Against theory!

While intellectuals are laboring away to bring us ever newer and better theoretical explanations of the world they have lost sight of the gulf that has sprung up between theory and practice. I am not talking about the "ivory tower" of academia, the way it has become self-sufficient and has failed to be part of the most important emancipatory struggles. I am talking about the curious fact that the state of the world has failed to progress and has recently even regressed so far that theories have ceased to be applicable. Not because there is something wrong with theories, but because the world is lagging so far behind in its development that the most advanced theories fail to describe it. The gap is roughly 150 years. The most advanced theories of that day are those that best describe our contemporary reality.

A leaflet Marx and Engels wrote in 1848 bears the title Demands of the communist party in Germany. One of the demands is quite interesting in the present-day context: "8. Mortgages on peasant lands shall be declared the property of the state. Interest on such mortgages shall be paid by the peasants to the state." What a simple and brilliant solution to the recent mortgage crisis in the US. Give banks the money they need to stay afloat, but at the same time nationalize mortgages. This would have directly guaranteed that the money given to banks benefited citizens, would have stopped or at least significantly slowed down the further erosion of housing prices and prevented misuses of the generous contribution of the US Government - once said to be of the people, by the people and for the people - to the corporate world. It would have also spared Obama from offering that embarrassing lip-service to justice in which he scolded CEOs for rewarding themselves with million dollar bonuses. You would expect that after managing to plunder the federal budget they would be quite proud of that feat and would see it fitting to reward their success.

Given the situation the government had basically three options, two of which were completely unacceptable. The first was standing by idly as the whole economic system came crashing down around their ears. The second - perhaps even worse than the first - was to give a vast amount of money to people who have proven themselves to be perfectly incapably of responsibly handling money. This would be the fiscal equivalent of trying to cure an alcoholic by giving them a crate of vodka. The third option was some form of nationalization (either of banks directly or of mortgages, as Marx and Engels had suggested). How is it possible that a democratically elected government has decided upon an obviously ludicrous course of action just because it brought profit to a corrupt, irresponsible and cruel elite. It has become obvious that such a government is not susceptible to reason. And the US merely set the pace, European governments have by now outdone it in its monstrosity and idiocy. The time for reasoning is past, it is the pressure from the streets that these committees of the global bourgeoisie will listen to once it has become so strong that it strikes fear in their hearts. It has become obvious that we are in a state of war, war of the combined forces of bourgeois and states against the people. In war we must not try to understand our opponent but try to hit them where it hurts. In this context we need only the theory that can serve us as a weapon in this struggle.

Multiculturalism is dead

At least that is what German chancellor Angela Merkel has declared in a speech to the youth branch of the CDU, sparking a heated polemic around the globe. It is not long ago that Thilo Sarrazin, at the time member of the executive board of the Deutsche Bundesbank, published a book in which he openly propagates racist theories (for example that genetic deficiencies are to blame for low academic performance of Turkish immigrants). He has been relieved of his post, not surprisingly. That the book has become a bestseller on the other hand is cause for concern. That Merkel has shifted to a national-chauvinist rhetoric is cause for concern.

Yet she speaks the truth. Multiculturalism has failed utterly. What is more it was madness to ever believe it could work. While coexisting together peacefully might seem fine on paper, in reality some groups have stubbornly refused to integrate. Time and time again they have proven themselves unable to accept the most basic rules of society. Today their antisocial behavior, their moral depravity and ruthless criminality have become blatantly obvious, but were they really any different in the past? No. Although I consider myself a tolerant person, here is where I must draw the line: the bourgeoisie must go. There is no way we can coexist peacefully with them. It is not the case that they were not given a chance to integrate. We have asked them time and time again to accept our most basic social norms and time and time again they have refused. Every chance they have gotten they chose greed over charity, ruthlessness over compassion, egoism over altruism. They are the cancer that is destroying our societies. So I ask you this: should we try to coexist peacefully with the cancer whose only aim is to destroy us, or should we fight it with every ounce of strength?

On emptiness

A feeling of emptiness, lack of meaning, the never ending search for ones "true" self, they are perhaps what best characterizes the modern Zeitgeist. The symptoms are many: expressive consumption (buying to satisfy emotional needs or needs of belonging), the grotesque inflation of expectations regarding erotic relationships and child rearing, new age cults, a surge in national chauvinism. Reactionaries have been preaching for some time now that we need more religion, more indoctrination, more propaganda, more ideology. They believe meaning is socially created and from that assumption they derive the demand for social institutions that create meaning. Truth be told we need more indoctrination like we need another hole in the head. We have way too much of it already and most of it of the wrong kind: the one that tries to convince us to ignore our interests in the interest of the powerful, that tells us our hurt is not real, that our frustrations are imaginary, that our anger is unjustified but most of all that we should not act on our feelings.

This is perhaps the most pervasive and most diabolic effect of propaganda: not that it changes our opinions and attitudes (almost a century of scientific investigation has demonstrated that propaganda is terribly ineffective at changing attitudes) but that it constructs a wall between perception, feelings, knowledge on the one hand and action on the other. To change someone's attitude you need to provide proof, you have to argue, you have to inform, you have to plead, and even then the results are unreliable at best and only make themselves felt in the long run. To change behavior turns out to be much easier. Change the structural conditions and people behave differently (not that hard to do for someone acting from a position of power). Associate the feelings of people with the action you want them to perform - that is why washing powders don't clean clothes anymore, at least as far as advertising is concerned, they create happy families, just as toothpaste makes you attractive, SUVs make you powerful, and Marlboro cigarettes make you independent. When you trick people into changing their behavior, you get their attitudes for free, since people try really hard to convince themselves that an action they had already performed was justified (another thing scientific investigation has shown us). To change their attitudes after they have acted is easy, since at that point they want to be convinced.

The all-pervasive feeling of emptiness is a consequence of this rift between cognition and feeling and action. Indoctrination will not cure it since it is actively contributing to the problem. The argument also rests on a flawed epistemology. Meaning is not created by ideological apparatuses, but by action. The only proof we have that the world exists is because we are able to interact with it meaningfully. All the philosophical proofs that we can not be certain of the existence of the world will mean nothing to the person who has just bumped his or her head against a wall. They can feel the pain, they can not feel philosophical arguments. All the sermons of love for ones fellows will remain futile as long as our society is structured by a logic of competition instead of cooperation. The world is meaningful insofar it is able to satisfy needs and desires: sufficient food and shelter (a minority of people on our planet is able to enjoy these), safety and belonging. A society in which the achievement of basic needs is based on a bellum omnia contra omnes can never lead to happiness. Meaningless of life today is quite objective. The problem will not be solved until a humane society has been built. Until that day our best bet is the happiness ensuing from the anticipation of that better world, the belonging we feel when we are building it together.

The un-hero

During the latter half of the twentieth century Serbia had been one of the leading global centers of movie production. Not in terms the market would acknowledge - quantity or popularity, or global sales figures - but by the power of their visions, the capacity to condense the state of the world into a few hours of film. Emir Kusturica has gained some international acclaim (winning the Palme d'or twice, for When father was away on business and Underground, and then there is Do you remember Dolly Bell, arguably his best movie, and of course Time of the Gypsies), but does he measure up to the greats of earlier generations? Not really. One needs only to take a look at Dušan Makavejev's early feature length films like Čovek nije tica, Ljubavni slučaj ili tragedija službenice PTT and Misterije organizma, or Saša Petrović's masterpieces Skupljači Perja and Tri. And then in the comedy department there is Paskaljević's Varljivo leto 68 and Kovačević's Balkanski Špijun (before Underground was an award winning movie, it was a play by Kovačević, who has also co-written the script for the movie together with Kusturica) and so so many more.

If I were forced to make an impossible choice and pick one I thought was the best, I would go with Tri. But before I focus on it I will solve the mystery of the title: tri is the serbian word (or number?) for three. The title is fitting since we are presented with three stories, containing one violent death each (adding up to three deaths in all). The first story is from the beginning of World war II, the second from the middle, the last happens toward the end. The connection between them is established by the protagonist, who acts as witness in all three cases.

Luckily someone took the time to upload the whole movie on Youtube, here is the first part, I'm sure you'll find your way after that:



Now that the mystery of the movie title is solved, how about the title of this post? The un-hero acts as witness to the three deaths and little more. What is happening in the movie happens around him, never through him or even to him. In Minima Moralia Adorno claimed that all attempts to turn the horror of the war into drama are doomed to failure, since what happened was far beyond the subject, beyond the subject's ability to act and beyond the subject's ability to comprehend. The catastrophe was objective, hence impossible to translate into actions of subjects, on which drama must rely. I don't know if Petrović has read Adorno, but he certainly solved his paradox: if the war can not be understood through actions of subjects, well then my protagonist will not act. Petrović took the camera and pointed it at the paradox itself. The un-hero (I don't believe he even has a name) is faced three times with his inability to act, to change the course of events, to save a life. The movie brilliantly subverts the expectations of the audience. We can not identify with the un-hero, not because he is alien to us, but because he is us. He does not convey to us his frustration, his feeling of powerlessness, we feel them first hand with him. We are watching events unfold on screen, unable to interfere with them, and so is he, telling us that the subject has become so hollowed out that his capacity to act has been reduced to acting as a silent witness to the course of the world.