some fifty years of technological advance toward an overwhelmingly Orwellian society.  Still, he spends a great deal of time stating unequivocally that students are the vanguard of all progress.  At the time of the essay or presentation, that may have been the case, but today there is very little to hope for from our students, faculty, politicians, or inventors. 

And there is plenty of room for Utopian thinking as what we face is anything but.  There is no need to repeat previous references to contemporary events to support this.

The one remark, not made here, that I remember most from Marcuse had to do with being able to listen to classical music on a home entertainment system.  His argument was that the actual experience of attending a concert is lost in so doing.  He was violently attacked by those who love to listen to the Goldberg Variations and the like on electronic equipment at home.  He simply meant that they were two different experiences.  And, I might add, anyone who has attended a live and serious concert recently should be able to tell you that it is far less rewarding listening to coughing, shuffling, over-dressed, audience noises as accompaniment than to listen alone with only the performer and ones own ears involved.

Herbert Marcuse The End of Utopia
Source: Herbert Marcuse Home page, created by H. Marcuse on 27 May 2005;
Translated: by Jeremy Shapiro and Shierry M. Weber.
First Published: in Psychoanalyse und Politik; lecture delivered at the Free University of West Berlin in July 1967.
Today any form of the concrete world, of human life, any transformation of the technical and natural environment is a possibility, and the locus of this possibility is historical. Today we have the capacity to turn the world into hell, and we are well on the way to doing so. We also have the capacity to turn it into the opposite of hell. This would mean the end of utopia, that is, the refutation of those ideas and theories that use the concept of utopia to denounce certain socio-historical possibilities. It can also be understood as the “end of history” in the very precise sense that the new possibilities for a human society and its environment can no longer be thought of as continuations of the old, nor even as existing in the same historical continuum with them. Rather, they presuppose a break with the historical continuum; they presuppose the qualitative difference between a free society and societies that are still unfree, which, according to Marx, makes all previous history only the prehistory of mankind.
But I believe that even Marx was still too tied to the notion of a continuum of progress, that even his idea of socialism may not yet represent, or no longer represent, the determinate negation of capitalism it was supposed to. That is, today the notion of the end of utopia implies the necessity of at least discussing a new definition of socialism. The discussion would be based on the question whether decisive elements of the Marxian concept of socialism do not belong to a now obsolete stage in the development of the forces of production. This obsolescence is expressed most clearly, in my opinion, in the distinction between the realm of freedom and the realm of necessity according to which the realm of freedom can be conceived of and can exist only beyond the realm of necessity. This division implies that the realm of necessity remains so in the sense of a realm of alienated labor, which means, as Marx says, that the [p. 63] only thing that can happen within it is for labor to be organized as rationally as possible and reduced as much as possible. But it remains labor in and of the realm of necessity and thereby unfree. I believe that one of the new possibilities, which gives an indication of the qualitative difference between the free and the unfree society, is that of letting the realm of freedom appear within the realm of necessity – in labor and not only beyond labor. To put this speculative idea in a provocative form, I would say that we must face the possibility that the path to socialism may proceed from science to utopia and not from utopia to science.
Utopia is a historical concept. It refers to projects for social change that are considered impossible. Impossible for what reasons? In the usual discussion of utopia the impossibility of realizing the project of a new society exists when the subjective and objective factors of a given social situation stand in the way of the transformation – the so-called immaturity of the social situation. Communistic projects during the French Revolution and, perhaps, socialism in the most highly developed capitalist countries are both examples of a real or alleged absence of the subjective and objective factors that seem to make realization impossible.
The project of a social transformation, however, can also be considered unfeasible because it contradicts certain scientifically established laws, biological laws, physical laws; for example, such projects as the age-old idea of eternal youth or the idea of a return to an alleged golden age. I believe that we can now speak of utopia only in this latter sense, namely when a project for social change contradicts real laws of nature. Only such a project is utopian in the strict sense, that is, beyond history – but even this “ahistoricity” has a historical limit.
The other group of projects, where the impossibility is due to the absence of subjective and objective factors, can at best be designated only as “provisionally” unfeasible. Karl Mannheim’s criteria for the unfeasibility of such projects, for instance, are inadequate for the very simple reason, to begin with, that unfeasibility shows itself only after the fact. And it is not surprising that a project for social transformation is designated unfeasible because it has shown itself unrealized in history. Secondly, however, the criterion of unfeasibility in this sense is inadequate because it may very well be the case that the realization of a revolutionary project is hindered by counterforces and countertendencies that can be and are overcome precisely in the process of revolution. For this reason it is questionable to set up the absence of specific subjective and objective factors as an objection to the feasibility of radical transformation. Especially – and this is the question with which we are concerned here – the fact that no revolutionary class can be defined in the capitalist countries that are technically most highly developed does not mean that Marxism is utopian. The social agents of revolution – and this is orthodox Marx – are formed only in the process of the transformation itself, and one cannot count on a situation in which the revolutionary forces are there ready-made, so to speak, when the revolutionary movement begins. But in my opinion there is one valid criterion for possible realization, namely, when the material and intellectual forces for the transformation are technically at hand although their rational application is prevented by the existing organization of the forces of production. And in this sense, I believe, we can today actually speak of an end of utopia.
All the material and intellectual forces which could be put to work for the realization of a free society are at hand. That they are not used for that purpose is to be attributed to the total mobilization of existing society against its own potential for liberation. But this situation in no way makes the idea of radical transformation itself a utopia.
The abolition of poverty and misery is possible in the sense I have described, as are the abolition of alienation and the abolition of what I have called “surplus repression.” Even in bourgeois economics there is scarcely a serious scientist or investigator who would deny that the abolition of hunger and of misery is possible with the productive forces that already exist technically and that what is happening today must be attributed to the global politics of a repressive society. But although we are in agreement on this we are still not sufficiently clear about the implication of this technical possibility for the abolition of poverty, of misery, and of labor. The implication is that these historical possibilities must be conceived in forms that signify a break rather than a continuity with previous history, its negation rather than its positive continuation, difference rather than progress. They signify the liberation of a dimension of human existence this side of the material basis, the transformation of needs.
What is at stake is the idea of a new theory of man, not only as theory but also as a way of existence: the genesis and development of a vital need for freedom and of the vital needs of freedom – of a freedom no longer based on and limited by scarcity and the necessity of alienated labor. The development of qualitatively new human needs appears as a biological necessity; they are needs in a very biological sense. For among a great part of the manipulated population in the developed capitalist countries the need for freedom does not or no longer exists as a vital, necessary need. Along with these vital needs the new theory of man also implies the genesis of a new morality as the heir and the negation of the Judeo-Christian morality which up to now has characterized the history of Western civilization. It is precisely the continuity of the needs developed and satisfied in a repressive society that reproduces this repressive society over and over again within the individuals themselves. Individuals reproduce repressive society in their needs, which persist even through revolution, and it is precisely this continuity which up to now has stood in the way of the leap from quantity into the quality of a free society. This idea implies that human needs have a historical character. All human needs, including sexuality, lie beyond the animal world. They are historically determined and historically mutable. And the break with the continuity of those needs that already carry repression within them, the leap into qualitative difference, is not a mere invention but inheres in the development of the productive forces themselves. That development has reached a level where it actually demands new vital needs in order to do justice to its own potentialities.
What are the tendencies of the productive forces that make this leap from quantity into quality possible? Above all, the technification of domination undermines the foundation of domination. The progressive reduction of physical labor power in the production process (the process of material production) and its replacement to an increasing degree by mental labor concentrate socially necessary labor in the class of technicians, scientists, engineers, etc. This suggests possible liberation from alienated labor. It is of course a question only of tendencies, but of tendencies that are grounded in the development and the continuing existence of capitalist society. If capitalism does not succeed in exploiting these new possibilities of the productive forces and their organization, the productivity of labor will fall beneath the level required by the rate of profit. And if capitalism heeds this requirement and continues automation regardless, it will come up against its own inner limit: the sources of surplus value for the maintenance of exchange society will dwindle away.
In the Grundrisse Marx showed that complete automation of socially necessary labor is incompatible with the preservation of capitalism. Automation is only a catchword for this tendency, through which necessary physical labor, alienated labor, is withdrawn to an ever greater extent from the material process of production. This tendency, if freed from the fetters of capitalist production, would lead to a creative experimentation with the productive forces. With the abolition of poverty this tendency would mean that play with the potentialities of human and nonhuman nature would become the content of social labor. The productive imagination would become the concretely structured productive force that freely sketches out the possibilities for a free human existence on the basis of the corresponding development of material productive forces. In order for these technical possibilities not to become possibilities for repression, however, in order for them to be able to fulfill their liberating function, they must be sustained and directed by liberating and gratifying needs.
When no vital need to abolish (alienated) labor exists, when on the contrary there exists a need to continue and extend labor, even when it is no longer socially necessary; when the vital need for joy, for happiness with a good conscience, does not exist, but rather the need to have to earn everything in a life that is as miserable as can be; when these vital needs do not exist or are suffocated by repressive ones, it is only to be expected that new technical possibilities actually become new possibilities for repression by domination.
We already know what cybernetics and computers can contribute to the total control of human existence. The new needs, which are really the determinate negation of existing needs, first make their appearance as the negation of the needs that sustain the present system of domination and the negation of the values on which they are based: for example, the negation of the need for the struggle for existence (the latter is supposedly necessary and all the ideas or fantasies that speak of the possible abolition of the struggle for existence thereby contradict the supposedly natural and social conditions of human existence); the negation of the need to earn one’s living; the negation of the performance principle, of competition; the negation of the need for wasteful, ruinous productivity, which is inseparably bound up with destruction; and the negation of the vital need for deceitful repression of the instincts. These needs would be negated in the vital biological need for peace, which today is not a vital need of the majority, the need for calm, the need to be alone, with oneself or with others whom one has chosen oneself, the need for the beautiful, the need for “undeserved” happiness – all this not simply in the form of individual needs but as a social productive force, as social needs that can be activated through the direction and disposition of productive forces.
In the form of a social productive force, these new vital needs would make possible a total technical reorganization of the concrete world of human life, and I believe that new human relations, new relations between men, would be possible only in such a reorganized world. When I say technical reorganization I again speak with reference to the capitalist countries that are most highly developed, where such a restructuring would mean the abolition of the terrors of capitalist industrialization and commercialization, the total reconstruction of the cities and the restoration of nature after the horrors of capitalist industrialization have been done away with. I hope that when I speak of doing away with the horrors of capitalist industrialization it is clear I am not advocating a romantic regression behind technology. On the contrary, I believe that the potential liberating blessings of technology and industrialization will not even begin to be real and visible until capitalist industrialization and capitalist technology have been done away with.
The qualities of freedom that I have mentioned here are qualities which until now have not received adequate attention in recent thinking about socialism. Even on the left the notion of socialism has been taken too much within the framework of the development of productive forces, of increasing the productivity of labor, something which was not only justified but necessary at the level of productivity at which the idea of scientific socialism was developed but which today is at least subject to discussion. Today we must try to discuss and define – without any inhibitions, even when it may seem ridiculous – the qualitative difference between socialist society as a free society and the existing society. And it is precisely here that, if we are looking for a concept that can perhaps indicate the qualitative difference in socialist society, the aesthetic-erotic dimension comes to mind almost spontaneously, at least to me. Here the notion “aesthetic” is taken in its original sense, namely as the form of sensitivity of the senses and as the form of the concrete world of human life. Taken in this way, the notion projects the convergence of technology and art and the convergence of work and play. It is no accident that the work of Fourier is becoming topical again among the avant-garde left-wing intelligentsia. As Marx and Engels themselves acknowledged, Fourier was the only one to have made clear this qualitative difference between free and unfree society. And he did not shrink back in fear, as Marx still did, from speaking of a possible society in which work becomes play, a society in which even socially necessary labor can be organized in harmony with the liberated, genuine needs of men.
Let me make one further observation in conclusion. I have already indicated that if critical theory, which remains indebted to Marx, does not wish to stop at merely improving the existing state of affairs, it must accommodate within itself the extreme possibilities for freedom that have been only crudely indicated here, the scandal of the qualitative difference. Marxism must risk defining freedom in such a way that people become conscious of and recognize it as something that is nowhere already in existence. And precisely because the so-called utopian possibilities are not at all utopian but rather the determinate socio-historical negation of what exists, a very real and very pragmatic opposition is required of us if we are to make ourselves and others conscious of these possibilities and the forces that hinder and deny them. An opposition is required that is free of all illusion but also of all defeatism, for through its mere existence defeatism betrays the possibility of freedom to the status quo.
Question. To what extent do you see in the English pop movement a positive point of departure for an aesthetic-erotic way of life?
Marcuse. As you may know, of the many things I am reproached with, there are two that are particularly remarkable. I have supposedly asserted that today the movement of student opposition in itself can make the revolution. Second, I am supposed to have asserted that what we in America call hippies and you call Gammler, beatniks, are the new revolutionary class. Far be it from me to assert such a thing. What I was trying to show was that in fact today there are tendencies in society – anarchically unorganized, spontaneous tendencies – that herald a total break with the dominant needs of repressive society. The groups you have mentioned are characteristic of a state of disintegration within the system, which as a mere phenomenon has no revolutionary force whatsoever but which perhaps at some time will be able to play it role in connection with other, much stronger objective forces.
Q. You have said that technically the material and intellectual forces for revolutionary transformation exist already. In your lecture, however, you seem to be speaking of forces for “utopia,” not for the transformation itself, and this question you have not really answered.
M. To answer this question, of course, a second lecture would be necessary. A few remarks: If I have put so much emphasis on the notion of needs and of qualitative difference, that has a lot to do with the problem of transformation. One of the chief factors that has prevented this transformation, though objectively it has been on the agenda for years, is the absence or the repression of the need for transformation, which has to be present as the qualitatively differentiating factor among the social groups that are to make the transformation. If Marx saw in the proletariat the revolutionary class, he did so also, and maybe even primarily, because the proletariat was free from the repressive needs of capitalist society, because the new needs for freedom could develop in the proletariat and were not suffocated by the old, dominant ones. Today in large parts of the most highly developed capitalist countries that is no longer the case. The working class no longer represents the negation of existing needs. That is one of the most serious facts with which we have to deal. As far as the forces of transformation themselves are concerned, I grant you without further discussion that today nobody is in a position to give a prescription for them in the sense of being able to point and say, “Here you have your revolutionary forces, this is their strength, this and this must be done.”
The only thing I can do is point out what forces potentially make for a radical transformation of the system. Today the classical contradictions within capitalism are stronger than they have ever been before. Especially the general contradiction between the unprecedented development of the productive forces and social wealth on the one hand and of the destructive and repressive application of these forces of production on the other is infinitely more acute today than it has ever been. Second, in a global framework, capitalism today is confronted by anticapitalist forces that already stand in open battle with capitalism at different places in the world. Third, there are also negative forces within advanced capitalism itself, in the United States and also in Europe – and here I do not hesitate to name again the opposition of the intellectuals, especially students.
Today this still seems remarkable to us, but one needs only a little historical knowledge to know that it is certainly not the first time in history that a radical historical transformation has begun with students. That is the case not only here in Europe but also in other parts of the world. The role of students today as the intelligentsia out of which, as you know, the executives and leaders even of existing society are recruited, is historically more important than it perhaps was in the past. In addition there is the moral-sexual rebellion, which turns against the dominant morality and must be taken seriously as a disintegrative factor, as can be seen from the reaction to it, especially in the United States. Finally, probably, here in Europe we should add those parts of the working class that have not yet fallen prey to the process of integration. Those are the tendential forces of transformation, and to evaluate their chances, their strength, and so forth in detail would naturally be the subject of a separate and longer discussion.
Q. My question is directed toward the role of the new anthropology for which you have called, and of those biological needs that are qualitatively new in the framework of a need structure that you have interpreted as historically variable. How does this differ from the theory of revolutionary socialism? Marx in his late writings was of the opinion that the realm of freedom could be erected only on the basis of the realm of necessity, but that probably means that a free human society could be set up only within and not in abstraction from the framework of natural history, not beyond the realm of necessity. In your call for new biological needs, such as a new vital need for freedom, for happiness that is not repressively mediated, are you implying a qualitative transformation of the physiological structure of man that is derived from his natural history? Do you believe that that is a qualitative possibility today?
M. If you mean that with a change in the natural history of mankind the needs which I have designated as new would be able to emerge, I would say yes. Human nature – and for all his insistence on the realm of necessity Marx knew – this human nature is a historically determined nature and develops in history. Of course the natural history of man will continue. The relation of man to nature has already changed completely, and the realm of necessity will become a different realm when alienated labor can be done away with by means of perfected technology and a large part of socially necessary labor becomes a technological experiment. Then the realm of necessity will in fact be changed and we will perhaps be able to regard the qualities of free human existence, which Marx and Engels still had to assign to the realm beyond labor, as developing within the realm of labor itself.
Q. If the vital need for freedom and happiness is to be set up as a biological need, how is it to materialize?
M. By “materially convertible” you mean: How does it go into effect in social production and finally even in the physiological structure itself? It operates through the construction of a pacified environment. I tried to indicate this in speaking of eliminating the terror of capitalist industrialization. What I mean is an environment that provides room for these new needs precisely through its new, pacified character, that is, that can enable them to be materially, even physiologically converted through a continuous change in human nature, namely through the reduction of characteristics that today manifest themselves in a horrible way: brutality, cruelty, false heroism, false virility, competition at any price. These are physiological phenomena as well.
Q. Is there a connection between the rehabilitation of certain anarchist strategies and the enormity of extra-economic violence which today has become an immediate economic power through internalization, by which I mean that the agents of manipulation know how to internalize bureaucratic and governmental mechanisms of domination?
M. But that’s not internalization of violence. If anything has become clear in capitalism it is that purely external violence, good old-fashioned violence, is stronger than it has ever been. I don’t see any internalization at all there. We should not overlook the fact that manipulatory tendencies are not violence. No one compels me to sit in front of my television set for hours, no one forces me to read the idiotic newspapers.
Q. But there I should like to disagree, because internalization means precisely that an illusory liberality is possible – just as the internalization of economic power in classical capitalism meant that the political and moral structure could be liberalized.
M. For me that’s simply stretching the concept too far. Violence remains violence, and a system that itself provides the illusory freedom of such things as television sets that I can in fact turn off whenever I want to – which is no illusion – this is not the dimension of violence. If you say that, then you are blurring one of the decisive factors of present society, namely the distinction between terror and totalitarian democracy, which works not with terror but rather with internalization, with mechanisms of coordination: that is not violence. Violence is when someone beats someone else’s head in with a club, or threatens to. It is not violence when I am presented with television programs that show the existing state of things transfigured in some way or other.
Q. Is there a connection between the program for a new historically and biologically different structure of needs and a rehabilitation in strategy of those groups that Marx and Engels, with a touch of petit-bourgeois morality, denounced as déclassé?
M. We shall have to distinguish among these déclassé groups. As far as I can see, today neither the lumpenproletariat nor the petit bourgeois have become at all a more radical force than they were before. Here again the role of the intelligentsia is very different.
Q. But don’t you think that precisely students are such a déclassé group?
M. No.
Q. Under the conditions of maturity of the productive forces, is it still possible or valid to speak of “necessity,” of necessary, objective laws or even tendencies of social development? Must not the role of subjectivity be completely restructured and reevaluated as a new factor in the present period, which is perhaps what legitimates the reemergence of anarchism?
M. I consider the reevaluation and determination of the subjective factor to be one of the most decisive necessities of the present situation. The more we emphasize that the material, technical, and scientific productive forces for a free society are in existence, the more we are charged with liberating the consciousness of these realizable possibilities. For the indoctrination of consciousness against these possibilities is the characteristic situation and the subjective factor in existing society. I consider the development of consciousness, work on the development of consciousness, if you like, this idealistic deviation, to be in fact one of the chief tasks of materialism today, of revolutionary materialism. And if I give such emphasis to needs and wants, it is meant in the sense of what you call the subjective factor.
One of the tasks is to lay bare and liberate the type of man who wants revolution, who must have revolution because otherwise he will fall apart. That is the subjective factor, which today is more than a subjective factor. On the other hand, naturally, the objective factor – and this is the one place where I should like to make a correction – is organization. What I have called the total mobilization of the established society against its own potentialities is today as strong and as effective as ever. On the one hand we find the absolute necessity of first liberating consciousness, on the other we see ourselves confronted by a concentration of power against which even the freest consciousness appears ridiculous and impotent. The struggle on two fronts is more acute today than it ever was. On the one hand the liberation of consciousness is necessary, on the other it is necessary to feel out every possibility of a crack in the enormously concentrated power structure of existing society. In the United States, for example, it has been possible to have relatively free consciousness because it simply has no effect.
Q. The new needs, which you spoke of as motive forces for social transformation – to what extent will they be a privilege of the metropoles? To what extent do they presuppose societies that are technically and economically very highly developed? Do you also envisage these needs in the revolution of the poor countries, for example the Chinese or the Cuban Revolution?
M. I see the trend toward these new needs at both poles of existing society, namely in the highly developed sector and in the parts of the third world engaged in liberation struggles. And in fact we see repeated here a phenomenon that is quite clearly expressed in Marxian theory, namely that those who are “free” of the dubious blessings of the capitalist system are those who develop the needs that can bring about a free society. For example, the Vietnamese struggling for liberation do not have to have the need for peace grafted onto them, they have it. They also have need of the defense of life against aggression. These are needs that at this level, at this antipode of established society, are really natural needs in the strictest sense; they are spontaneous. At the opposite pole, in highly developed society, are those groups, minority groups, who can afford to give birth to the new needs or who, even if they can’t afford it, simply have them because otherwise they would suffocate physiologically. Here I come back to the beatnik and hippie movement. What we have here is quite an interesting phenomenon, namely the simple refusal to take part in the blessings of the “affluent society.” That is in itself one of the qualitative changes of need. The need for better television sets, better automobiles, or comfort of any sort has been cast off. What we see is rather the negation of this need. “We don’t want to have anything to do with all this crap.” There is thus potential at both poles.
Q. If the objective basis for a qualitatively different society is present why place so much emphasis on an absolute break between the present and future? Must not the transition be mediated, and does not the idea of an absolute break contradict concrete attempts to bridge the gap?
M. What I would say in my defense is this: I believe that I have not advocated a break. It is rather that when I look at the situation I can conceive of our definition of a free society only as the determinate negation of the existing one. But one cannot then take the determinate negation to be something that ultimately is nothing more than old wine in new bottles. That is why I have emphasized the break, quite in the sense of classical Marxism. I don’t see any inconsistency here. The question implied in yours, namely, how does the break occur and how do the new needs for liberation emerge after it, is precisely what I should have liked to discuss with you. You can of course say, and I say it to myself often enough, if this is all true, how can we imagine these new concepts even arising here and now in living human beings if the entire society is against such an emergence of new needs. This is the question with which we have to deal. At the same time it amounts to the question of whether the emergence of these new needs can be conceived at all as a radical development out of existing ones, or whether instead, in order to set free these needs, a dictatorship appears necessary, which in any case would be very different from the Marxian dictatorship of the proletariat: namely a dictatorship, a counteradministration, that eliminates the horrors spread by the established administration. This is one of the things that most disquiets me and that we should seriously discuss.
Q. Putting aside the choice of dropping out of the system through underground subcultures, how is it possible to engage in heretical activities within the system, for example heretical medicine that does not merely cure people to restore their labor power but makes them conscious of how their labor makes them sick and how they could participate in qualitatively different work?
M. On the problem as to whether and how the elements you have called heretical can be developed within the established system, I would say the following: In established societies there are still gaps and interstices in which heretical methods can be practiced without meaningless sacrifice, and still help the cause. This is possible. Freud recognized the problem very clearly when he said that psychoanalysis really ought to make all patients revolutionaries. But unfortunately that doesn’t work, for one has to practice within the framework of the status quo. Psychoanalysis has to deal with just this contradiction and abstract from extra-medical possibilities. There are still today psychoanalysts who at least remain as faithful as possible to the radical elements of psychoanalysis. And in jurisprudence, for example, there are also quite a few lawyers who work in a heretical way, that is, against the Establishment and for the protection of those accused whom it has cast out, without thereby making their own practice impossible.
The interstices within the established society are still open, and one of the most important tasks is to make use of them to the full.
Q. Is there not a conflict between the sort of needs that arise among the Vietcong and the sort that you have called sensitivity, are they not perhaps incompatible, and does one not perhaps have to choose between them?
M. The first tendencies pointing to a new image of man lie in solidarity with the struggle of the third world. What emerges in the advanced industrial countries as new needs is in the third world not at all a new need but a spontaneous reaction against what is happening.
Q. It seems to me that the needs determining social revolutionary movements are quite old ones. Industrialization requires discipline. Isn’t it a luxury to lump this together with aesthetic Eros?
M. But the need for freedom is not a luxury which only the metropoles can afford. The need for freedom, which spontaneously appears in social revolution as an old need, is stifled in the capitalist world. In a society such as ours, in which pacification has been achieved up to a certain point, it appears crazy at first to want revolution. For we have whatever we want. But the aim here is to transform the will itself so that people no longer want what they now want. Thus the task in the metropoles differs from the task in Vietnam – but the two can be connected.
Q. Does the thesis that the technification of domination undermines domination mean that the bureaucracy or the apparatus provides itself with it own provocation or that it must be permanently provoked as a learning process that makes comprehensible the contradictions and senselessness of this bureaucracy? Or does it mean that we should not provoke it because of the menace of fascist terror that would cut off any possibility of change?
M. It surely does not mean the latter, for the status quo itself must be endangered. One cannot turn the argument that radical action will menace the status quo against the necessity of doing so. Technification of domination means that if we rationally think through technological processes to their end, we find that they are incompatible with existing capitalist institutions. In other words, domination that is based on the necessity of exploitation and alienated labor is potentially losing this base. If the exploitation of physical labor power in the process of production is no longer necessary, then this condition of domination is undermined.
Q. Are you saying that labor should be completely abolished, or that it should be made free of misery?
M. I have wavered in terminology between the abolition of labor and the abolition of alienated labor because in usage labor and alienated labor have become identical. That is the justification for this ambiguity. I believe that labor as such cannot be abolished. To affirm the contrary would be in fact to repudiate what Marx called the metabolic exchange between man and nature. Some control, mastery, and transformation of nature, some modification of existence through labor is inevitable, but in this utopian hypothesis labor would be so different from labor as we know it or normally conceive of it that the idea of the convergence of labor and play does not diverge too far from the possibilities.
Q. Does not revolution become reified when the oppressed hate the oppressor to the point where the humanistic element gets lost? Is this reification one that can be undone during, or only after the revolution?
M. A really frightening question. On the one hand, I believe that one must say that the hatred of exploitation and oppression is itself a humane and humanistic element. On the other hand there is no doubt that in the course of revolutionary movements hatred emerges, without which revolution is just impossible, without which no liberation is possible. Nothing is more terrible than the sermon, “Do not hate thy opponent,” in a world in which hate is thoroughly institutionalized. Naturally in the course of the revolutionary movement itself this hatred can turn into cruelty, brutality, and terror. The boundary between the two is horribly and extraordinarily in flux. The only thing that I can at least say about this is that a part of our work consists in preventing this development as much as possible, that is to show that brutality and cruelty also belong necessarily to the system of repression and that a liberation struggle simply does not need this transmogrification of hatred into brutality and cruelty. One can hit an opponent, one can vanquish an opponent, without cutting off his ears, without severing his limbs, without torturing him.
Q. It seems that you have an ideal of a harmonious society without tolerance or pluralism. Who will determine the common good in such a society? Are there to be no antagonisms? This ideal is unrealistic and, if there is to be no tolerance in resolving antagonisms, it will be undemocratic and require dictatorship.
M. Either a free society without tolerance is unthinkable, or a free society does not need tolerance because it is free anyway, so that tolerance does not have to be preached and institutionalized. A society without conflicts would be a utopian idea, but the idea of a society in which conflicts evidently exist but can be resolved without oppression and cruelty is in my opinion not a utopian idea. With regard to the concept of democracy: that is of course really a very serious matter. If I am to say in one sentence what I can offer as a momentary answer, it is only that at the moment no one could be more for a democracy than I am. My objection is only that in no existing society, and surely not in those which call themselves democratic, does democracy exist. What exists is a kind of very limited, illusory form of democracy that is beset with inequalities, while the true conditions of democracy have still to be created. On the problem of dictatorship: What I suggested was a question, namely, I cannot imagine how the state of almost total indoctrination and coordination can turn into its opposite in an evolutionary way. It seems to me inevitable that some intervention must occur in some way and that the oppressors must be suppressed in some way, since they unfortunately will not suppress themselves.
Q. It seemed to me that the center of your paper today was the thesis that a transformation of society must be preceded by a transformation of needs. For me this implies that changed needs can only arise if we first abolish the mechanisms that have let the needs come into being as they are. It seems to me that you have shifted the accent toward enlightenment and away from revolution.
M. You have defined what is unfortunately the greatest difficulty in the matter. Your objection is that, for new, revolutionary needs to develop, the mechanisms that reproduce the old needs must be abolished. In order for the mechanisms to be abolished, there must first be a need to abolish them. That is the circle in which we are placed, and I do not know how to get out of it.
Q. How is it possible to distinguish false from genuine utopias? For example, has the elimination of domination not occurred owing to social immaturity, or because its elimination is, so to speak, biologically impossible? If someone believes the latter, how can you prove to him that he is mistaken?
M. If it were demonstrable that the abolition of domination is biologically impossible, then I would say, the idea of abolishing domination is a utopia. I do not believe that anyone has yet demonstrated this. What is probably biologically impossible is to get away without any repression whatsoever. It may be self-imposed, it may be imposed by others. But that is not identical with domination. In Marxian theory and long before it a distinction was made between rational authority and domination. The authority of an airplane pilot, for example, is rational authority. It is impossible to imagine a condition in which the passengers would tell the pilot what to do. The traffic policeman is another typical example of rational authority. These things are probably biological necessities, but political domination, domination based on exploitation, oppression, is not.
Q. In the advanced sectors of today’s industry and bureaucracy there is already, among scientists, technicians, and so on, an alienated form of the integration of work and play – think of planning and strategy games, game theory, and the use of scientific phantasy. How do you estimate the possibility of this activity turning into refusal within the power structure, as suggested for example by Serge Mallet?
M. My objection to Mallet’s evaluation of technicians is that precisely this group is today among the highest paid and rewarded beneficiaries of the system. For what you have said to be possible would require a total change not only of consciousness but of the whole situation. My second objection is that as long as this group is considered in isolation as the potentially revolutionary force one arrives only at a technocratic revolution, that is a transformation of advanced capitalism into technocratic state capitalism, but certainly not at what we mean when we speak of a free society.
Q. With regard to a new theory of man: How do the needs of peace, freedom, and happiness concretely become translated into biological, bodily needs?
M. I would say that the need for peace as a vital need in the biological sense does not need to be materially translated because in this sense it is already a material need. The need for peace, for example, would be expressed in the impossibility of mobilizing people for military service. That would not be a material translation of the need for peace but a material need itself. The same applies to the other needs I mentioned.
Q. Back to the problem of the qualitative break. The latter seems to presuppose a crisis, and indeed there is one. But how can we tell when the crisis has progressed to the point of a break? Or does the crisis just turn into a break? How can the minority that has consciousness of what is possible intervene in society to prevent utopia from being blocked off?
M. I would see an expansion of the crisis in certain symbolic facts and events, events that somehow represent a turning point in the development of the system. Thus, for example, a forced ending of the war in Vietnam would represent a considerable expansion of the crisis of existing society.
Q. In connection with the problems of a new theory of man: this new theory has already found its advocates in the third world, namely Fanon, who says, “The goal is to establish the total man on earth,” and Guevara, who says, “We are building the man of the twenty-first century.” I should like to ask you how your ideas of a new theory of man are connected with these two declarations?
M. I had not ventured to say so, but after you yourself have said it, and you seem to know something about it, I can now say that I believe in fact, although I have not mentioned it here, that at least in some of the liberation struggles in the third world and even in some of the methods of development of the third world this new theory of man is putting itself in evidence. I would not have mentioned Fanon and Guevara as much as a small item that I read in a report about North Vietnam and that had a tremendous effect on me, since I am an absolutely incurable and sentimental romantic. It was a very detailed report, which showed, among other things, that in the parks in Hanoi the benches are made only big enough for two and only two people to sit on, so that another person would not even have the technical possibility of disturbing.
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Gates v. Strangelove

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Gates v. Strangelove










    I had to put these two images together just to make sure that they really are not the same person or a reincarnation.  See, the last week or so has been like a bad acid trip without the benefits of one with everything as the old Zen jokes goes.

    Our past Defense Dr. has written a book called "Duty," ja, Duty über Alles, bestimmt, nicht wahr?  Or something like that.  At the time I was watching pundits "break" the story, however, nobody had read the book.  Still, it was quoted extensively, and praised and belittled, excerpted selectively, from no one said what, but it had something to do with New York.

     It seems he said Obama "lacked passion" while sending 30,000 extra troops to Afghanistan.  This was exceptionally cruel as he should have been very gung ho and happy about it, especially when troops died.  After all, what is he going to tell the parents and family of the killed "heroes"? 

    What is a hero, anyway.  I had a flashback to Pat Tillman, I think his name was, a million dollar plus corner-back in the NFL who gleefully did his patriotic duty and rushed over there and became a real hero, shot in the back by his fellow soldiers (although that was not the story we first got).

    It seems we also have a duty to stay in Afghanistan to support that strange guy with a cloak and funny hat, Kharzai, I think it is spelled, and whoever else against evil.

    Then the Doctor appeared live, wearing an out-sized neck-brace, and I think this is what reminded me of the Dr. Strangelove.  (I'm still not sure if the book has been published, however, so it is not clear what he would be signing copies of.)

    In Japan they sell apps for your smart phone that will turn it into a Geiger Counter.  That is nice.  Take your readings with you, day or night. 

    They buried a big fat guy in the desert as he died, the doctors assure us.  Arable land is hard to find in the area of Palestine.

    In Pennsylvania, it is not wise to use your licorice smelling water for anything else but to flush toilets.

    Our President made a speech about search and seizure of our private information.  No particular reason, he is just a nice guy.







     A white-haired guy with a pale complexion from two years inside an embassy in London appeared on CNN and said he did not believe it would be wise of him to go outside now, despite the assurances of the United States that it was not after him.  He said that Snowden was the reason the President was making that speech.  I believed him.


    I guess a lot more happened, but that is all I have the stomach for right now.
   

Schwartz, February 11, and the NSA

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Schwartz, February 11, and the NSA






           
 Illustration: Noted Republican Computer Analyst

     The kid has been buried for nearly a year now, but he left RSS behind as a monument, fittingly binary instead of marble.  He had announced the actions of the NSA about a year prior to Edward Snowden’s massive release of information that finally convinced people that they were, indeed, being spied on by their own government with blithe indifference to the fourth amendment, using the legacy of Dick Cheney and Georgie Bush as the rationale tucked away in a corner somewhere of the so pretentiously and contemptibly named “Patriot Act.” 



It is meaningless to repeat here that this spying had been underway for decades as we have already done that to the extent that the extra typing is a loathsome chore, but it seems the right thing to do.  The day, FEB11, is scheduled for a mass demonstration of some sort.



          President Obama announced that the “vast reforms” of this process will take place quickly.  This change will take place immediately after Congress “reaches a broad consensus” on the issue, and this is widely seen as quickly, but actually means when Hell freezes over, and we have seen signs of the impending freeze right here on this planet.  Hell, as if seems to have evolved in the popular imagination, must be extremely exuberant at the possibility. 

       The Chair of the Congressional Committee for Intelligence or  Homeland Security (Republican), announced that Snowden had to have Russian help in downloading all those documents.  This Congressman looked as if he would experience immense difficulty in installing Firefox on his own PC.  Fortunately, an ex-security analyst for the government said there is no reason to believe that, and he mentioned several storage and encryption methods, sounding reasonably literate in the field.



          A rotund Governor of New Jersey is suspected of the unimaginable practice of “corruption.”  In an effort to reduce the pressure on him, he no doubt announced that the George Washington bridge will be open for the Super Bowl, duration of such opening pending negotiations with the National Football League.



          A very well-groomed ex-Governor of Virginia with a charming family and immaculately handsome demeanor that screamed “Christian” so blatantly that one expected some scandalous sex-crime has been charged with “Corruption”.  No sex is involved, so coverage is likely to be limited.



          It seems that “Black Widows” are haunting southern Russia, threatening bombings.  The city is surrounded by a “ring of steel,” as the Russians proclaim, so you will be as safe there was you would be using a credit card at a Target store.  This is extremely safe as only small farmers have the wisdom to leave the door open after their valuable livestock has escaped.


          Now for the interview concerning Aaron Schwartz:

           
TUESDAY, JANUARY 21, 2014

The Internet’s Own Boy: Film on Aaron Swartz Captures Late Activist’s Struggle for Online Freedom

One year ago this month, the young Internet freedom activist and groundbreaking programmer Aaron Swartz took his own life. Swartz died shortly before he was set to go to trial for downloading millions of academic articles from servers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology based on the belief that the articles should be freely available online. At the time he committed suicide, Swartz was facing 35 years in prison, a penalty supporters called excessively harsh. Today we spend the hour looking at the new documentary, "The Internet’s Own Boy: The Story of Aaron Swartz." We play excerpts of the film and speak with Swartz’s father Robert, his brother Noah, his lawyer Elliot Peters, and filmmaker Brian Knappenberger.

TRANSCRIPT

This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
AMY GOODMAN: We’re broadcasting from Park City TV in Utah, home of the Sundance Film Festival, the largest festival for independent cinema in the United States. This is our fifth year covering some of the films here, and the people and topics they explore.
Today, we spend the hour with the people involved in an incredible documentary that just had its world premiere here yesterday. It’s called The Internet’s Own Boy: The Story of Aaron Swartz. It comes as Aaron’s loved ones and friends mark the first anniversary of his death. It was just over a year ago, on January 11th, 2013, that the young Internet freedom activist took his own life. He was 26 years old. This is a clip of Aaron Swartz from the film.
AARON SWARTZ: I mean, I, you know, feel very strongly that it’s not enough to just live in the world as it is, to just kind of take what you’re given and, you know, follow the things that adults told you to do and that your parents told you to do and that society tells you to do. I think you should always be questioning. You know, I take this very scientific attitude that everything you’ve learned is just provisional, that, you know, it’s always open to recantation or refutation or questioning. And I think the same applies to society. Once I realized that there were real, serious problems, fundamental problems that I could do something to address, I didn’t see a way to forget that. I didn’t see a way not to.
AMY GOODMAN: That was Aaron Swartz in his early twenties. By that time, Aaron was already an Internet legend. At the age of 14, Aaron helped develop RSS, Really Simple Syndication, which changed how people get online content, allowing them to subscribe to different sources of information like blogs and podcasts. He also helped develop the Creative Commons alternative to copyright, which encourages authors and publishers to share content. He founded a company, Infogami, that merged with Reddit, which allows users to collectively rank and promote contributed content, is now one of the most popular websites globally.
In 2010, Aaron Swartz became a fellow at Harvard University’s Edmond J. Safra Center for Ethics. It was around this time that he used the Internet at nearby MIT, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, to download millions of digitized academic articles run by a nonprofit company called JSTOR. Aaron believed the articles should be freely available online. Although Aaron did not give or sell the files to anyone, the federal government filed multiple felony charges against him. At the time he committed suicide, Aaron was facing 35 years in prison, a penalty supporters called excessively harsh.
Now, despite promises of reform, the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act used to charge Swartz remains unchanged. A bill proposed by Congressmember Zoe Lofgren, called "Aaron’s Law," remains stalled in committee. It’s meant to ensure victimless computer activities are not charged as felonies.
On the Sunday after the first anniversary of Swartz’s death, the hacker group Anonymous attacked a number of MIT’s websites and posted messages criticizing Swartz’s prosecution and calling for a reform of Internet regulation. The message said, quote, "We call for this tragedy to be a basis for a renewed and unwavering commitment to a free and unfettered internet, spared from censorship with equality of access and franchise for all."
The same weekend, a group of activists inspired by Aaron also launched what they called the "New Hampshire Rebellion," a two-week walk across New Hampshire to protest government corruption. Campaign finance reform was another one of the many issues Aaron cared deeply about.
In a minute, we’ll be joined by Aaron’s brother, Noah Swartz; his lawyer, Elliot Peters; and by Brian Knappenberger, the director of The Internet’s Own Boy: The Story of Aaron Swartz; as well as Aaron’s father, Robert Swartz. But first, I want to play an extended clip from what, well, recalls a happier time in Aaron’s life as an activist. It begins with Trevor Timm with the Electronic Frontier Foundation and then Senator Ron Wyden. We also hear from Aaron himself and then his girlfriend, Taren Stinebrickner-Kauffman.
TREVOR TIMM: SOPA was the bill that was intended to curtail online piracy of music and movies, but what it did was basically take a sledgehammer to a problem that needed a scalpel.
REP. ZOE LOFGREN: There’s collateral damage in the digital...
SEN. RON WYDEN: There were only a handful of us who said, "Look, we’re not for piracy, either, but it makes no sense to destroy the architecture of the Internet, the domain name system and so much that makes it free and open, in the name of fighting piracy. And Aaron got that right away.
AARON SWARTZ: The freedoms guaranteed in our Constitution, the freedoms our country had been built on, would be suddenly deleted. New technology, instead of bringing us greater freedom, would have snuffed out fundamental rights we had always taken for granted. And I realized that day that I couldn’t let that happen.
TAREN STINEBRICKNER-KAUFFMAN: I don’t think anybody really thought that SOPA could be beaten. I remember him just turning to me and being like, "I think we might win this."
DAVID SEGAL: Aaron was one of the most prominent people in a community of people who helped lead organizing around social justice issues at the federal level in this country.
BEN WIKLER: It was like Aaron had been like striking a match, and it was being blown out, striking another one, was being blown out, and finally he’d like manage to catch enough kindling that the flame actually caught, and then it turned into this roaring blaze.
AARON SWARTZ: Wikipedia went black. Reddit went black. Craigslist went black. The phone lines on Capitol Hill flat-out melted. Members of Congress started rushing to issue statements retracting their support for the bill that they were promoting just a couple days ago. And that was when, as hard as it was for me to believe, after all this, we had won. The thing that everyone said was impossible, that some of the biggest companies in the world had written off as kind of a pipe dream, had happened. We did it. We won.
DECLAN McCULLAGH: This is a historic week in Internet politics, maybe American politics.
PETER ECKERSLEY: The thing that we heard from people in Washington, D.C., from staffers on Capitol Hill, was they received more emails and more phone calls on SOPA blackout day than they’d ever received about anything. I think that was an extremely exciting moment. This was the moment when the Internet had grown up politically.
AARON SWARTZ: It’s easy sometimes to feel like you’re powerless, like when you come out in the streets and you march and you yell, and nobody hears you. But I’m here to tell you today: You are powerful.
AMY GOODMAN: That’s a clip from The Internet’s Own Boy: The Story of Aaron Swartz, that recalls a happier time in Aaron’s life as an activist. We also heard from Aaron’s friend David Segal, founder of Demand Progress; and Ben Wikler, a friend of Aaron’s. When we come back, we’ll be joined by Aaron’s brother Noah and his father Robert. This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report. We’re broadcasting from Park City, Utah, from the Sundance Film Festival, where a film on Aaron Swartz has just premiered. Stay with us.
[break]
AMY GOODMAN: "Extraordinary Machine" by Fiona Apple. Aaron Swartz reportedly said it was his theme song. And this is_Democracy Now!_, democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report. I’m Amy Goodman. We’re broadcasting from Park City, Utah, where the Sundance Film Festival is underway. We’re spending the hour today looking at the life of the young Internet activist, Aaron Swartz. It was a year after he tragically took his own life, and now a new film about him has premiered at Sundance, called The Internet’s Own Boy: The Story of Aaron Swartz. We’re joined now by Aaron’s brother, Noah, and his father, Robert.
We welcome you to Democracy Now! It’s a year later, but it’s so important to share condolences because of the just tremendous loss that you have suffered. Robert, talk about Aaron and what you feel it’s most important for people to understand.
ROBERT SWARTZ: I think—I mean, there’s lots of things to understand, and it’s complicated. I think Aaron was interested in making the world a better place and changing the world for the better. And I think that’s all that we have to do and can do to remember his legacy.
AMY GOODMAN: He took his own life. He committed suicide just over a year ago. Talk about the circumstances leading up to his death, what he was facing.
ROBERT SWARTZ: Well, he was facing trial for a felony—on felony charges from the federal government, and a—a really vindictive and, in many respects, nearly sadistic prosecution by the federal government, and which turned his whole life upside down, drained his financial resources, and terrified him with the prospect of destroying his future.
AMY GOODMAN: Noah, you, too, are a computer programmer. You’ve grown up in this household with computers since you were tots. Talk about the significance of Aaron’s work.
NOAH SWARTZ: As Ben Wikler is quoted in the movie, Aaron thought very firmly that he should work on what was most important in the world at any given time, and he really felt that he could do this through computers and through technology. And much of his work in the last four years had been around this. With Demand Progress and the SOPA protest, he built a whole framework for—specifically for Demand Progress, but basically for any activist organization that wants to maintain an email list, wants to be able to send actions to people, and sort of revolutionized this space with technology, in addition to working on things like SecureDrop and—
AMY GOODMAN: And explain what SecureDrop—
NOAH SWARTZ: SecureDrop is a tool to protect journalistic sources by allowing them to submit articles anonymously and through an encrypted connection—or documents rather than articles.
AMY GOODMAN: Noah, you have organized hackathons. Explain what they are.
NOAH SWARTZ: So, after Aaron’s death, we decided that there was lots of work still to be done, work specifically that Aaron had touched and work done by people that he had worked with that needed help, and so we organized a number of hackathons to help people figure out what they could do with technology and with activism. So, we organized a number of hackathons. The idea is to have it either yearly or twice a year to continue Aaron’s legacy and work.
AMY GOODMAN: Bob, talk about Aaron’s growing up, his worldview. It’s a little odd to say, you know, when he’s growing up, his worldview, as five-year-old, but Aaron really did have a worldview.
ROBERT SWARTZ: I don’t know. I find these questions a little difficult. I mean, his worldview seemed to me to be normal and ordinary. And when people ask why he acted the way he did, it just seems to me peculiar, because isn’t that the way everyone would? He was very curious. He was certainly very interested in computers.
AMY GOODMAN: A deep questioner, questioning, when he was growing up, school and its role?
ROBERT SWARTZ: I don’t think that’s a particularly deep question. I mean, that’s an obvious question. Deep questions are much—are much more serious. There are much more serious deep questions than that. I mean, that’s not a deep—that’s just clear.
AMY GOODMAN: Like father, like son. As Aaron grew older, the kind of work he did, truly remarkable, I mean, one of the founders of Reddit, and moving on, though, to talk about what happened in 2010, how you came to know what happened when Aaron was arrested, and the weight of the state on Aaron?
ROBERT SWARTZ: Well, I was—I had landed in San Francisco for some meetings, and I got a call from my wife that Aaron had been arrested, and was just shattered by that news. I couldn’t really think at all the rest of the day, and tried to learn more about what was going on. I guess, initially, on the one hand, we were devastated, because any—the notion that Aaron would be arrested and be involved in the criminal justice system was completely incomprehensible, but on the other hand, the notion was that we could get this resolved in some rational way. As time went on, that became clear that it was much more complicated than we had ever imagined and much more difficult. And the weight—the weight on Aaron, in particular, was immense, as we struggled to try to resolve this.
AMY GOODMAN: Explain what you came to understand he did. I mean, when we talk about JSTOR—well, students in college understand what JSTOR is, but most people don’t. Explain what it is and what he did.
ROBERT SWARTZ: JSTOR is a repository for scholarly journals. So, if you take something like the American Mathematical Association’s journal, JSTOR makes that available electronically on a subscription basis to primarily academic libraries.
AMY GOODMAN: Now, they didn’t produce these articles, right? There are millions of articles that are gathered.
ROBERT SWARTZ: Right, right. No, the articles are produced for free by the academics, and the journals are edited and produced by the academic societies, in general, for free. JSTOR is not-for-profit, but nonetheless they charge both universities and their subscribers and individual users for access to those journals. So it’s very different than, say, a Disney movie, where there are people who are paid to produce the content. The people who produce this content are never paid, and I’ve never met an academic who wants to see their work behind a pay wall. The notion that the knowledge of mankind, that is—that is provided for free, should be behind a pay wall is completely wrong.
AMY GOODMAN: And explain what Aaron did.
ROBERT SWARTZ: So Aaron downloaded a substantial portion of the JSTORdatabase—or at least that’s what’s alleged—onto a computer.
AMY GOODMAN: I wanted to turn to comments of Aaron himself made at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in October of 2010. He spoke aboutJSTOR.
AARON SWARTZ: I am going to give you one example of something not as big as saving Congress, but something important that you can do right here at your own school. It just requires you willing to get your shoes a little bit muddy. By virtue of being students at a major U.S. university, I assume that you have access to a wide variety of scholarly journals. Pretty much every major university in the United States pays these sort of licensing fees to organizations like JSTOR and Thomson and ISI to get access to scholarly journals that the rest of the world can’t read. And these licensing fees are substantial. And they’re so substantial that people who are studying in India, instead of studying in the United States, don’t have this kind of access. They’re locked out from all of these journals. They’re locked out from our entire scientific legacy. I mean, a lot of these journal articles, they go back to the Enlightenment. Every time someone has written down a scientific paper, it’s been scanned and digitized and put in these collections.
That is a legacy that has been brought to us by the history of people doing interesting work, the history of scientists. It’s a legacy that should belong to us as a commons, as a people, but instead it’s been locked up and put online by a handful of for-profit corporations who then try and get the maximum profit they can out of it. Now, there are people, good people, trying to change this with the open access movement. So, all journals, going forward, they’re encouraging them to publish their work as open access, so open on the Internet, available for download by everybody, available for free copying, and perhaps even modification with attribution and notice.
AMY GOODMAN: After Aaron Swartz’s suicide, JSTOR expressed deep condolences to the Swartz family and maintained that the case had been instigated by the U.S. attorney’s office. They wrote, quote, "The case is one that we ourselves had regretted being drawn into from the outset, since JSTOR’s mission is to foster widespread access to the world’s body of scholarly knowledge. At the same time, as one of the largest archives of scholarly literature in the world, we must be careful stewards of the information entrusted to us by the owners and creators of that content. To that end, Aaron returned the data he had in his possession and JSTORsettled any civil claims we might have had against him in June 2011." Bob Swartz, soJSTOR did not have a beef with Aaron.
ROBERT SWARTZ: That’s correct.
AMY GOODMAN: But MIT—explain. Now, this is a place, MIT, that you worked for, and you were part of the MIT community. Your father did, as well?
ROBERT SWARTZ: My father didn’t work for MIT.
AMY GOODMAN: Your father had no relationship with MIT, but you did.
ROBERT SWARTZ: I still do.
AMY GOODMAN: So, talk about MIT’s role in this.
ROBERT SWARTZ: Well, first of all, MIT brought in the federal authorities. They worked at the direction of the federal authorities. Rather than, as was their custom, just—which they did with another instance of this, of downloading of academic journals that was going on at the same time—disconnecting the computer and stopping it, they put a camera in order to build a case against him, and then continued to collaborate and cooperate with the U.S. attorney’s office in that, in the making of that case, where they fundamentally stonewalled us in terms of all our inquiries. We pleaded with them to intervene on Aaron’s behalf and advocate that the case be dropped, in a similar fashion to JSTOR, which went to the U.S. attorney and asked that the charges against Aaron be dropped, and they refused.
AMY GOODMAN: Now, you had, presumably, a sort of a way to talk to the higher-ups at MIT. You had worked there for years.
ROBERT SWARTZ: Yeah.
AMY GOODMAN: What was their response to you?
ROBERT SWARTZ: Their response was that MIT was neutral, which was nonsense and which—
AMY GOODMAN: Why is that nonsense?
ROBERT SWARTZ: Because they cooperated with the prosecutor. They provided the prosecutor evidence without a subpoena and a warrant. They violated any number of laws, including the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, Aaron’s Fourth Amendment rights, the Massachusetts wiretap statute, the U.S. wiretap statute, among others, the Stored Computer Act, in their—in the way that they proceeded in the case. They also refused to cooperate with us, give us evidence, and we had very significant difficulty even getting them to respond. And when we asked them to intervene on Aaron’s behalf, they said they were unable to do that because there were multiple, different perspectives about this on MIT’s part, and therefore they must remain neutral. But in the report, the report makes clear that MIT did not remain neutral, and worked with the government.
AMY GOODMAN: Noah, what would you like to see MIT do now?
NOAH SWARTZ: Lots of things, mainly change the way they deal with this sort of playful hacking that goes on at MIT all the time.
AMY GOODMAN: Hadn’t something like this just happened, a massive downloading of information, where the student got a slap on the wrist?
NOAH SWARTZ: I mean, things like this happen at MIT all the time. And if you’re—
AMY GOODMAN: It’s MIT, after all. It’s—
NOAH SWARTZ: If you’re an MIT student, you can typically get out of the way. And if you’re not, apparently this is what happens. And if you’re an MIT student who does this off campus, you get sort of the same result that Aaron did, which is a very overprotective response from the university, trying to distance themselves from any sort of backlash or association with, you know, not illegal, but questionable activities.
AMY GOODMAN: Aaron’s partner, Taren Stinebrickner-Kauffman, joined us onDemocracy Now! about a week after Aaron’s suicide in January of 2013. I asked her to talk about Aaron, who he was, what he wanted, also how the upcoming trial had affected him.
TAREN STINEBRICKNER-KAUFFMAN: Aaron was the most—person most dedicated to fighting social injustice of anyone I’ve ever met in my life, and I loved him for it. He used to say—I used to say, "Why don’t you—why we do this thing? It will make you happy." And he would say, "I don’t want to be happy. I just want to change the world."
Open access to information was one of the causes that he believed in, but it was far from the only one. He fought for—during the course of this two-year ordeal, he led the fight against SOPA, the Internet censorship bill, which no one thought could be defeated when it was first introduced and which Aaron and millions of others, together, managed to fight back. And he did that all while under the burden of this—this bullying and false charges.
He was just the funniest, most lovely person. He—sorry. He—he loved children. He loved reading out loud. That was one of his favorite things. He loved David Foster Wallace. He started trying to read me Robert Caro’s biography of Lyndon Johnson out loud from the first volume. We didn’t get that far because it’s very, very long. One of his favorite—favorite books was Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality, a fanfic. We would read it to each other as chapters came out online.
AMY GOODMAN: That is Aaron’s partner, Taren Stinebrickner-Kauffman, who was with us on Democracy Now! about a week after Aaron died last year. Your last thoughts? In a moment, after break, we’ll be joined by Aaron’s lawyer, as well as the filmmaker who did The Internet’s Own Boy. But, Bob, if you could talk about Aaron’s goals and the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, a little more about it, the CFAA, what Aaron’s Law would be and why it’s stuck in committee right now, and what you think needs to be done?
ROBERT SWARTZ: Well, I mean, I don’t really understand Congress that well to explain why things don’t get through, but gridlock in Congress is very well known. The Computer Fraud and Abuse Act makes it a felony to violate terms of use of a website. So, for example, if you give your HBO password to someone else, both of you could become felons. And the revision of the act, among other things, is to change it so that this act can’t be used by prosecutors to destroy people like Aaron.
AMY GOODMAN: Aaron, in the end, could have pled and maybe gotten six months in jail, is that right?
ROBERT SWARTZ: Yes. I mean, it was more complicated than that, but yes.
AMY GOODMAN: He would have pled to felonies.
ROBERT SWARTZ: Yes.
AMY GOODMAN: And why was that—did that mean so much to Aaron, what it would have meant to be a felon?
ROBERT SWARTZ: It’s just incomprehensible, the notion that Aaron should be a felon and go to jail for something that was clearly not illegal, and he did nothing wrong. He was innocent. And to be railroaded on this basis was a complete distortion and corruption of the criminal justice system.
AMY GOODMAN: Noah, what do you feel people can do to continue Aaron’s legacy?
NOAH SWARTZ: I feel that in the film and in one of the clips I think we played on the show, Aaron says, "I’m here to tell you—you may feel powerless, but I’m here to tell you: You are powerful." And with the work that I’m trying to do with these hackathons, a lot of people are and have been justifiably upset recently with Snowden’s revelations, with WikiLeaks, with all these things that they’re learning about how the world works. And I think Aaron’s message that we can all take on with us is that there are things we can do about this. We can actually have an impact, and we can—we can see the change we want to see in the world by participating, rather than feeling helpless and useless. And so, watching the documentary, I see Aaron, but I also see all the work that he did and all the work that I could be doing and all of us could be doing. And I think that’s the most important message to take out.
AMY GOODMAN: And, Bob, as you watched the premiere of The Internet’s Own Boy, the story of your son, the story of Aaron Swartz, with hundreds of people yesterday, what were your feelings?
ROBERT SWARTZ: Just being completely shattered.
AMY GOODMAN: I want to thank you both for being with us, Bob and Noah Swartz, the father and brother of Aaron Swartz. When we come back, we’re going to find more out about the legal case against Aaron, what happened in the last months of his life, and we’re going to talk to the filmmaker who did this remarkable film,Internet’s Own Boy. This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report. Back in a minute.
[break]
AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report. I’m Amy Goodman. We’re broadcasting from the Sundance Film Festival in Park City, Utah. Yesterday, a new film premiered called The Internet’s Own Boy. I want to play another clip from The Internet’s Own Boy: The Story of Aaron Swartz. In this extended clip, we hear from Tim Berners-Lee, who invented the World Wide Web; Aaron himself; Aaron’s friend, Matt Stoller; Harvard Professor Lawrence Lessig, who founded the Creative Commons and was a mentor to Aaron; and Cory Doctorow, an author, activist and friend of Aaron’s.
TIM BERNERS-LEE: I think Aaron was trying to make the world work. He was trying to fix it. So he was a bit ahead of his time.
AARON SWARTZ: It is shocking to think that the accountability is so lax that they don’t even have sort of basic statistics about how big the spying program is. If the answer is, "Oh, we’re spying on so many people, we can’t possibly even count them," then that’s an awful lot of people. It would be one thing if they said, "Look, you know, we know the number of telephones we’re spying on; we don’t know exactly how many real people that corresponds to," but they just came back and said, "We can’t give you a number at all." That’s pretty—I mean, it’s scary, is what it is.
MATT STOLLER: They put incredible pressure on him, took away his—all of the money he had made. They, you know, threatened to take away his physical freedom. Why did they do it? You know, I mean, well, why—why are they going after whistleblowers? You know, why are they going after people who tell the truth about all sorts of things, I mean, from the banks to the—you know, to war, to just sort of government transparency?
DAVID SIROTA: Secrecy serves those who are already in power, and we are living in an era of secrecy that coincides with an era where the government is doing also a lot of things that are probably illegal and unconstitutional. So, those two things are not coincidences.
AARON SWARTZ: It’s very clear that this technology has been developed not for small countries overseas, but right here for use in the United States by the U.S. government. The problem with the spying program is it’s this sort of long, slow expansion, you know, going back to the Nixon administration, right? Obviously, it became big after 9/11 under George W. Bush, and Obama has continued to expand it, and the problems have slowly grown worse and worse. But there’s never been this moment you can point to, say, "OK, we need to galvanize opposition today, because today is when it matters." Instead, it’s mattered for a long time.
LAWRENCE LESSIG: So he was just doing what he thought was right, to produce a world that was better.
CORY DOCTOROW: I guess the one thing that I would say to people who are feeling the—you know, for whom the black dog is visiting, is that Aaron’s problems didn’t get solved when he died. Even now, as we try to honor Aaron’s legacy, it’s us, it’s not him. The one thing that being alive tells you is that you have the power to make things better.
AMY GOODMAN: That’s an excerpt of The Internet’s Own Boy: The Story of Aaron Swartz. We are broadcasting from Park City, Utah, where the Sundance Film Festival is underway, spending the hour looking at the life of this young Internet freedom activist, Aaron Swartz. It’s one year since he tragically took his own life. Now a new film about him has premiered. The Internet’s Own Boy premiered yesterday. We’re joined by Brian Knappenberger, the director of the film. He also directed We are Legion: The Story of the Hacktivists. And we’re joined by attorney Elliot Peters, who represented Aaron.
We welcome you both to Democracy Now! Why did you make the film, Brian?
BRIAN KNAPPENBERGER: Well, I was powerfully moved by Aaron’s story, on so many levels. I think that some of his early life is a very poignant chronology of Internet history. His contributions to RSS, Creative Commons, being co-founder of Reddit, it all just suggests somebody with this vision you mentioned earlier, this kind of worldview at a very young age. But I think what happened after he sold Reddit is particularly interesting to me, because he turned his back on startup culture. You know, we have a culture, a startup culture, that’s about creating, you know, companies and selling them, and he turned his back on it.
AMY GOODMAN: Now, explain. A lot of people might say, when he sold Reddit—he was one of the founders of Reddit.
BRIAN KNAPPENBERGER: Yeah, right. So he’s—yeah, he started a site with Y Combinator called Infogami. Infogami merged with Reddit, and so he became one of three—what they call co-founders of Reddit. And when Condé Nast bought Reddit, Aaron became a 19-year-old, probably, more or less—I mean, we don’t know how much he made, but he was a very rich 19-year-old. And that startup culture didn’t sit well with him. I didn’t think—I don’t think it merged well with his sort of sense of social justice and the kind of political—the areas that he wanted to go in. You know, and let’s face it, startup culture often says they want to change the world, but it becomes a kind of slogan of sorts. It’s really about build to flip—you know, create a company, sell it to a big corporation, and do the whole thing again. I think Aaron, at that—that part of his life was really interesting to me, because he shifted to using his skills and energy to his—towards political organizing, towards the causes that he really cared about.
AMY GOODMAN: Elliot Peters, explain when you got involved in Aaron Swartz’s life. I mean, you’ve represented Google. You represented Lance Armstrong. Talk about what happened with Aaron.
ELLIOT PETERS: I got involved with Aaron after the government filed what’s called a superseding indictment against him, and he was charged with 13 felonies, including wire fraud and violations of the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act. It could have put him in jail for an absurdly long time. And I met—so I met Aaron in the kind of the middle of 2012. I took over his case from some other lawyers that were handling it, and started getting ready to defend it and try it. And I got to know Aaron, and I got to know his dad, and I got to know even better the U.S. government that was chasing him.
AMY GOODMAN: All right, so talk about the pressure that Aaron was under. Talk about the 35 years of prison he faced, the million-dollar fine, the plea bargain offers that were being made, and Aaron’s attitude towards it all.
ELLIOT PETERS: Well, just the preface to that is, in my view, Aaron was innocent. I don’t believe Aaron committed a crime, and I think that we could have successfully defended him at trial. But he was under tremendous pressure, facing 13 felony counts, and they had added charges to ratchet up his exposure to jail. The prosecutor insisted that in any plea or any agreement in the case Aaron would have to go to jail and that the government would seek jail time. And I said to him the proper disposition of this case is to tell Aaron to do community service in Brooklyn by teaching high school students in the public schools in Brooklyn about computer programming, and after he’s done some of that, dismiss the case. And they said, "Absolutely not. He needs to plead guilty to 13 felonies, and he needs to go to jail." And the kind of person that Aaron was, he never struck me as a very good candidate for federal prison. I think that the thought of that was very frightening to him. I thought it was tremendously cruel and unfair. And given my line of work, I was very eager to fight them and defend Aaron, because he deserved it.
AMY GOODMAN: Talk about the prosecutor, what he prosecuted before.
ELLIOT PETERS: Well, he was a computer crimes prosecutor, or so he said.
AMY GOODMAN: This is Michael Heymann?
ELLIOT PETERS: His name is Stephen.
AMY GOODMAN: Stephen.
ELLIOT PETERS: Steve Heymann in Boston. And as I said in Brian’s terrific film, you’re not much of a computer crimes prosecutor if you don’t have a computer crime to prosecute. And when MIT referred this case to this task force, which included a Secret Service agent, Heymann immediately got involved. He took over the case. They turned it into an investigation. And they tried to turn it into the biggest case they could for their own purposes, with no regard, in my mind, to what was fair, or even any appreciation of who Aaron Swartz was. I’m not even sure that they cared.
AMY GOODMAN: You warned the prosecutor that they could break Aaron.
ELLIOT PETERS: He was aware that Aaron—there was a certain fragility about Aaron. But they were trying to put pressure on Aaron. They were trying, in a different way, to break Aaron. I’m not saying that they were trying to cause him to commit suicide, but they were trying to bring him to his knees so that he would knuckle under to the pressure that they were putting on him. And they were aware of that. They were intentionally maximizing the pressure on this young man. And to what end, I really don’t understand.
AMY GOODMAN: The main prosecutor in the case, Ortiz, said, "Stealing is stealing whether you use a computer command or a crowbar, and whether you take documents, data or dollars," said Carmen Ortiz.
ELLIOT PETERS: So facile, so ignorant, so stupid. Aaron wasn’t a thief. He was making a political statement. They charged him with fraud as if he was stealing something for profit. He wasn’t. He was an authorized user of the MIT computer network. He didn’t hack into anything. He logged in as any guest on the MIT campus could. He certainly downloaded more of JSTOR than they wanted, but it wasn’t to steal anything. These are a bunch of old academic journals that exist now for the purposes of increasing people’s knowledge. The idea to call Aaron a thief is just pandering to the lowest instincts of people, of viewers or listeners of Carmen Ortiz’s press conference.
AMY GOODMAN: We just played—Carmen Ortiz, the U.S. attorney in Boston who Steve Heymann worked for.
ELLIOT PETERS: Correct.
AMY GOODMAN: We just played a clip of Aaron talking about his philosophy and talking about JSTOR, and being concerned about the disparity of resources, intellectual resources, for people, say, in India versus in the United States. Brian?
BRIAN KNAPPENBERGER: Yeah, absolutely. It was a huge concern of his, this walling-up of the world’s information behind a pay wall.
AMY GOODMAN: You are one of the people involved in the February 11th action that will be taking place. Explain what it is.
BRIAN KNAPPENBERGER: Well, we’re leading up to some actions. You know, it’s part of a group called Stop Watching Us that was formed to protest NSA overreach and, you know, this kind of surveillance state that’s been revealed to us by Edward Snowden. And so, we are—
AMY GOODMAN: Amazing to listen to him, a year before Edward Snowden, talk about NSA surveillance.
BRIAN KNAPPENBERGER: Well, when we found that clip of Aaron, it was chilling, actually. We found Aaron talking quite a bit about NSA overreach, the amount of searching that they were doing, the amount of people that they were surveilling at that point. And those clips come about a year and a week or so before the main Snowden revelations. And he even says in the clip, there’s never been a moment when we really mobilize, that really sparks action. And he just didn’t live to see that moment.
AMY GOODMAN: Well, I want to thank you both for being with us, and for your film, Brian Knappenberger. The film is called—well, his first film, We are Legion: The Story of the Hacktivists, but this film is called The Internet’s Own Boy: The Story of Aaron Swartz. And Elliot Peters, Aaron’s lawyer.


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Amadeus Reconsidered

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Amadeus as I See It


Poetrait of Mozart at the age in question.
Salieri in the Asylum, expressing the eternal "Why?  God, I hate you."
The Same Mozart at the same age as portrayed by Hulce, envisioned by Salieri.


A friend whose judgment and taste I respect greatly, recently pointed out that Tom Hulce had reduced Mozart in that film to a silly, tasteless fool, and obviously held him accountable for desecrating Mozart’s memory, as bland as he seems today as a composer when compared to Bach or Beethoven.  It made me realize, after quite a while, that many people do not interpret the film as I do, nor as it was meant to be seen.
I did not know at the time that the movie was based loosely on something that Pushkin wrote, but I did know the German romantic tradition quite well.  As an undergraduate, I had studied German intently.  I also felt a great sympathy, even empathy, with the Weltschmertz of the period.
One of the works I read, in the very original German, script-type and all, was Edward  Mörike’s Mozart auf der Reise nach Prag, a short novel of the period with which I greatly sympathized, thinking of Mozart as the struggling artist and the protagonist.  I was not even aware that it was supposed to be somewhat humorous, but German Romantic humor is easy to miss.
Strangely enough, I had one of the most jocular of Professors I had ever studied under, before or since.  He was, to me, elderly, balding, with thin horn-rimmed glasses, and had a thick accent but perfect syntax and an impressive English vocabulary.
The assignment was to write a review and summary, or a paper, on the book.  I remember one sentence I wrote then almost verbatim: “Mozart was a creative genius with a cabal of practitioners of the vapid and artificial pastoral torpor that passed for art at the time.”  That’s telling them, I thought.
I did get an “A” on the paper, but Professor Ernst had written the following in the margin: “There is a certain charm in the poetry of the Baroque and Rocco Period, believe it or not!  Your professor has spent years re-editing such poetry!!!”  When he saw me reading his remark, he was laughing a hearty Bavarian sounding chuckling smirk and said “So Zere. Ho Ho!”
On another occasion, I informed him that I had just acquired a recording by Glenn Gould, the outstanding pianist most know for his interpretation of J. S. Bach, particularly The Goldberg Variations (1955), that had Mozart’s #24 on one side and Schoenberg’s #1 on the other.  He asked, “Dozen’t zis make loud noize during ze night?” and put his hands to his ears.  I assured him that I kept it in a plastic bag and that no sound was emitted unless I actually took it out and put it on the player.  He found that not only hilarious, so indicating with raucous laughter and slapping me on the shoulder, then himself on his thigh.
At any rate, Peter Schaefer who wrote the screenplay in the 20th Century, using accounts from the 19th, to describe events in the 18th, placed the entire story in the mind of Antonio Salieri, who is confined in an insane asylum in Vienna.  So, we have an insane 18th century figure, a rival of another 18th century genius, as related by a 19th century tradition, as interpreted by a 20th century playwright, using as a model the writing of Pushkin, a 19th century Russian, reflecting the views of an 18th century Italian living in a German insane asylum.
Salieri is convinced he murdered Mozart as God, remember the word in Latin, Amadeus, as a major part of this delusion, endowed Mozart with the talent he, Salieri, desired and for which he gave his chastity and that God cursed only with the ability to recognize.
F. Murray Abraham does a magnificent job of portraying him, the man who considered himself the patron saint of the mediocre.  Sir Neville Mariner was an excellent choice as conductor and musical director of the score.  Needless to say, any resemblance between the characters in the film and anyone who ever lived was entirely avoided.  Nevertheless, it is a delightful film.
Some of the more scintillating and rewarding lines and scenes come as a reaction to Mozart.  The Emperor has only one reservation to one of Mozart’s operas: “Now and then, how shall I say, hmmm, too many notes, yes, that’s it, too many notes.”  Mozart is flabbergasted and eventually asked which notes the Emperor have removed.  “It doesn’t matter.  Just snip a few here and there and it will be perfect.”
Or when an opera fails, Mozart complains to Salieri about it and asks why it happened.  “You overestimate the audience, my good fellow, why you didn’t even give them a good ‘bang’ at the end of a song to let them know when to applaud.”
Contemptuously, Mozart says “Yes, maybe I should be taking lessons from you.”
Salieri looks at him with an expression that cannot be adequately described and says “I wouldn’t presume.”
At any rate, the key to enjoying the film is NOT to view it as a documentary.  Forget about a pedantic insistence on historical accuracy.  Just remember this is Salieri’s tale of his own revenge against God.
It is worth seeing again.

Seeger, Shaw, Both Dead at 94

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No need to preface this – either you know him or you do not.  A lot of information of the late singer.

TUESDAY, JANUARY 28, 2014

"We Shall Overcome": Remembering Folk Icon, Activist Pete Seeger in His Own Words & Songs

The legendary folk singer and activist Pete Seeger died Monday at the age of 94. For nearly seven decades, Seeger was a musical and political icon who helped create the modern American folk music movement. We air highlights of two appearances by Seeger on Democracy Now!, including one of his last television interviews recorded just four months ago. Interspersed in the interviews, Seeger sings some of his classic songs, "We Shall Overcome,""If I Had a Hammer" and "Where Have All the Flowers Gone." He also talks about what has been described as his “defiant optimism.” "Realize that little things lead to bigger things. That’s what [the album] 'Seeds' is all about," Seeger said. "And there’s a wonderful parable in the New Testament: The sower scatters seeds. Some seeds fall in the pathway and get stamped on, and they don’t grow. Some fall on the rocks, and they don’t grow. But some seeds fall on fallow ground, and they grow and multiply a thousandfold. Who knows where some good little thing that you’ve done may bring results years later that you never dreamed of."
Seeger led an illustrious musical career. In the 1940s, he performed in The Almanac Singers with Woody Guthrie. Then he formed The Weavers. In the 1950s, he was blacklisted after he opposed Senator Joseph McCarthy’s political witch hunt and was almost jailed for refusing to answer questions before the House Un-American Activities Committee. Seeger became a prominent civil rights activist and helped popularize the anthem "We Shall Overcome." In the 1960s, he was a vocal critic of the Vietnam War and inspired generations of protest singers. He was later at the center of the environmental and anti-nuclear movements. With his wife Toshi, Pete helped found Clearwater, a group to clean up the Hudson River. Toshi died last year just weeks before their 70th wedding anniversary. In 2009, he and Bruce Springsteen performed Guthrie’s "This Land is Your Land" on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial at an inaugural concert for Barack Obama.

TRANSCRIPT

This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
PETE SEEGER: [singing] If I had a hammer,
I’d hammer in the morning,
I’d hammer in the evening,
All over this land,
I’d hammer out danger,
I’d hammer out a warning,
I’d hammer out love between,
My brothers and my sisters,
All over this land.
If I had a bell,
If I had a bell,
Ring it in the morning,
I’d ring it in the morning
Ring it in the evening!
Ring it in the evening,
All over this land,
Ring out danger
Ring out danger,
Ring out a warning,
Ring out a warning,
Ring out love, ring out love between,
My brothers and my sisters,
All over this land.
AMY GOODMAN: The legendary folk singer and activist Pete Seeger died Monday at the age of 94. For nearly seven decades, Pete Seeger was a musical and political icon who helped create the modern American folk music movement. In the 1940s, he performed in The Almanac Singers with Woody Guthrie. Then he formed The Weavers. In the '50s, he opposed Senator Joseph McCarthy's witch hunt and was almost jailed for refusing to answer questions before the House Un-American Activities Committee. Pete Seeger became a prominent civil rights activist and helped popularize the anthem, "We Shall Overcome." He was also a vocal critic of the Vietnam War and inspired a generation of protest singers. Later in his life, Pete was at the center of the environmental and anti-nuclear movements. With his wife Toshi, Pete Seeger helped found Clearwater, a group to clean up the Hudson River. Toshi Seeger died last year, just weeks before their 70th wedding anniversary. In 2009, Pete and Bruce Springsteen performed Woody Guthrie’s "This Land is Your Land" on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial at an inaugural concert for Barack Obama, when he first became president.
Pete Seeger last joined us on Democracy Now! just four months ago. We’ll play highlights from that interview later, but first I want to turn to Pete Seeger in 2004, when he joined us in our firehouse studio. I asked him about his parents and their philosophy of raising him.
PETE SEEGER: Well, my father said, "Let Peter enjoy himself. We’ll see what happens." And I think he was curious, because he knew I liked music. My mother just left instruments all around the house. So I could bang on a piano or an organ or a marimba, on a squeezebox or a penny whistle or an auto-harp. And at age seven I was given a ukulele, and I’ve been into fretted instruments ever since then. In prep school I joined the jazz band. And then a few years later, my father took me to a square dance festival in the Southern Mountains, and I suddenly realized there was a wealth of music in my country that you never heard on the radio: old-time music, my brother called it—I think a better name than folk music—all over the place. Depending where you are, you hear different kinds of old-time music. And I still feel that I’d like to see people not forget the old songs at the same time they’re making up new songs.
AMY GOODMAN: Do you remember any of the songs that you heard then?
PETE SEEGER: Oh, good gosh, yes.
AMY GOODMAN: That you’d like to play now?
PETE SEEGER: I can’t play them. My fingers are froze up, and my voice, you hear, I can’t really sing anymore. What I do these days, I get the audience singing with me. If I’m singing for children, needless to say, I say, "Kids, you all know this song. If you don’t, you will in a minute. She’ll be coming around the mountain, when she comes. Toot! Toot!" I’d say, "Can’t you get the toot? Toot! Toot!" Well, pretty soon they’re all doing it. "She’ll be coming around the mountain, when she comes. Toot! Toot!" And the last verse, it’s cumulative, so you repeat all the previous things. "She’ll be wearing red pajamas, when she comes. Scratch! Scratch! She’ll be wearing red pajamas, when she comes. Scratch! Scratch! Wearing red pajamas, she’ll be wearing red pajamas, she’ll be wearing red pajamas, when she comes. Scratch! Scratch! Hoink-shoo! Yum! Yum! Hi, Babe! Woe, back! Toot! Toot!" And even if the kids never heard the song before, they’re doing it with me.
AMY GOODMAN: Pete, you traveled the South with Alan Lomax, and to a lot of people that may not be a familiar name.
PETE SEEGER: Alan Lomax was the son of a Texas fella who collected cowboy songs a hundred years ago. And that’s how we know "Home on the Range" and other songs like it, "Whoopee Ti Yi Yo." And in 1908, he got President Roosevelt, Theodore Roosevelt, to write a short forward for his book of cowboy songs.
Thirty years later, he had a son, and Alan was only 22 years old. His father got him installed as the curator of the Archive of American Folksong in the Library of Congress. And Alan in a few years did what most people would take a lifetime to do. With utmost self-confidence, he calls up the head of Columbia Radio and says, "You have a school of the air. Why don’t you spend one year learning about American folk music? And the Columbia symphony can play the music, after you’ve heard some old person croak out the old ballad." And if he couldn’t find an old person to do it, he got young me, age 19 and 20. And I still sing some of the songs I learned then.
’Tis advertised in Boston, New York and Buffalo,
five hundred brave Americans, a waggling for to go,
singing, blow ye winds of the morning, blow ye winds, high ho!
Clear away your running gear, and blow, blow, blow.
He interviewed the woman who collected that song when she was a teenager sailing on her father’s whaling ship in the 19th century. Now, as an old woman, she came out with a beautiful book, Songs of American Sailormen. Joanna Colcord was her name, so he interviews her, has me sing a song, and then the symphony orchestra plays it.
Well, Alan got me started, and many others. He’s the man who told Woody Guthrie, he says, "Woody Guthrie, your mission in life is to write songs. Don’t let anything distract you. You’re like the people who wrote the ballads of Robin Hood and the ballad of Jesse James. You keep writing ballads as long as you can." And Woody took it to heart. He wasn’t a good husband. He was always running off. But he wrote songs, as you know.
AMY GOODMAN: Do you remember when you first met Woody Guthrie?
PETE SEEGER: Oh, yeah, I’ll never forget it. It was a benefit concert for California agricultural workers on Broadway at midnight. Burl Ives was there, the Golden Gate Quartet, Josh White, Leadbelly, Margo Mayo Square Dance Group, with my wife dancing in it. I sang one song very amateurishly and retired in confusion to a smattering of polite applause.
But Woody took over and for 20 minutes entranced everybody, not just with singing, but storytelling. "I come from Oklahoma, you know? It’s a rich state. You want some oil? Go down on the ground. Get you some hole. Get you more oil. If you want lead, we got lead in Oklahoma. Go down a hole and get you some lead. You want coal? We got coal in Oklahoma. Go down a hole, get you some coal. If you want food, clothes or groceries, just go in the hole and stay there." Then he’d sing a song.
AMY GOODMAN: When did you form The Weavers?
PETE SEEGER: That was after World War II. Lee Hays from Arkansas, and his roommate Millard Lampell and I had started a group called The Almanacs. And I wrote to Woody, I said, "Woody, we’re singing for unions all around. Come out and join us. We’re in Madison Square Garden singing for striking transport workers." And so Woody, once again, deserted his wife, came and joined us. But Woody used to say, "The Almanacs are the only group I know that rehearse on stage." We were very badly organized. And after World War II, Lee says, "Pete, do you think we could start a group that would actually rehearse?"
And we were fortunate to run into one of the world’s greatest singers, Ronnie Gilbert. She was in her early twenties, beautiful alto voice, and a strong alto voice. I’d have to be two inches from the microphone. She could be two feet from the microphone, and she’d drown me out. She stood up to three strong-voiced men, and the four of us, however, were about to break up, when we did the unthinkable: We got a job at a nightclub.
Well, a little Greenwich Village place, it’s still down there, the Village Vanguard. And the owner paid us—he didn’t want me first. He said, "I can’t pay for a quartet. I’ll pay for you. I’ll pay you $200, like I did two years ago." I said, "Well, what if the all four of us were willing to come for $200?" That was low pay, even then. And he had laughed. He said, "Well, if you’re willing." And we got $200 and free hamburgers, until a month later he came and saw the size of the hamburgers I was making. He said, "Let’s make that $250, but no more free hamburgers."
And we stayed there six months. Near the end of it, we met an extraordinary band leader, Gordon Jenkins, who loved our music and got us signed up with Decca, and we had a record called, "Tzena, Tzena, Tzena," and on the other side, the B-side—it was a record—"_Irene_,"good night, which sprang to number one, and for three months stayed up there on top of the hit parade. It was the biggest seller since World War II, and—
AMY GOODMAN: Can you talk more about "Irene"?
PETE SEEGER: Well, it was the song, the theme song of the great black singer, Leadbelly. He died in '49, and if he'd only lived another six months, he would have seen his song all over America. It was an old, old song. He’d simply changed and adapted it, added some verses and changed the melody, what my father called the "folk process," but which happens all through all kinds of music—in fact, all culture, you might say. Lawyers adapt old laws to suit new citizens. Cooks adapt old recipes to fit new stomachs.
Anyway, I learned this 12-string guitar from Leadbelly. A high string and a low string together, but played together to give a new tone. And the song I really would like to sing to you is—always have to do with it—I don’t sing it anymore. I give the words to the audience, and they sing it. I says, "You know this song. To everything, turn, turn, turn, there is a season. Sing it." And the whole audience sings, "Turn, turn, turn. There is a season. And a time. And a time for every purpose under heaven. A time to be born, a time to die. Sing it. A time to be born, a time to plant, to reap. A time to plant, a time to kill, to heal. A time to kill, a time to laugh, to weep. A time to laugh, a time to"—
You know, those words are 2,256 years old. I didn’t know that at the time, but Julius Lester, an old friend of mine, he’s a—I don’t know if you know him—he’s a black man who’s officially a Jew. He became fascinated with the Bible. I asked him, "When was these words written?" He says, "Well, the man’s name was Kohelet, meaning 'convoker,'" somebody who calls people together to speak to them. In the Greek translation, they called him Ecclesiastes, and he’s still in the King James Version as this. And it’s a type of poetry, which is Greek. The Greeks have a word for it, anaphora, A-N-A-P-H-O-R-A, and it means you start off a line with a word or a phrase. You don’t have rhyme at the end of the line, but you do have—it becomes poetry by the way it’s organized.
Well, I didn’t realize I liked the words, but I realize now. Those are maybe some of the most fundamentally important words that anybody could learn. You see, you and I, we’re all descended from killers, good killers. The ones who were not good killers didn’t have descendants. But we’re descended from good killers. For millions of years our ancestors were good killers. They say if they hadn’t been, we wouldn’t be here today. Now is a new period. In other words, it’s a time, you might say, the human race needed to have good killers. Now, if we don’t change our way of thinking, there will be no human race here, because science acts very irresponsibly—oh, any information is good. Ha, ha, ha. They don’t realize that some information is very important, some, frankly, forget about until we solve some other problems. Einstein was the first person who said it: Everything has changed now, except our way of thinking. And we’ve got to find ways to change our way of thinking.
Sports can do it. Arts can do it. Cooking can do it. All sorts of good works can do it. Smiles can do it. And I’m of the opinion now that if the human race makes it—I say we’ve got a 50-50 chance—if the human race makes it, it’ll be women working with children, these two very large oppressed classes in the human race. Children, doing what the grown-ups say they’re supposed to do, and yet they’re going to have to pay for our mistakes. They’re going to have to clean up the environment, which had been filled with chemicals, the air being filled with chemicals, the water being filled with chemicals, the ocean being filled with chemicals. And they’re going to have to clean it up. And I think it will be women working with kids that’ll do this job. In millions of little ways, maybe done in your hometown. In my hometown, we’re starting a project to put in a floating swimming pool in the Hudson, because now the Hudson is clean enough to swim in. Let’s swim in it. And if it works in our little town, maybe other towns will do it. In fact, if this swimming pool idea—it’s like a big netting in the water.
So, I confess I’m more optimistic now than I was 58 years ago, 59 years ago, when the atom bomb was dropped.
AMY GOODMAN: That’s Pete Seeger in our firehouse studio with our tell-tale radio headphones in 2004. The legendary folk singer and activist died Monday at the age of 94. We’ll go back to our interview with him in a minute.
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AMY GOODMAN: Pete Seeger and Bruce Springsteen and Tao Rodríguez-Seeger, Pete’s grandson, singing "This Land is Your Land" on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial ahead of President Obama’s inauguration in 2009. This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report. I’m Amy Goodman. Today, aDemocracy Now! special, remembering the life of Pete Seeger. The legendary folk singer and activist died Monday at the age of 94. We now return to our interview in 2004 in our firehouse studio. I asked Pete to talk about his time serving in the military during World War II.
PETE SEEGER: I first wanted to be a mechanic in the Air Force. I thought that would be an interesting thing. But then military intelligence got interested in my politics. My outfit went on to glory and death, and I stayed there in Kiesler Field, Mississippi, picking up cigarette butts for six months. Finally, they let me know, yes, they’d been investigating me, opening all my mail.
AMY GOODMAN: Pete Seeger, when you came back, they continued to investigate you.
PETE SEEGER: Well, I have assumed most of my life that if there wasn’t a microphone under the bed, they were tapping the phone from time to time and opening my mail from time to time. Who knows?
AMY GOODMAN: But it was more than that, wasn’t it?
PETE SEEGER: Well, sometimes they’d have picket lines out, but, you know, in a crazy way all it did was sell tickets. I remember one concert did not sell out. My manager said, "Pete, we should have gotten the Birches to picket you. Then it would have sold out."
AMY GOODMAN: I’m looking at a transcript of the House Un-American Activities Committee, August 18th, 1955, when they started off by saying—Mr. Taverner said, "When and where were you born, Mr. Seeger?" You actually answered that question.
PETE SEEGER: Well, I wish I had been more—spoken up more. I just did what my lawyer, a very nice guy—he says, "Don’t try to antagonize them. Just don’t answer these questions, because if you answer this kind of question, you’re going to have to answer more questions. Just say you don’t think it’s legal." Well, I said, "I think I’ve got a right to my opinion, and you have the right to your opinion. Period."
And so, eventually I was sentenced to a year in jail, but my lawyer got me off on bail. I was only in jail for four hours, and I learned a folk song. They served us lunch, a slice of bread and a slice of bologna and an apple, and the man next to me was singing, "If that judge believes what I say, I’ll be leaving for home today." The man next to him says, "Not if he sees your record, you won’t." But that’s an old African melody, you know. It’s in many, many African-American folk songs.
AMY GOODMAN: Now, you were sentenced to a year in jail?
PETE SEEGER: And a year later the appeals court acquitted me. Ironically—the contradictions of life still amaze me—the judge who acquitted me, the head judge—there were three judges—head one was Irving Kaufman, the man who sentenced the Rosenbergs to the chair 10 years earlier. But he acquitted me. He said, "We are not inclined to lightly disregard charges of unconstitutionality, even though they may be made by those unworthy of our respect."
However, I feel that—both my wife and I feel we’re lucky to be alive and lucky to be on good terms with our neighbors, and in the little town where we live, people shout out, "Hi, Pete! Hi, Toshi!" And I’d like to—I wish I could live another 20 years just to see things that are happening, because I believe that women working with children will get men to wake up to what a foolish thing it is to seek power and glory and money in your life. What a foolish thing. Here we are—
There’s a politician in my hometown, a very nice guy. He used to be a shop steward for the union in the local factory, but for 20 years he represented our town in the county legislature. And he said, "Pete, if you don’t grow, you die." One o’clock in the morning, I sat up in bed and thought of the next question. If that’s true, if you don’t grow, you die, doesn’t it follow the quicker you grow, the sooner you die? Nobody is facing up to that question, but it’s very definitely true. Now the first step in solving a problem is to admit there’s a problem. Then we can argue about ways it could be solved.
I suppose one person will say, "Well, let a few people have trillions of dollars and the rest of the people obediently do the work, and the people in charge will see that everything is done right." On other hand, I think what was in the Declaration of Independence is true now just as it was then. Those great lines, they’re written by Ben Franklin, you know, not Jefferson. "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their creator with certain inalienable rights; that among these rights are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness; that to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed; that when any government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it."
AMY GOODMAN: Pete Seeger, can you tell us about "We Shall Overcome"?
PETE SEEGER: I thought, in 1946, when I learned it from a white woman who taught in a union labor school, the Highlander Folk School in Tennessee, that the song had been made up in 1946 by tobacco workers, because they sang it there to strike through the winter of 1946 in Charleston, South Carolina, and they taught the song to Zilphia Horton, the teacher at the labor school. And she said, "Oh, it was my favorite song." And I printed it in our little magazine in New York,People’s Songs, as "We Will Overcome" in 1947.
It was a friend of mine, Guy Carawan, who made it famous. He picked up my way of singing it, "We Shall Overcome," although Septima—there was another teacher there, Septima Clark, a black woman. She felt that "shall"—like me, she felt it opened up the mouth better than "will," so that’s the way she sang it. Anyway, Guy Carawan in 1960 taught it to the young people at the founding convention of SNCC, Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, SNCC for short. And a month later, it wasn’t asong, it was the song, throughout the South.
Only two years ago, I get a letter from a professor in Pennsylvania, who uncovered an issue of the United Mine Workers Journal of February 1909, and a letter there on front page says, "Last year at our strike, we opened every meeting with a prayer, and singing that good old song, 'We Will Overcome.'" So it’s probably a late 19th century union version of what was a well-known gospel song. I’ll overcome, I’ll overcome, I’ll overcome some day.
AMY GOODMAN: You sang it for Martin Luther King?
PETE SEEGER: In 1957, I went down to Highlander. Zilphia was dead, and Myles Horton, her husband, said, "We can’t have a celebration of 25 years with this school without music. Won’t you come down and help lead some songs?" So I went down, and Dr. King and Reverend Abernathy came up from Alabama to say a few words, and I sang a few songs, and that was one of them. Ann Braden drove King to a speaking engagement in Kentucky the next day; and she remembers him sitting in the back seat, saying, "'We Shall Overcome.' That song really sticks with you, doesn’t it?" But he wasn’t the song leader. It wasn’t until another three years that Guy Carawan made it famous.
AMY GOODMAN: Even as you’re singing songs like that, it has also often been seen as a tremendous threat to the establishment. In 1963, the Fire & Police Research Association of Los Angeles warned before one of your appearances, Pete Seeger, that folk music in youth gatherings were being used to brainwash and subvert vast segments of young people’s groups.
PETE SEEGER: Oh, poor—I hope they’ve learned a little different now. That’s 40 years ago, 41 years ago, but the establishment has always been concerned about music. I’ve quoted Plato for years, who wrote, "It’s very important that the wrong kind of music not be allowed in the Republic." And I’ve also heard there’s an old Arab proverb, "When the king puts the poet on his payroll, he cuts off the tongue of the poet."
During the 1930s, I was very conscious that radio stations played nice love songs and funny songs, but only by accident did a song like "Brother, Can You Spare a Dime?" get through. The other songs tended to be more like Bing Crosby’s hit of 1933, I think. "Wrap your troubles in dreams. Dream your troubles away." That’s how we’re going to lick the Depression?
AMY GOODMAN: We’re talking to Pete Seeger, and on this allmusic.com bio of you, it says, "Pete Seeger’s adherence to the sanctity of folk music came to a boiling point with the advent of folk rock, and it’s long been rumored that he tried to pull the plug on Bob Dylan’s very electrified set with the Paul Butterfield Blues Band in 1965." Is that true?
PETE SEEGER: No. It’s true that I don’t play electrified instruments. I don’t know how to. On the other hand, I’ve played with people who play them beautifully, and I admire some of them. Howling Wolf was using electrified instruments at Newport just the day before Bob did. But I was furious that the sound was so distorted you could not understand a word that he was singing. He was singing a great song, "Maggie’s Farm," a great song, but you couldn’t understand it. And I ran over to the soundman, said, "Fix the sound so you can understand him." And they hollered back, "No, this is the way they want it!" I don’t know who they was, but I was so mad I said, "Damn, if I had an axe, I’d cut the cable right now." I really was that mad. But I wasn’t against Bob going electric.
As a matter of fact, some of Bob’s songs are still my favorites. What an artist he is. What a great—I would say maybe he and Woody and Buffy Sainte-Marie and Joni Mitchell and Malvina Reynolds are the greatest songwriters of the 20th century, even though Irving Berlin made the most money. They wrote songs that were trying to help us understand where we are, what we’ve got to do. Still are writing them.
AMY GOODMAN: In 1967, you made your stand against the Vietnam War clear on the Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour. Can you talk about that?
PETE SEEGER: Well, the Smothers Brothers were a big, big success on CBS television. And way back the year before, I think in the spring of '67, they said—CBS says, "Anything we can do for you? You're right at the top. What can we do to make you happier?" And they said, "Let us have Seeger on." And CBS said, "Well, we’ll think about it." Finally, in October, they said, "OK, you can have him on." And I sang this song "Waste deep in the big muddy, the big fool says to push on."
The tape was made in California, flown to New York. And in New York they scissored the song out. And now, the Smothers Brothers took to the print media and said, "CBS is censoring our best jokes. They censored Seeger’s best song." And they got some publicity. And during November, December and January, the arguments went on. Finally, in February—no, pardon me, late January, late January of '68, CBS said, "OK, OK, he can sing the song." On six hours' notice, I flew out to California.
I remember singing a batch of songs from American history, songs from the Revolution, like "Come ye hither, redcoats, you mind what madness fills. In our forest there is danger, there’s danger in our hills. Fall the rifles, the rifles in our hands shall prove no trifle." I think I mentioned the hit song of 1814. It was the hit song: "Oh, say can you see." And the song of the Mexican War, "Green grow the lilacs all sparking with dew." A love song. That’s why Yankees are called "gringos" in Mexico, from that song. And, of course, the Civil War, several good songs, not just "Battle Hymn of the Republic," but a batch of them. The Spanish-American War, Oscar Brown taught me this song. American soldiers in the Philippines, they were singing, "Damn, damn, damn the Filipinos. Cross-eyed kakiack ladrones. And beneath the starry flag, civilize them with a crag, and go back to our own beloved home." I didn’t sing that. But along come modern times. I sang "Waste Deep in the Big Muddy," and this time only a station in Detroit cut it out. But the rest of the country heard it, so seven million people heard it.
Who knows? Later that month, in late February, Lyndon Johnson decided not to run for re-election. The song would be probably just one more thing. I honestly believe that the future is going to be millions of little things saving us. I imagine a big seesaw, and at one end of this seesaw is on the ground with a basket half-full of big rocks in it. The other end of the seesaw is up in the air. It’s got a basket one-quarter full of sand. And some of us got teaspoons, and we’re trying to fill up sand. A lot of people are laughing at us, and they say, "Ah, people like you have been trying to do that for thousands of years, and it’s leaking out as fast as you’re putting it in." But we’re saying, "We’re getting more people with teaspoons all the time." And we think, "One of these years, you’ll see that whole seesaw go zooop in the other direction." And people will say, "Gee, how did it happen so suddenly?" Us and all our little teaspoons. Now granted, we’ve got to keep putting it in, because if we don’t keep putting teaspoons in, it will leak out, and the rocks will go back down again. Who knows?
AMY GOODMAN: Do you see those cracks, those places, today in mass media? I know you don’t watch TV and all that, but, for example, you going on Smothers Brothers. Do you think that it is as constricted today?
PETE SEEGER: Not as constricted, no. There’s all sorts of little things going on. I understand this program may be on some TV stations. I’ve got to find out where, when, so I can see it. You’re right, I don’t look at TV much, except to check on the weather for my skating rink. I’m a read-aholic and a magazine-aholic, I get 40 or 50 magazines a month. And I read music magazines, environmental magazines, union magazines, civil rights magazines. Who knows?
AMY GOODMAN: That’s Pete Seeger in our firehouse studio in 2004. The legendary folk singer and activist died Monday at the age of 94. We continue remembering Pete in his own words and song.
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AMY GOODMAN: Pete Seeger, singing "Waist Deep in the Big Muddy" on theSmothers Brothers Comedy Hour in 1967. This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report. I’m Amy Goodman, as we remember the life of Pete Seeger, the legendary folk singer and activist. He died Monday at the age of 94. We return to our interview in 2004 in our firehouse studio. I asked Pete Seeger to talk about one of his most famous songs, "Where Have All the Flowers Gone?"
PETE SEEGER: Well, I was sitting in an airplane on my way to sing at Oberlin College. I was over Ohio, and—
AMY GOODMAN: What year?
PETE SEEGER: —half-dozing. Year, 1955. And all of a sudden, three lines, which I had read in a book, took form. In the book, it simply said, "Where are the flowers? The girls have plucked them. Where are the girls? They’re all married. Where are the men? They’re all in the army." It’s an old Russian folk song. And the Don Cossacks—maybe it’s a Ukrainian folk song. "Koloda Duda" is the original name, but I didn’t know that. All I knew is I had read these three lines in the book And Quiet Flows the Don by a Soviet novelist. And all of a sudden, I had three verses. I didn’t realize it at the time, I had swiped part of the verse from an old Irish song. I had been recording a lumberjack song from the Adirondacks: "Johnson says he’ll load more hay, says he’ll load 10 times a day." You can really see, I slowed it down, and I pinned the words to the microphone that night and sang them.
And a few weeks later, I was walking down 48th Street, Manhattan, stopped in at Folkways Records, said, "I made up a new song." And then, Moe Asch propped a mic up in front of me and recorded it. And a few months later it was out on another LP. An Oberlin College student got the LP at a job at a summer camp, and the kids were fooling around with the verses: "Where have all the counselors gone, broken curfew everyone." But by the end of the summer, he had made up the two extra verses we know. "Where have the soldiers gone, gone to graveyards. Where have the graveyards gone, covered with flowers."
And the kids took the song back to New York. Peter, Paul and Mary were singing in the Village, in Greenwich Village, and picked it up, started singing it. The Kingston Trio learned it from them. And about three years later, my manager says, "Pete, didn’t you write a song called 'Where Have All the Flowers Gone'?" I said, "Yeah, about three years ago." He said, "Did you copyright it?""No, I guess I never did." He said, "Well, you ought to. The Kingston Trio have recorded it."
Well, I got on the phone to Dave Guard. He was an old friend. He had started playing the banjo because he got my book, my bestseller. I mimeographed it first, but later printed it. It’s printed 100,000 copies.How to Play the Five-String Banjo. He wrote me a year later. He says, "I’ve been putting that book to hard use. I and two others have a group we call The Kingston Trio." So I called him up. "Oh, Pete, we didn’t know it was your song. We’ll take our name off it." It was very nice of him, because technically, legally, I had, as they say, quote, "abandoned copyright." But they took their name off, and my manager copyrighted it. It pays my taxes these days, that song. It’s been translated into dozens of other languages.
AMY GOODMAN: Pete, could you play "Where Have All the Flowers Gone?"
PETE SEEGER: Where — ah, maybe I’ll just sing the very, very last verse, because the contradictions of life still amaze me. You have to laugh, if you don’t cry.
Where have all the graveyards gone?
Long time passing.
Where have all the graveyards gone?
Long time ago.
Where have all the graveyards gone?
Covered with flowers every one.
When will we ever learn?
When will we ever learn?
AMY GOODMAN: You still have your voice.
PETE SEEGER: It’s in the cellar.
AMY GOODMAN: Can you talk about getting older?
PETE SEEGER: Oh, it’s no fun to lose your memory or your hearing or your eyesight, but from my shoulders on down I’m in better condition than most men my age. I can go skiing with the family, although I stick to the intermediate slopes. I don’t try the double diamond.
AMY GOODMAN: Pete, you sit here listening with headphones on. You’re a singer. Sound is very important. It’s not as easy for you to hear things so clearly anymore. How has that affected you?
PETE SEEGER: Well, I’m singing to myself all the time, just humming or just in my brain. I’m not making any sound. But admittedly, I can’t—unless I have earphones on, I can’t really—even with what they call hearing aids, I can’t really hear music. I don’t listen to CDs. I don’t listen to the radio. I don’t listen to TV. And occasionally, when friends come around, I’ll join in with them, but my fingers are slowing down. I hear records that I made years ago and say, "How did I ever play that so fast?"
On the other hand, these are exciting times. There’s never been such as exciting times. And win, lose or draw, it’s going to be very, very exciting. And I applaud what you are doing. I think what Democracy Now! is doing is just fantastic. This couldn’t have been done half a century ago, could not have been done.
AMY GOODMAN: Why?
PETE SEEGER: Well, they didn’t have the technology for it, I guess. So as I say, technology will save us if it doesn’t wipe us out first.
AMY GOODMAN: Well, final words, Pete Seeger, as we wrap up this conversation—the role of music, culture and politics.
PETE SEEGER: They’re all tangled up. Hooray for tangling!
AMY GOODMAN: Well, I want to thank you very much for being with us. And for someone who isn’t so hopeful who is listening to this right now, trying to find their way, what would you say?
PETE SEEGER: Realize that little things lead to bigger things. That’s what Seeds is all about. And there’s a wonderful parable in the New Testament: The sower scatters seeds. Some seeds fall in the pathway and get stamped on, and they don’t grow. Some fall on the rocks, and they don’t grow. But some seeds fall on fallow ground, and they grow and multiply a thousandfold. Who knows where some good little thing that you’ve done may bring results years later that you never dreamed of.
AMY GOODMAN: Pete Seeger speaking in 2004 on Democracy Now!. The legendary folk singer and activist died Monday at the age of 94. He last appearedhiroshimabombing on Democracy Now! in August. He talked about one of his most famous songs.
PETE SEEGER: The song, "If I Had a Hammer," went all sorts of places that I could never go, and I’m very glad.
[singing] If I had a hammer,
I’d hammer in the morning,
I’d hammer in the evening,
All over this land,
I’d hammer out danger,
Hammer out a warning,
Hammer out love between,
All of my brothers,
Oh, a woman said, "Make that 'My brothers and my sisters.'" Lee says, "It doesn’t roll off the tongue so well. But she insisted. He said, "How about 'All of my siblings'?" She didn’t think that was funny.
[singing] All over this land.
If I had a song,
Don’t need to sing the whole song. You can sing it to yourself, whether you’re driving a car or washing the dishes or just singing to your kids. We haven’t mentioned children much on this program, but it may be children realizing that you can’t live without love, you can’t live without fun and laughter, you can’t live without friends—and I say, "Long live teachers of children," because they can show children how they can save the world.
AMY GOODMAN: And we end with more Pete Seeger just four months ago.
PETE SEEGER: We shall overcome.
We shall overcome.
We shall overcome some day.
Oh, deep in my heart,
I know that I do believe,
We shall overcome...
AMY GOODMAN: You’ve been listening to Pete Seeger in his own words and song. He died yesterday, Monday, at the age of 94. For a copy of today’s show, go to our website at democracynow.org, and go there to watch all of our Pete Seeger shows, including his 90th birthday celebration featuring Bruce Springsteen, Bernice Johnson Reagon and Joan Baez.


The original content of this program is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License. Please attribute legal copies of this work to democracynow.org. Some of the work(s) that this program incorporates, however, may be separately licensed. For further information or additional permissions, contact us.

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Corporate and Military Interests hidden in the SOTU

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I missed the SOTU, or State of the Union speech because I was able to watch the opening episodes of The Borgias, a much more realistic version of how politics works.  However, here is some commentary on it so that nobody feels left out.





WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 29, 2014

"A Silent Coup": Jeremy Scahill & Bob Herbert on Corporate, Military Interests Shaping Obama’s SOTU

On issues from domestic inequality to foreign policy, President Obama delivered his fifth State of the Union with a vow to take action on his own should Congress stonewall progress on his agenda. But will Obama’s policies go far enough? We host a roundtable with three guests: Jeremy Scahill, producer and writer of the Oscar-nominated documentary "Dirty Wars: The World is a Battlefield" and senior investigative reporter at First Look Media, which will launch in the coming months; Bob Herbert, distinguished senior fellow with Demos; and Lorella Praeli, director of advocacy and policy at the United We Dream coalition.

TRANSCRIPT

This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
AMY GOODMAN: Our guests are Jeremy Scahill—his film, Dirty Wars, has just been nominated for an Oscar; Bob Herbert with us, former New York Timescolumnist, now with Demos; and Lorella Praeli with the United We Dream coalition. Nermeen?
NERMEEN SHAIKH: We’re continuing our coverage of President Obama’s State of the Union address. During Tuesday’s speech, he announced an executive action to raise the minimum wage for some federal contract workers from $7.25 an hour to $10.10 an hour.
PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA: In the coming weeks, I will issue an executive order requiring federal contractors to pay their federally funded employees a fair wage of at least $10.10 an hour, because if you cook our troops’ meals or wash their dishes, you should not have to live in poverty.
Of course, to reach millions more, Congress does need to get on board. Today, the federal minimum wage is worth about 20 percent less than it was when Ronald Reagan first stood here. And Tom Harkin and George Miller have a bill to fix that by lifting the minimum wage to $10.10. It’s easy to remember, 10-10. This will help families. It will give businesses customers with more money to spend. It does not involve any new bureaucratic program. So join the rest of the country. Say yes. Give America a raise.
NERMEEN SHAIKH: Bob Herbert, can you respond to that, the significance of this raise for some federal workers?
BOB HERBERT: Sure. I think it’s symbolically significant. So, it’s not going to take effect until new contracts come up, so federal contract workers will have to be paid at least a minimum of $10.10 an hour. The reason I think it’s symbolically significant is because it keeps a spotlight on the issue of the minimum wage, on the issue of employment going forward.
You know, to Jeremy’s point about the State of the Union essentially being a propaganda speech, which is absolutely true, what you didn’t hear there was really what the state of the economy is for ordinary Americans, for working people in this country. You didn’t hear anything about poverty, for example. So, for years now, the American people have made it clear, in poll after poll and in other ways, that employment is their top priority. I mean, people need jobs. But neither party, presidents from either party and Congress, whether it’s in the control of the Republicans or the Democrats, have had a sustained, effective job creation program in this country. And the United States is never going to get out of its morass until it’s able to put people back to work.
We now have nearly 50 million people who are officially poor in the United States, according to federal guidelines. Another 50 million people are just a notch or two above the official poverty rate. That’s nearly a third of the entire population that’s poor or near poor. One out of every three black children in the United States is poor. If you just walk a few blocks from this studio, every day you will see enormous lines wrapped around the corner for soup kitchens and that sort of thing. And that’s the case in places across this country. None of that was addressed. And none of the initiatives that the president has offered, and nothing that the Republicans have offered in years, would begin to address this state of distress among American working people and among the poor.
NERMEEN SHAIKH: Just to give us an idea, Bob Herbert, how many employees does the federal government have through contractors?
BOB HERBERT: Well, it’s interesting. It was actually Demos that—it was a Demos initiative that put the spotlight on this $10.10 initiative, because Demos was the first organization to point out that the federal government, through its contractors, employs nearly two million low-wage workers, which is more than Wal-Mart and McDonald’s combined. So, if you could get this initiative expanded to cover all of the workers who are contracted to work for the federal government, then you would help an enormous number of people.
AMY GOODMAN: Mention of unions? I saw Richard Trumka in the audience.
BOB HERBERT: You know, get me started on unions. One of the reasons American workers are in such a deep state of distress is because they have no clout in the workplace. They are not organized, and they are not represented, so they cannot fight for their own interests. Corporations are organized every which way from sundown, and they have tremendous amounts of money. They have a lot a political clout and that sort of thing.
Workers go to work. You know, it’s just one man or one woman, you know, against an employer in a terrible job market. So you’re afraid to even ask for a raise, even if you deserve a raise, because you think the employer is going to say to you, "Take a hike." And then you go out there in this terrible job market, and there’s no jobs to be had. If workers were organized, then they would be able to have clout. You’d be able to bring pressure not just on employers, not just on corporations, but also on the federal government to get legislation passed that would be beneficial to workers.
And one of the most important things you could do is to just enforce the laws that are on the books that have to do with labor organizing. I mean, so, if you’re in an organization, a corporation, a plant, that sort of thing, where workers are not organized, do not belong to a labor union, they want to organize—the majority of the workers want to organize—the corporations fight you every step of the way. And they use a tremendous number—amount of unfair tactics. That’s illegal, but the federal government has not enforced the laws.
AMY GOODMAN: Let’s talk about international trade policy and how that relates. In his State of the Union, President Obama also sought fast-track authority to give lawmakers an up-or-down vote on the trade deals such as TPP, the Trans-Pacific Partnership.
PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA: When 98 percent of our exporters are small businesses, new trade partnerships with Europe and the Asia-Pacific will help them create even more jobs. We need to work together on tools like bipartisan trade promotion authority to protect our workers, protect our environment, and open new markets to new goods stamped "Made in the U.S.A." Listen, China and Europe aren’t standing on the sidelines. And neither should we.
AMY GOODMAN: That was President Obama in his fifth State of the Union address. We just returned from Japan, Bob Herbert. There, there’s a huge discussion about the Trans-Pacific Partnership. Here, most people, if you asked them, they wouldn’t even know what it is.
BOB HERBERT: Well, one of the things that’s a problem in this country is because the economic situation has been so stagnant for most people for so long and because the government has been—the government in Washington has been so dysfunctional, that Americans have really tuned out. And also, I don’t think that the press has done a good job at all on trade agreements, if you go all the way back to NAFTA in the 1990s. So people essentially don’t even understand these agreements. But what they do understand is that they have not been helpful to the vast majority of workers over all these years. So...
JEREMY SCAHILL: Can I just make a comment?
AMY GOODMAN: Jeremy Scahill.
JEREMY SCAHILL: I mean, you know, what Obama was doing there—in his last major address that he gave, he—at the United Nations General Assembly, he laid out this sort of forceful defense of American empire, and even went so far as to say that the U.S. will use its military might to continue to secure energy resources. In this speech, it was a pretty forceful defense of a neoliberal economic agenda. And, you know, what Bob is saying about corporations resonates on a foreign policy level, as well.
What is widely being considered to be the most moving part of last night was when this U.S. Army Ranger was addressed in the crowd and who was severely wounded and had done 10 tours. Think about that for a moment—10 tours in these war zones. You know, this young American spent his entire adult life in these combat zones. And, you know, the issue of how veterans are treated in this country is one thing, but at the end of the day, did he benefit from these wars? Does the average American benefit from the continuation of these wars? No. Who benefits? That’s the most important question we all have to ask. It’s corporations.
BOB HERBERT: Exactly.
JEREMY SCAHILL: War corporations, the Halliburtons of the world, the Boeings. John Kerry, yesterday it was announced, is giving these awards for corporate excellence around the world. He’s giving them to Citibank, to Apache, to Boeing, to Coca-Cola. And so you have this neoliberal economic agenda, which is sort of the hidden hand, in many ways, of the U.S. empire, and then you have this iron fist of U.S. militarism that is being sold to the American public, and increasingly to the world, as national security policy.
And so, you know, when I see that Army Ranger who’s wounded like that, the first thing that just occurs to me is: Who has benefited from all of this? When corporations control our political process in this country through a legalized form of corruption that’s called campaign finance, what does that say about the state of our democracy? In a way, there already has been a coup in this country, but it’s been a silent coup. And it reminds me of that famous line from the great movie The Usual Suspects. At the end of it, Kevin Spacey’s character says the greatest trick the devil ever pulled was convincing the world he didn’t exist. In many ways, a coup has happened, and the brilliance of it is that it’s not sparking major uprisings because we’ve been pacified and taught to just accept this as how things work. We have two parties in this country, the minimum wage is going to be the minimum wage, and corporations are in control, and these wars are fought in our name, but without our consent.
BOB HERBERT: And the flipside of who benefits is the suffering that is so tremendous out there among the warriors who have been sent over to fight these wars since late 2001. And so, you just have hundreds of thousands of people who have—men and women, who have come back from the combat zones, who have terrible, disabling injuries, who are going to have to be cared for—we have an obligation to care for them—in many cases, for the rest of their lives. We have to pay, as a society, to care for these folks. You know, it’s probably—Joe Stiglitz has estimated that now these wars are probably going cost cumulatively $4 trillion or more. None of this has been really explored clearly or properly explained to the American public.
JEREMY SCAHILL: You know, just a small sort of side point on this, you know, when we talk about the U.S. withdrawing from Iraq and Afghanistan, the conventional military, a story that very seldom gets attention is the connection between a paramilitarization of law enforcement inside of the United States and increasing use of what they call counterterrorism tactics on SWAT-style operations in the U.S. The military is donating a lot of its equipment to local police agencies and other so-called law enforcement agencies, and the communities that are most at risk here are communities of color and poor communities. Everything is about war—the war on drugs, the war on crime.
BOB HERBERT: Right.
JEREMY SCAHILL: And war requires some kind of a militarized response. And that’s what we’re seeing. This is deeply connected to the wars abroad, the wars at home, as well.
BOB HERBERT: And this is actually going into our public schools, where you have that type of militarized behavior going on actually in public schools. That’s how you get the school-to-prison pipeline that people are talking about.
AMY GOODMAN: On Afghanistan, President Obama said, "If the Afghan government signs a security agreement that we have negotiated, a small force of Americans could remain in Afghanistan with NATO allies." But the latest news says the Pentagon has proposed up to 10,000 troops remaining behind, Jeremy.
JEREMY SCAHILL: Yeah, and if you look at what sort of various senior anonymous military officials have been saying for several years now, they’ve known that the withdrawal is not really going to be a withdrawal. Yes, we’re going to see the Marines pull out. We’re going to have this thing where journalists can ride on the tanks, like they did out of Iraq. But at the end of the day, this is an Afghanization of a U.S. policy. So, what’s going to happen is that you’re going to have these advise-and-assist squads of highly trained U.S. special ops and CIA personnel accompanying Afghan units, and they’re going to try to have the Afghans do the fighting and dying and killing on behalf of U.S. policy. But what I think should be of greater concern to the American public is that you are going to have these strike forces in place. It’s taken as conventional wisdom now that the U.S. is out of Iraq. Actually, the U.S. has a massive paramilitary presence inside of Iraq and is going to continue to have one inside of Afghanistan. So, these wars are going to continue on for at least another generation, albeit on a sort of covert, hidden-hand manner of doing it.
NERMEEN SHAIKH: But what’s the justification, Jeremy, for keeping troops in Afghanistan?
JEREMY SCAHILL: I mean, there is no counterterrorism mission in Afghanistan anymore. I mean, no one wants to talk about this, because you’re going to be accused of being sympathetic to the Taliban. The Taliban is not a terrorist organization with global aspirations. The Taliban has a constituency, has a greater constituency than the U.S., arguably than Hamid Karzai, who the U.S. recognizes as the president. And I think the Taliban is a morally reprehensible group of individuals, but they do have indigenous support. And the reason that they’re fighting right now is because the U.S. and NATO are in their country. And so, to sort of imply that what we’re doing there is countering terrorists, when in the first months of the Obama administration his own national security adviser said there are less than a hundred al-Qaeda operatives in Afghanistan, we should be asking that question that John Kerry asked in 1971: Who wants to be the last to die for this failed war? What do they tell the families of the soldiers who die from here until they pull out the conventional military?
AMY GOODMAN: Now, the significance of that, for people who don’t remember, John Kerry, who is the secretary of state and formerly senator, was—fought in Vietnam, and when he came home, he was strongly opposed to the war in Vietnam, and he testified before Congress asking that question.
JEREMY SCAHILL: Yeah, I’d love to see 1971 John Kerry questioning, you know, 2014 John Kerry at a hearing about all these policies that he’s having to sell as secretary of state around the world.


The original content of this program is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License. Please attribute legal copies of this work to democracynow.org. Some of the work(s) that this program incorporates, however, may be separately licensed. For further information or additional permissions, contact us.
WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 29, 2014

"Dirty Wars" Filmmaker Jeremy Scahill on the "Drone President"& Obama’s Whitewashing of NSA Spying

In his State of the Union address, President Obama called on the United States to "move off a permanent war footing," citing his recent limits on the use of drones, his withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq and Afghanistan, and his effort to close the military prison at Guantánamo Bay. Obama also vowed to reform National Security Agency surveillance programs to ensure that "the privacy of ordinary people is not being violated." Jeremy Scahill, whose Oscar-nominated film "Dirty Wars" tackles the U.S. drone war and targeted killings abroad, says Obama has been a "drone president" whose operations have killed large numbers of civilians. On NSA reform, Scahill says "the parameters of the debate in Washington are: Should we figure out a way to streamline this and sell it to the American people, or should we do more surveillance?"

TRANSCRIPT

This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
NERMEEN SHAIKH: Let’s go back to President Obama’s State of the Union. Here he talks about his counterterrorism strategy.
PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA: So, even as we aggressively pursue terrorist networks, through more targeted efforts and by building the capacity of our foreign partners, America must move off a permanent war footing. That’s why I’ve imposed prudent limits on the use of drones, for we will not be safer if people abroad believe we strike within their countries without regard for the consequence. That’s why, working with this Congress, I will reform our surveillance programs, because the vital work of our intelligence community depends on public confidence, here and abroad, that privacy of ordinary people is not being violated. And with the Afghan War ending, this needs to be the year Congress lifts the remaining restrictions on detainee transfers and we close the prison at Guantánamo Bay, because we counter terrorism not just through intelligence and military actions, but by remaining true to our constitutional ideals and setting an example for the rest of the world.
NERMEEN SHAIKH: Jeremy Scahill, your response?
JEREMY SCAHILL: Well, on this issue of Obama and Guantánamo, you know, he gets hit a lot from the left in the United States for the failure to close Guantánamo. And part of it is, I think, a little bit disingenuous. On the one hand, I think Obama has not fought hard enough to close Guantánamo. He hasn’t used his political capital in any prioritized way to make that happen, and there are ways that he could have done it. But the Republicans and some Democrats have long been blocking the funding. But the fact is that we had several dozen prisoners who had been cleared for release from Guantánamo on a hunger strike, and the president basically stood idly by while these individuals were being very brutally force-fed. I mean, you can go online and see the hip-hop artist Mos Def doing—being force-fed. He couldn’t take more than a few seconds of the tube going through his nose. And I think if you—you know, I encourage people to watch that to get a sense of what it means when we’re talking about the force-feeding of prisoners at Guantánamo. So, you know, on the one hand, Obama has failed to close it; on the other hand, the Republicans have really obstructed it. And I think, at the end of the day, it’s a combination of those two factors that lead to that.
On this issue of the drones and the permanent war footing, I mean, Obama has been the drone president. And his line with liberals is sort of "Trust me. I know what I’m doing. I’m monitoring this. I’m doing everything I can to make sure that civilians aren’t killed." But time and time again, we see incidents where large numbers of civilians are being killed, and there seems to be no public accounting for how this happened. They say that they investigate when civilians are killed, and yet we are now two years, almost, removed from the killing of this 16-year-old kid, Abdulrahman al-Awlaki, who appears to have been killed because of who his father was, was killed in a drone strike while having dinner with his teenage cousin and some other young people from their tribe while they were sitting down for dinner, killed in a drone strike.
AMY GOODMAN: Two weeks after—
JEREMY SCAHILL: Two weeks after his father had been killed. His father is a separate issue. And I think it was extraordinary that Obama sentenced an American citizen to death without even charging him with a crime related to terrorism, and served as the prosecutor, judge, jury and executioner, but that’s a separate issue from this kid. What was his crime that he committed, other than sitting there having dinner with his cousin and other teenagers? The White House told me that when—that they review all cases when civilians are killed. Where is that review? I’ve asked for it, and the White House said they won’t confirm or deny that there has been a review of that case. So, there are a lot of unanswered questions here.
And on the NSA issue, I mean, the panel that was empowered to investigate this was a setup from the beginning. It was largely made up of intelligence industry people, part of the, you know, intelligence- or spying-industrial complex. And the end results of it are going to be largely a whitewashing of these operations. And, you know, the Republicans want Obama to go further than the NSA is already going. So the parameters of the debate in Washington are: Should we figure out a way to streamline this and sell it to the American people, or should we do more surveillance, which is what a lot of the Republicans want?
AMY GOODMAN: On the issue of the NSA, on this issue that’s being debated even within the White House, the attorney general, Eric Holder, this question of whether Edward Snowden should be pardoned, talk more about what’s happening inside, and then what he’s demanding.
JEREMY SCAHILL: Right. I mean, first of all, Representative Mike Rogers, who is the chair of the House Intelligence Committee, made a public allegation that Edward Snowden is an agent for the Russian government and that the Russian intelligence services, the FSB, may have been involved with Snowden prior to Snowden taking the documents and giving them to Glenn Greenwald and Laura Poitras. My understanding—and, of course, I work with Glenn and Laura—is that Edward Snowden did not take a single document with him to Moscow and that he is not cooperating at all with any aspects of the Russian intelligence apparatus. So, these are scurrilous, unfounded, unproven allegations being made by the head of the most important committee in the U.S. Congress when it comes to these matters.
Edward Snowden’s lawyer, one of his lawyers, legal advisers, Jesselyn Radack, was onMeet the Press, you know, with David Gregory, and David Gregory was basically saying, you know, "How is Snowden suffering?" I mean, this is a guy that gave up, probably forever, life in the free world. I wouldn’t want to be stuck in Moscow if I were him. But here’s my question for David Gregory. "Mr. Glenn Greenwald, don’t you think you should be prosecuted for this?" I mean, that’s what Gregory said when Glenn Greenwald was on Meet the Press_. NBC News—you should go to their website—just did a major exposénews/2014/01/27/22469304-snowden-docs-reveal-british-spies-snooped-on-youtube-and-facebook with Glenn Greenwald on the British intelligence services tapping into pipelines and monitoring social media sites and YouTube and other things. David Gregory should have on the NBC journalists. Richard Esposito, the head of the investigations division, should have to sit in front of David Gregory on Meet the Press and be asked, "Richard Esposito, don’t you think you should be going to prison for having done this story?" I mean, let’s be fair here with the Meet the Press release. They should actually have to ask tough questions of their own people.
AMY GOODMAN: Jeremy, before we win—on Dirty Wars, your film—it’s astounding, it’s been nominated for an Oscar—what would an Oscar win mean?
JEREMY SCAHILL: You know, when it was announced, I mean, I was the only person from our team with the stomach to watch the actual ceremony on CNN. I had to rewind it, because I was shocked. But the first thing I thought of is what this could possibly mean to this family in Afghanistan, where two pregnant women were killed in a botched U.S. night raid, and then they watched, the survivors watched, as the bullets were dug out of their pregnant bodies by U.S. soldiers, or the families of the drone strike victims that you see in our film, or the people who were in Yemen in this village of al-Majalah—
AMY GOODMAN: Ten seconds.
JEREMY SCAHILL: —where 14 women and 21 children were killed. A win would mean that their stories would be told, and it would send a message that we actually do care in this society about what happens on the other side of our missiles and bombs.
AMY GOODMAN: Well, I want to thank you all for being with us. Jeremy Scahill is starting a new news organization. It will be launching in the next weeks. And his film,Dirty Wars, has been nominated for an Oscar. Bob Herbert has been with us, distinguished senior fellow with Demos, former New York Times columnist. And I want to thank Lorella Praeli with the United We Dream coalition.


The original content of this program is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License. Please attribute legal copies of this work to democracynow.org. Some of the work(s) that this program incorporates, however, may be separately licensed. For further information or additional permissions, contact us.

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MOSES V. ISRAEL

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One of you sent this, and it makes the point all by itself:




'Before beginning my talk I want to tell you something about Moses. When he struck the rock and it brought forth water, he thought, 'What a good opportunity to have a bath!' 
He removed his clothes, put them aside on the rock and entered the water. 
When he got out and wanted to dress, his clothes had vanished. 
An Israeli had stolen them.'
 
The Israeli representative jumped up furiously and shouted, 'What are you talking about? The Israelis weren't there then.' 
The Palestinian representative smiled and said: 
'And now that we have made that clear, I will begin my speech.'




Ukraine -- Ready for Some Insanity?

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Ukraine


 


Illustration:  The "lesser" coat of arms of Ukraine.  Why "lesser"?  I haven't the slightest idea.


          As mentioned below, corporate media coverage in the United States, not surprisingly, has largely ignored what has been going on in Ukraine (or, the Ukraine as it was called) except for visuals depicting flames, demonstrations, and police.  We had come to the conclusion that almost nobody in this country knew squat about what was going on over there, leaving a dribble of semi-liberal and right-wing Republican cant about liberty and freedom and the like.  The truth is, almost nobody who is not from the Ukraine knows what is going on over there.  None of them understand what a Ukrainian is, nor what any agenda concerning anyone is.



          I’ll start out by repeating that I am not making any of this stuff up.  I couldn’t.  For example, I know that many Ukrainians could all of a sudden decide to visit this site.  A few months ago, for several days, hundreds of them visited.  Then they disappeared.  The same thing happened with Moldavia, of all places, about a year ago.  I do not know why and I’m no longer trying to figure it out, either. 



          So, let me straighten this out right now, just to make everyone ridiculous.  I have to qualify this by mentioning that the only Ukrainians I have ever met were in Chicago or nearby in Illinois.  Still, they stand out enough to make a fairly reasonable sample, at least of the extremes possible, and probably the rest as well.  In addition, there have been some I’ve seen in various contexts on television, including those discussing the situation as it is now and some simply appearing as they were.



          I have to say that Ukrainian women can have a physical beauty unmatched anywhere.  It is not simply a matter of type, either.  They can be tall and slender with long straight flowing flaxen hair and blue eyes or medium height with a taut muscularity and wide flashing alert eyes with dark hair.  Some could even be irresistibly attractive even with six toes.  It just doesn’t seem to last long, although they do have a talent for self-preservation -- if that is their goal.   The men, well, nothing special, but them I never did look much.  All of them talked about the Ukraine as being the “breadbasket of the Soviet Union,” with no idea or concern that I couldn’t care less about terms such as “breadbasket.” 



          Now that we have gotten over that, we can talk about the people in general.  About 40% of them seem to be quite insane, insane in an overly “romantic delusion” sort of way, as if they expected Lord Byron to pop in any moment and write about them.  



Take, for example, their last President, a woman, straight and thin, with long, blonde hair that she had in one long pigtail that she wrapped around the top of her head live some sort of giant beehive.  Many of the mass want her back and out of jail.  Another 40% are very loyal to Russia and what it offers.  The remaining 20% are supposedly undecided, but it is also quite possible that they are unable to formulate clearly understandable positions. 



For example, I once knew one who kept telling me that her mother often slept with other men while her father was very sick, but did watch.  She said this to me in an apparent attempt to explain her own sexual frigidity.  I was completely confused, but it was clear I could not push the matter further.  Years later I think she was trying to say that she felt ill at ease because she was an illegitimate child and that I should know this before things went further.  I am still not sure.  I no longer care.  Forget it.  Sorry I mentioned it.



          Now the present leader, in response to the mob’s demands, first fired his prime minister.  That wasn’t enough.  They wanted him to resign and then go to prison.  Seriously.  So, right now he is taking some “sick days.”   No, as I said, I’m not making this up.  I also doubt that he will decide to go to prison on his own.



          So, what is the big fuss about?  Well, it started with about 40% inclined to join the European Union, presumably to become “European,” or get more Lady Gaga CDs.  Your guess is as good as mine.  The EU offers them a paltry (comparatively) sum and expects a program of “austerity” in return.  They would have to be idiots to accept that, but then that is what they think they want.  I guess.



          Another part is anti-Putin sentiment.  They don’t like him, although the aid they receive from Russia is far in excess of that they would get from the EU and it has no “austerity” requirements.  Another condition demanded by the EU is that they have nothing to do with Russia. 



          But there is more to it than that: underlying all of this is a lunatic right-wing group or faction of National Socialists (yeah, that’s another term for “Nazis”) is using this whole thing to establish the social identity of Ukraine and eliminate socialists, Jews, Polish, and so on.  They have pretty much taken over the movement right now.  The woman with the pigtail tiara mentioned above is a favorite of those who believe in the Fatherland, or Her Breadbasketness, or whatever.  It’s the home of the Indo-European family of languages as well, gotta give them that.  Ukraine Über alles.



          Of course, it is ridiculous to assert that there is some sort of purity associated with any country and its people, but in Ukraine, the idea is insane, and hence loved by the fanatic portion of the population.  This is just one more aspect of their romanticism, this aspect worthy of Spengler, in his Preußentum und Sozialismus, not even Byronic.  Just to point this out, I am appending a brief history of the area, dating back to pre-historic times.[i]



          In the interview below, there is one of the Ukrainian nutjobs, balanced with Stephen Cohen, perhaps the only persona able to speak with any sense of realism about the current situation.  The first guy should be seen as an example of the 40% who are insane.  Anyway, here goes:


Debate: Is Ukraine’s Opposition a Democratic Movement or a Force of Right-Wing Extremism?

Ukrainian anti-government protesters have rejected an amnesty bill aimed at ending the country’s political unrest, refusing to vacate occupied government buildings and dismantle their street blockades in exchange for the release of jailed activists. The demonstrations in the Ukraine are collectively referred to as "Euromaidan." They began in late November after President Viktor Yanukovych reversed his decision to sign a long-awaited trade deal with the European Union to forge stronger ties with Russia instead. While the Ukrainian opposition has been hailed in the West as a democratic, grassroots movement, we host a debate on whether the rush to back opponents of Russian President Vladimir Putin obscures a more complex reality beneath the surface. We are joined by two guests: Stephen Cohen, professor emeritus of Russian studies and politics at New York University and Princeton University; and Anton Shekhovtsov, a Ukrainian citizen and University College London researcher who has just returned from observing the protests in Kiev.

TRANSCRIPT

This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
AMY GOODMAN: We turn now to Ukraine, where thousands of anti-government demonstrators have constructed what amounts to a self-sufficient protest city within the capital, Kiev. The standoff prompted the country’s prime minister to resign on Tuesday. Its parliament has agreed to repeal a round of laws that cracked down on dissent. On Wednesday, lawmakers offered an amnesty to protesters who have been arrested during the standoff, but only on the condition that activists vacate buildings they’ve occupied in Kiev and other parts of Ukraine. This is the speaker of the Parliament, Volodymyr Rybak.
VOLODYMYR RYBAK: [translated] Let me remind you that yesterday we have approved the bill number 4007 about the law of Ukraine that ceased to be in force. We have also agreed to discuss today the questions related to the "removal of the negative consequences and non-admission pursuit" and punishment of persons in relation to the events, which took place during peaceful rallies. So, I come up with a proposition to vote on legislation without discussion. I ask people’s deputies to vote.
AMY GOODMAN: The government’s amnesty offer was an attempt to get people to remove their barricades and tents from the main protest zone in Kiev. But so far, demonstrators have vowed to continue their occupation.
STEPAN: [translated] If the authorities had shown honesty, according to the mandate they were given, we would trust them. But now they have compromised the guarantees. We have no trust in these authorities. We have doubts in their honesty and decency, and that’s why it’s risky. So we are not leaving. That’s for sure.
VASIL: [translated] People came here so that all of them would be gone, so that the president would be gone and the government would be gone. We need full change. We cannot go on like this.
AMY GOODMAN: The demonstrations in Ukraine are collectively referred to as "Euromaidan." They began in late November after President Viktor Yanukovych reversed his decision to sign a long-awaited trade deal with the European Union in a move that favored stronger ties with Russia instead. The protests rapidly grew in size after a violent police crackdown. While nationalists led the demonstrations at first, others have since joined the movement. At least five protesters have been killed in clashes with police; hundreds have been injured. Police have also attacked dozens of journalists, destroyed their equipment. As tensions continued to increase on Wednesday, Ukraine’s first post-independence president, Leonid Kravchuk, emphasized the seriousness of the crisis.
LEONID KRAVCHUK: [translated] The situation is, frankly, very dramatic. All the world acknowledges, and Ukraine acknowledges, that the state is on the brink of civil war. There are parallel authorities in the country, and there is a de facto uprising. When the power is taken over, which is a real fact, when the power is falling down and the constitutional authorities refuse to honor their responsibilities, it becomes clear that this is a fall of the power. This is simply a revolution.
AMY GOODMAN: For more, we’re joined by two guests.
Here in New York, Stephen Cohen is with us, professor emeritus of Russian studies and politics at New York University and Princeton University. His most recent book,Soviet Fates and Lost Alternatives: From Stalinism to the New Cold War, is now out in paperback. He recently wrote "A Letter to 'The New York Times'" that was critical of its editorial on Ukraine and Russian President Vladimir Putin’s role in the country.
Joining us from London, Anton Shekhovtsov, a Ukrainian citizen who just got back earlier this month from observing the protests in Kiev. He’s a researcher at the University College London specializing in studying the far right. He recently wrote apiece titled "What the West Should Know About the Euromaidan’s Far Right Element."
Anton Shekhovtsov, Stephen Cohen, welcome both to Democracy Now! Let’s begin with Anton in London. What should people understand?
ANTON SHEKHOVTSOV: Well, first of all, thank you for the invitation toDemocracy Now!
I wrote the piece to highlight a very dangerous trend, in my opinion, is that many people in the West buy into Russian propaganda which is saying that Euromaidan is infiltrated by the neo-Nazis and anti-Semites. And this is completely untrue. There is a far-right element in the Euromaidan protests, but it is a minor element. And Euromaidan protest is basically a multicultural, democratic movement which is trying to build a new Ukraine, a democratic Ukraine. And sometimes, by the name "far right," there goes Ukrainian nationalism, and Ukrainian nationalism has—its main thrust is building of a truly independent Ukraine, a Ukraine which would be a national democratic state and not a colony of Russia, as Ukrainian nationalists think Ukraine is.
So the move towards Europe is a move towards democracy and away from the authoritarianism of Russia and its projected Eurasian union, which would unite several authoritarian states, like Belarus, Kazakhstan and Russia. So Ukrainians do not want this. They want to be away from authoritarianism, and they struggle for democracy now in Ukraine. So, basically, Ukraine is now a front line of democratic Europe. And they’re not—Ukrainians are not only fighting for their own freedom, but they are fighting to stop authoritarianism to spread westwards.
AMY GOODMAN: Stephen Cohen, what is your take on what’s happening in Ukraine right now?
STEPHEN COHEN: Well, it’s not what Anton said. Where to begin? Can we begin at the beginning? What’s happening in Ukraine, what’s been unfolding since November in the streets, is probably the single most important international story underway today. It may impact for a very long time the geopolitics of Europe, Russia, American-Russian relations, and a lot more. At the same time, media coverage of this story, particularly in the United States, has been exceedingly misleading, very close to what Anton just told you. I would characterize Anton’s characterization, to be as polite as I can, as half-true. But a half-truth is an untruth.
The realities are, there is no "the Ukraine." All this talk about Ukraine is on the front line of democracy—there are at least two Ukraines. One tilts toward Poland and Lithuania, the West, the European Union; the other toward Russia. This is not my notion. This is what every public opinion poll has told us since this crisis unfolded, that about 40 percent of Ukrainians want to go west, 40 percent want to stay with Russia, and, as usually true in these polls, 20 percent just don’t know or they’re not sure.
Who precipitated this crisis? It was the European Union, in this sense. It gave the Ukrainian government, which, by the way, is a democratically elected government—if you overthrow this government, just like they overthrew Morsi in Egypt, you’re dealing a serious blow to democracy. So if the crowd manages to essentially carry out a coup d’état from the streets, that’s what democracy is not about. But here’s what the European Union did back in November. It told the government of Ukraine, "If you want to sign an economic relationship with us, you cannot sign one with Russia." Why not? Putin has said, "Why don’t the three of us have an arrangement? We’ll help Ukraine. The West will help Ukraine." The chancellor of Germany, Merkel, at first thought that was a good idea, but she backed down for various political reasons. So, essentially, Ukraine was given an ultimatum: sign the EU economic agreement or else.
Now, what was that agreement? It would have been an economic catastrophe for Ukraine. I’m not talking about the intellectuals or the people who are well placed, about ordinary Ukrainians. The Ukrainian economy is on the brink of a meltdown. It needed billions of dollars. What did the European Union offer them? The same austerity policies that are ravaging Europe, and nothing more—$600 million. It needed billions and billions.
There’s one other thing. If you read the protocols of the European offer to Ukraine, which has been interpreted in the West as just about civilizational change, escaping Russia, economics, democracy, there is a big clause on military cooperation. In effect, by signing this, Ukraine would have had to abide by NATO’s military policies. What would that mean? That would mean drawing a new Cold War line, which used to be in Berlin, right through the heart of Slavic civilization, on Russia’s borders. So that’s where we’re at to now.
One other point: These right-wing people, whom Anton thinks are not significant, all reports—and I don’t know when he was in Ukraine, maybe it was long ago and things have gone—but the reports that are coming out of Ukraine are the following. One, the moderates—that’s the former heavyweight champion boxer, Vitali Klitschko, and others—have lost control of the street. They’ve asked the people who have been attacking the police with Molotov cocktails, and to vacate the buildings they’ve occupied, to stop. And the street will not stop, partly because—I’d say largely because—the street in Kiev is now controlled by these right-wing extremists. And that extremism has spread to western Ukraine, where these people are occupying government buildings. So, in fact, you have a political civil war underway.
What is the face of these people, this right wing? A, they hate Europe as much as they hate Russia. Their official statement is: Europe is homosexuals, Jews and the decay of the Ukrainian state. They want nothing to do with Europe. They want nothing to do with Russia. I’m talking about this—it’s not a fringe, but this very right-wing thing. What does their political activity include? It includes writing on buildings in western Ukraine, "Jews live here." That’s exactly what the Nazis wrote on the homes of Jews when they occupied Ukraine. A priest who represents part of the political movement in western Ukraine—Putin quoted this, but it doesn’t make it false. It doesn’t make it false; it’s been verified. A western Ukrainian priest said, "We, Ukraine, will not be governed by Negroes, Jews or Russians." So, these people have now come to the fore.
The first victims of any revolution—I don’t know if this is a revolution, but the first victims of any revolution are the moderates. And the moderates have lost control of what they created, helped by the European Union and the American government back in November. And so, now anything is possible, including two Ukraines.
AMY GOODMAN: Anton Shekhovtsov, can you respond to Professor Stephen Cohen?
ANTON SHEKHOVTSOV: Yes. So, this is basically what I said, as I called as a distortion in the Western media. I don’t know if Professor Cohen have been in Ukraine. I’ve been to Ukraine just a few days ago. I haven’t seen that the right-wingers have taken control of the streets. The streets are controlled by Euromaidan, which is ideologically very different. There is a right-wing element, but this is the element which is only a minor component of Euromaidan. And if you remember the Solidarity movement in the ’80s in Poland, it also comprised some right-wing elements, but in the end they built a democratic national—national democratic Poland.
As for the neo-Nazis and anti-Semites in western Ukraine, there are some, but at the same time, if you talk to them, if you interview them, and if you read their demands, you will not find any discrimination laws among their demands. What they demand is the national democratic state, independent from Russia. Even if they say that they are against the European Union, they at the same time support the pro-European protests. And this is partly what Euromaidan is about.
And then, again, there are many false reports about the beatings of representatives of national minorities in Ukraine. And mostly these reports are all false. They are being spread by Russian-backed propagandists, like Viktor Medvedchuk, leader of the pro-Eurasian, pro-Russian party, Ukrainski Vybir, Ukrainian Choice. So, these people, they’re trying to distort the image of Euromaidan and picture it as something very violent, as something very right-wing, although the right-wing element, as I said, is a minor element at Euromaidan.
AMY GOODMAN: Professor Richard Cohen—
STEPHEN COHEN: Stephen.
AMY GOODMAN: Professor Stephen Cohen—
STEPHEN COHEN: Richard Cohen writes for The Washington Post. We are completely different people.
AMY GOODMAN: But he’s not a professor, so—
STEPHEN COHEN: No, we’re still different people.
AMY GOODMAN: Stephen.
STEPHEN COHEN: Yeah, thank you, Amy.
AMY GOODMAN: Can you respond to what he’s saying? And also talk about how people are informed here, largely through the media, the media coverage of what’s happening in Ukraine.
STEPHEN COHEN: I’ve already responded to what Anton has said. To me, it’s a fundamental misrepresentation, and it raises questions in my mind, though he’s entitled to his political allegiances, who he represents in Ukraine. He is clear where he stands. But even the American media, which deleted this right-wing element for two months, now has gotten worried about it. There was an article in Time magazine, I think the day before yesterday. I think, because I saw it on the Internet, but today’sNew York Times, January 30th New York Times editorial, is now worried about these people. So, Anton is not worried about them, for his own reasons, but the plain reality is that the so-called moderates, who are democratic, have lost control of the situation.
And here’s the evidence. The moderate leaders, including Klitschko, the boxer, who wants to be president of Ukraine, entered into a negotiation with Yanukovych, the democratically elected president of Ukraine. And what did he offer them? He offered them a coalition government, which is a traditional democratic solution to such a crisis. He said, "We will give Klitschko and the other Ukrainian democratic leader the prime ministership and the deputy prime ministership." That’s a colossal concession. It’s power sharing. That’s what you do in a crisis. They didn’t accept. Now, they didn’t accept for several reasons.
AMY GOODMAN: The protesters didn’t accept.
STEPHEN COHEN: No, wait a minute. Klitschko and the other democratic leader didn’t accept. One reason, the main reason, is the street wouldn’t accept it. And since both of these guys want to be president, when there’s elections in 2015, if there are elections, they’re not going to go against the street. They’ve become captives of the street. Now, the street, increasingly, is in the control of these right-wingers.
Let me make a point, and it would be interesting to hear what Anton thinks about this. Many young thugs in the street are trying to kill policemen. They’re throwing Molotov cocktails at them. They’re beating them up. Now, the police are brutal also. But name me one democratic country that would allow mobs to attack policemen in the street of a capital city and not crack down? And, in fact, the Ukrainian police haven’t cracked down.
AMY GOODMAN: Anton Shekhovtsov, your response?
ANTON SHEKHOVTSOV: Well, the police has already cracked down on the protesters at the end of November, when peaceful protesters were brutally beaten by the riot police. They did not do anything except for staying on the Independence Square in Kiev, and they were beaten up. And some people have disappeared. And since then, since the end of November, there are tens of, dozens of people who have been kidnapped by the police, and now they are found sometimes frozen to death with their hands tied at their backs. So, there is a whole campaign of state terror going on in Ukraine. And more than five people were killed already.
And Arseniy Yatsenyuk, one of the whom—one of the politicians whom Professor Cohen called the moderates, he was offered a position of prime minister. But Ukraine is a presidential republic, so the whole power, the whole political power, is in the hands of President Viktor Yanukovych. So this position is not really powerful. A prime minister does not have any influence on politics and on the way Ukraine develops.
STEPHEN COHEN: Amy, I—
ANTON SHEKHOVTSOV: So, it wasn’t really a concession.
AMY GOODMAN: Stephen Cohen?
STEPHEN COHEN: Yeah, Anton may have been in Ukraine a week ago, but he’s completely out of touch. Part of the deal that Yanukovych offered the moderates was to change the constitution to deprive the president of the power he now has and switch it to the prime minister. So—
ANTON SHEKHOVTSOV: This is completely untrue. This is simply untrue.
STEPHEN COHEN: Please—it’s not untrue. I mean, I’ve read the documents. I’ve read the speech. It hasn’t gone through. It’s still at the Parliament. They may vote on it; they may not. But you’re simply not representing the situation correctly.
ANTON SHEKHOVTSOV: Well, I am representing the situation correctly, because I’ve been there. I’ve seen all the documents that were being discussed in the Parliament. And President Yanukovych never offered to go back to the constitution of 2004, which would reintroduce the parliamentary republic. He wants all the power he’s got during three years of his rule. He has now control of all the oligarchic business in Ukraine. He’s trying to build—he was trying to build a whole business empire and give his family and the oligarchs and businessmen connected to the family all the economic power in Ukraine. So, of course, he is now—will be fighting 'til death, because if he loses, his family is losing—will lose all the money that they've stolen from Ukrainian people and invested it in European banks, invested it in European businesses, as well as American businesses, as well.
AMY GOODMAN: I want to—I want to get Stephen Cohen’s response to last month Senators John McCain and Christopher Murphy visiting the protesters at their hub in Kiev’s Independence Square and voicing support for their cause.
SEN. CHRISTOPHER MURPHY: We are here to tell you that the American people and the United States Congress stands with the people of Ukraine.
SEN. JOHN McCAIN: I am a Republican. Senator Murphy is a Democrat. We are here together speaking for the American people in solidarity with you.
AMY GOODMAN: Professor Stephen Cohen?
STEPHEN COHEN: Well, that’s Anton’s position. I mean, Anton represents—at least his description of the situation—the mainstream American media political view of what’s going on in Ukraine. And when I say "mainstream," I mean it extends from the right wing in America to MSNBC, to the so-called liberals and progressives, to Bill Maher, who did this on his show the other night. There’s no alternative voice in America, except what I’m trying to say to you today. It’s wrong—it’s wrong factually, it’s wrong in terms of policy—for McCain to go, as he’s done in other countries. He once said, "We’re all Georgians." Now he’s saying, "We’re all Ukrainians." If he understands the situation in Ukraine—and he may not—then he’s being reckless.
But a true understanding of Ukraine begins with the fact that there are at least two Ukraines, two legitimate Ukraines, culturally, politically, ethnically, economically, culturally. This isn’t Putin’s fault. This isn’t Yanukovych, the president of Ukraine’s fault. It’s either God’s fault, or it’s history’s fault. This is what came down through the centuries. The situation has been explosive since the end of the Soviet Union 22 years ago. When Western politicians go there, they’re playing with fire, metaphorically, and now they have real fire.
AMY GOODMAN: Do you think this is about the media’s vilification of Putin?
STEPHEN COHEN: I think that the vilification of Putin in this country, demonization, is the worst press coverage by the American media of Russia that I’ve seen in my 40 years of studying Russia and contributing to the media. It’s simply almost insane. This idea that he’s a thug—
AMY GOODMAN: Ten seconds.
STEPHEN COHEN: —and that explains everything, passes for analysis in America today—
AMY GOODMAN: We have to leave it there. I want to thank you very much, Stephen Cohen, as well as Anton Shekhovtsov, for joining us to talk about Ukraine. We’ll continue to follow it.


The original content of this program is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License. Please attribute legal copies of this work to democracynow.org. Some of the work(s) that this program incorporates, however, may be separately licensed. For further information or additional permissions, contact us.


           

         
         
         



[i]Human settlement in Ukraine and its vicinity dates back to 32,000 BCE, with evidence of the Gravettian culture in the Crimean Mountains.[19][20] By 4,500 BCE, the Neolithic Cucuteni-Trypillian Cultureflourished in a wide area that included parts of modern Ukraine including Trypillia and the entireDnieper-Dniester region. During the Iron Age, the land was inhabited by Cimmerians, Scythians, andSarmatians.[21] Between 700 BC and 200 BC it was part of the Scythian Kingdom, or Scythia.
Later, colonies of Ancient Greece, Ancient Rome, and the Byzantine Empire, such as Tyras, Olbia, andHermonassa, were founded, beginning in the 6th century BC, on the northeastern shore of the Black Sea, and thrived well into the 6th century AD. The Goths stayed in the area but came under the sway of the Huns from the 370s AD. In the 7th century AD, the territory of eastern Ukraine was the center ofOld Great Bulgaria. At the end of the century, the majority of Bulgar tribes migrated in different directions, and the Khazars took over much of the land.


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