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Amartya Sen and the Marxist Critics of Capitalism

Is Amartya Sen “the century’s great critic of capitalism”?

The short answer is no, he is not “the century’s great critic of capitalism,” but surely Sen should be included in our pantheon of the foremost critics of capitalism. The conclusion that captures the essence of Tim Rogan’s piece in Aeon is as follows: “There have been two critiques [i.e., the ‘moral’ and the ‘material’] of capitalism, but there should be only one [i.e., a critique that does dialectical justice to both the material and the moral modalities]. Amartya Sen is the new century’s first great critic of capitalism because he has made that clear.” I don’t think Sen needs to be elevated to such “commanding heights” if only because it casts a shadow over all his comrades who have likewise been laboring on this selfsame endeavor, proving themselves equally adept as great “critic(s) of capitalism” according to Rogan’s criteria. In any case, the fact that the majority of Sen’s books were published in the previous century makes this premature or living “canonization” a bit silly (a social scientific or cultural variation on the ‘great man’ theory?).

I have long publicized the social scientific and philosophical virtues of Sen’s work, at least when provided the opportunity (in intimate conversational settings, in public lectures, in blog posts, etc.), so I’m inclined to find Rogan’s argument largely persuasive. As Rogan rightly states, “In Sen’s work, the two critiques [i.e., the ‘moral’ and the ‘material’] of capitalism cooperate. We move from moral concerns to material outcomes and back again with no sense of a threshold separating the two. Sen disentangles moral and material issues without favouring one or the other, keeping both in focus.” Sen has never self-identified as a Marxist or Marxist economist, although he has often acknowledged his debts to Marx (among others, from Aristotle to Adam Smith), which perhaps explains why Rogan is anxious to single out Sen’s critique of capitalism for celebrity-like acclaim.

Over the years, more than a few progressives and ostensible or sincere Leftists have been rhetorically reticent about invoking Marx or Marx’s theoretical ideas (and by extension, Marxists), motivated perhaps by motley and occasionally justifiable reasons, not the least of which is the oppressive and even suppressive or repressive political and cultural climate in this country. Here is where I part company with one of the founders of the (New Left) Students for a Democratic Society (SDS), emeritus sociology professor (and still a local activist and friend), Richard (Dick) Flacks. In Making History: The Radical Tradition in American Life (1988), Flacks proffered advice to this generation’s youngest activists, arguing that they should refuse the temptations of a “Leninist” answer to “social democracy,” that “the appropriate counter-position” is found in “pacifism—as a philosophy to guide extra-parliamentary activism and as a practical framework for deriving strategies of radical action.” There is much of principled and strategic value in that counsel, even if I don’t like the term “pacifism.” Flacks does not want this generation to repeat the (strategic, political, and moral) mistakes of earlier Leftists (not few of which he experienced first-hand), at least those that hankered after conventional political power, looking (often uncritically) to models of revolutionary praxis abroad in countries with colonialist and imperialist histories, countries with precious little by way of democratic experience or bourgeois legal rights, and thus with historical, socio-economic and political conditions starkly different from the capitalist democracies (welfare state regimes) in the affluent North in which they lived:  

“Activists who choose a radical path and an elitist practice must begin their journey by refusing absolutely to reach for power, seeing instead that their mission is to serve as exemplars of moral being and action. They must refuse absolutely the belief that history can be short-circuited through violent intervention. [I think I understand what Flacks means by this, but others may not choose a charitable interpretation.] They ought to study Thoreau, Tolstoy, Gandhi, Muste, and King as models of history making, rather than Lenin, Trotsky, Mao, Che, and Fanon.”

First, notice that Flacks fails to cite Marx on either side of his ledger! I happen to believe young radicals on the Left should study all of the above, even if their ethical dispositions and orientations find them favoring, say, Gandhi, Muste and King, over Lenin, Trotsky and Mao. The latter remain worth of study, for any number of philosophical and practical reasons. As the late philosopher Hector-Neri Castañeda wisely put it,

“Some fail to see the richness and complexity of human experience, yet, more importantly, some fail to see that the world is capable of being different in different contexts or perspectives [a point made rather systematically and emphatically in Jain epistemology]. Often the presupposition is straightforward: there is one world and an indivisible unity of man and world, hence, they assume, there is just one theory of the structure of man and world.”

Our well-considered or seasoned moral and political commitments should not be threatened by a thorough examination and (in part moral) assessment of Leftist figures, theorists and strategists of all stripes. Nor should Rogan fear acknowledging and according due attention to those Marxists who, with Sen, do justice to both the moral and material modalities of the critique of capitalism. There is no need on this score for a Rawlsian-like veil of ignorance or rhetorical dissimulation.

Rogan ignores contemporary Marxist critiques of capitalism that, in the widest—and what I prefer to think of as the best—sense do indeed have a strong moral dimension, exemplified, for instance, in the works of G.A. Cohen, Michael Harrington, and Jon Elster. This rendering explicit what is often implicit in Marx himself (and not just in the ‘early writings’) is given a rather more systematic articulation (one need not agree with all the particulars) in the Rawlsian-inspired or –provoked work by R.G. Peffer: Marxism, Morality, and Social Justice (1990). And this moral component has not come at the expense of “material” concerns and foci, as David Schwieckart’s books, Against Capitalism (1996) and After Capitalism (2002) amply demonstrate.

No doubt the (bourgeois) academic legal theorist and philosopher Brian Leiter would dismiss most of this literature for its “normative” (moral and otherwise, as not all norms are moral norms) orientation, as simply the sullied product of Western academic Marxists (distinguishing between its Anglophone and Continental European incarnations) writing for fellow “bourgeois academics.” This is not the place to attempt a rebuttal of that dismissal, but I do want to remind readers, in the words of Jeffrey Reiman, that

“Marxism has made two recent contributions to moral philosophy. The first has been to stimulate a deep and wide-ranging discussion of the moral status of capitalism, provoked by the attempt to determine whether the Marxist critique of capitalism is a moral critique and, if so, on what moral ideal the critique is based [here I would add that it is arguably more than one moral ideal and at least several moral principles and values]. The second has been to force moral philosophers to confront the problem of ideology.”

Reiman later points out that “Marxism’s practical and partisan nature is what brings it into contact with moral philosophy,” and this, I think, gets to the heart of matters; that is, at least if we view ethics and morality (which is not reducible to a first-order morality of formal or structured propositions and judgments, be they deontic or utilitarian) as integral to what it means to flourish, to live “rightly” and well, to aspire to “the Good.” For the Marxist moral and material critique of capitalism speaks clearly and urgently to our everyday (dispositional) “nexus of distinctive sensibilities, cares, and concerns that are expressed in distinctive patterns of emotional and practical response” (David Wiggins), as contemporary Marxist philosophers and theorists have demonstrated with uncommon intelligence and vigor.

I close by citing a somewhat neglected and no doubt forgotten work that embodies the merits of a material and moral critique of capitalism: Maurice Cornforth’s The Open Philosophy and the Open Society (1968) (the title alone may account for its neglect). Cornforth’s book is a well-argued and perhaps quaint defense of Marxism against the well-known attack on Marx’s theory by Karl Popper, one that artfully combines moral and materialist sensibilities in its critique of capitalism. I leave you with a taste of his ardent and incisive defense:

“Dr. Popper confuses militancy with advocacy of violence. Marxism advocates that mass organisations of working people should not be prepared meekly to abide by instructions issued by authorities not controlled by themselves and victimising working people for the benefit of their exploiters. They should be intransigent in their opposition to any sort of control of power by the exploiting class. And they should be united in their demands for what they immediately want done, and prepared to back their leaders and those in whose hands they entrust power in getting it done. This attitude of opposition to the dictation of an exploiting minority should not be confused with an attitude of violence directed against democratic institutions.

Marxism makes no proposals for the use of violence to destroy legally established democratic institutions, where such exist. [….] For us, the question of violence can only arise as a question, on the one hand, of how to resist violent attacks on democratic institutions, on the activities of democratic organisations, and on the implementation of democratic authorities and, on the other hand, of how to overcome violent methods of preventing democratic institutions and democratic rights being won. As Marxists have said again and again, if the ruling class resorts to violence, either to deprive people of existing democratic rights or to prevent their winning them, then violence must if necessary be used to defeat this violence [in the lexicon of forest fighters on chaparral ecological terrain, sometimes one needs to ‘fight fire with fire,’ keeping in mind that this is not the principal strategy or tactic used in ‘wildland’ fire suppression]. But without a doubt, the better organised, the more disciplined and the more united the democratic mass movement is [cf. the United Democratic Front in the South African struggle against apartheid], the less opportunity is there likely to be for the ruling class to resort to violence, and the less violence will be required to repel violence if it occurs. [….]

The underlying economic reason why the bourgeoisie became champions of the rule of law is clear enough. It is because this was an indispensable condition for security in the commercial development of the home market. Without it, they could never have become as prosperous and powerful as they did become. And this necessitated laws to protect the right to exploit and curtail the right to oppose it. Marxists are opposed to exploitation, and oppose it even when the law steps in to protect it. But that, says Dr. Popper, means we want to break the rule of law and carry on without it [which is to confuse anarchism with Marxism], whereas without law [at least in our time and place, during this epoch of history] there can only be anarchy or tyranny.

The law which Marxism opposes is law in so far as it has been instituted to protect the rights of exploiting classes. We are not in favor of submitting to laws which are designed to protect the security and right of exploiters and hamper the organisation of the masses. We propose to nullify such laws. But that is not to oppose the reign of law in general.”

Please see, “Why Amartya Sen remains the century’s great critic of capitalism,” by Tim Rogan in Aeon, 27 February, 2018.

Further Reading:

Please see my compilation for Marxism. 

And for bibliographies with family resemblance to the Marxist list, please see the following: (i) After Slavery & Reconstruction: The Black Struggle in the U.S. for Freedom, Equality, and Self-Realization; (ii) Beyond Capitalist Agribusiness: Toward Agroecology & Food Justice (iii) Beyond Capitalist-Attenuated Time: Freedom, Leisure, and Self-Realization; (iv) Beyond Inequality: Toward the Globalization of Welfare, Well-Being and Human Flourishing; (v) Blacks and Food Justice; (vi) Blacks on the (Radical) Left; (vii) César Chávez & the United Farm Workers… and the Struggle of Farm Workers in the U.S. (viii) Democratic Theory; (ix) Detroit: Labor & Industrialization, Race & Politics, Rebellion & Resurgence; (x) Global Distributive Justice; (xi) The Great Depression & The New Deal; (xii) Health: Law, Ethics & Social Justice; (xiii) The History, Theory & Praxis of the Left in the 1960s; (xiv) Human Rights; (xv) Punishment and Prison; (xvi) Social Security & The Welfare State; and (xvii) Workers, the World of Work, and Labor Law.

Who are the homeless?

First, some facts for background and contextual information:

• A comparatively few number of people with mental illness commit acts of violence.
• The homeless problem is not due to the “deinstitutionalization” of mental health patients.
• While deinstitutionalization or the “shuttering of mental hospitals” did occur from the late 1950s into the 1960s, we should recall that,

“[f]ar from being therapeutic, many of these hospitals were warehouses in which, say, schizophrenics would live alongside epileptics. Patients were often abused and rarely rehabilitated. When drugs that could control the delusions and psychoses of major mental illnesses came along, they were seen as a cheaper and more humane alternative to long-term, inpatient psychiatric care.” [I won’t here address the myriad problems we’ve since discovered about such drugs, noting merely that they have not, on the whole, proved to be an alternative to different forms of therapeutic treatment, even if, in some cases, and setting aside sundry side effects, they ameliorate some of the worst symptoms of severe forms of mental illness, such as psychosis.]

• It is estimated that roughly one-third of the homeless suffer from some form of mental illness, roughly meaning that they are under current “mental distress” or have a history of psychiatric hospitalization.
• Surveys of the homeless show that the “vast majority … are poor, just plain poor.”

This brings us to the moral that motivated of our list of facts:

“Why do so many people accept the conclusion that homelessness is due to deinstitutionalization of mental patients? [Recall that President Trump appears to believe there is at least an indirect (perhaps even direct) causal link between mass shootings and such “deinstitutionalization.”] Search your memory for the homeless people you saw most recently. What were they like? The unobtrusive homeless person [e.g., the homeless family sleeping overnight in the camper truck parked on the church lot] is easily forgotten. We tend to remember the person who sings on the bus, who intrudes on passersby, who is drunk, or who is obviously high on some drug. Moreover, we prepare ourselves to behave in certain ways if such a person approaches us, such preparation being exactly the type of ancillary event that—as William Wagenaar points out—enhances recall leading to it. Hence our view of ‘the homeless’ is based on the memorable homeless [and the ‘availability heuristic’], people whose emotional and physical debilitation is so severe that it suggests that poverty alone cannot be the cause of their problems.”—From Reid Hastie and Robyn M. Dawes, Rational Choice in an Uncertain World: The Psychology of Judgment and Decision Making (Sage Publications, 2001): 86-87.

I’m now prepared to share this excellent piece from the Los Angeles Times Editorial Board: “The homeless in L.A. are not who you think they are”

“Many people think of homelessness as a problem of substance abusers and mentally ill people, of chronic skid row street-dwellers pushing shopping carts. But increasingly, the crisis in Los Angeles today is about a less visible (but more numerous) group of ‘economically homeless’ people. These are people who have been driven onto the streets or into shelters by hard times, bad luck and California’s irresponsible failure to address its own housing needs.” The rest is here.

Further Reading:

• Abramsky, Sasha. The American Way of Poverty: How the Other Half Still Lives. New York: Nation Books, 2013.
• Austen, Ben. High-Risers: Cabrini-Green and the Fate of American Public Housing. New York: Harper, 2018.
• Bender, Steven W. Tierra y Libertad: Land, Liberty, and Latino Housing. New York: New York University Press, 2010.
• Desmond, Matthew. Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City. New York: Crown, 2016.
• Ehrenreich, Barbara. Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America. New York: Henry Holt and Co., 2001.
• Failinger, Marie A. and Ezra Rosser, eds. The Poverty Law Canon: Exploring the Major Cases. Anne Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2016.
• Goodin, Robert E. Reasons for Welfare: The Political Theory of the Welfare State. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1988.
• Goodin, Robert E., et al. The Real Worlds of Welfare Capitalism. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1999.
• Hatcher, Daniel L. The Poverty Industry: The Exploitation of America’s Most Vulnerable Citizens. New York: New York University Press, 2010.
• Hopper, Kim. Reckoning with Homelessness. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2003.
• Jusko, Karen Long. Who Speaks for the Poor? Electoral Geography, Party Entry, and Representation. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2017.
• Kalleberg, Arne L. Good Jobs, Bad Jobs: The Rise of Polarized and Precarious Employment Systems in the United States 1970s to 2000s. New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 2011.
• Kozol, Jonathan. Rachel and Her Children: Homeless Families in America. New York: Three Rivers Press, 1988.
• Liebow, Elliot. Tell Them Who I Am: Lives of Homeless Women. New York: Penguin Books, 1993.
• O’Flaherty, Brendan. Making Room: The Economics of Homelessness. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1996.
• Pugh, Allison J. The Tumbleweed Society: Working and Caring in an Age of Insecurity. New York: Oxford University Press, 2015.
• Rhode, Deborah L. Access to Justice. New York: Oxford University Press, 2004.
• Rothstein, Richard. The Color of Law: A Forgotten History of How Our Government Segregated America. New York: W.W. Norton & Co., 2017.
• Sherman, Jennifer. Those Who Work, Those Who Don’t: Poverty, Morality, and Family in Rural America. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 2009.
• Shipler, David K. The Working Poor: Invisible in America. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2004.

Foreswearing the bad habits of capitalist economic growth

“GDP, the yardstick of economic success, is choking us and the planet”

By David Pilling, for the Los Angeles Times, February 25, 2018

“There are 7.6 billion people alive today annually churning out goods and services worth around $75 trillion. By the end of the century there will be roughly 11 billion people. If each of them achieved a U.S. standard of living and if the U.S. economy keeps growing at about 3%, the global economy would need to expand nearly 100 times. Chen would have to work overtime. And the world would choke in trash, its air becoming more toxic and its forests more depleted.

It’s not Malthusian to wonder how much more the planet can take. Walter Berglund, the quirky hero of Jonathan Franzen’s novel Freedom, says that only economists believe endless growth is optimal. In biology, it is called cancer.

Part of the problem is how we measure growth. Gross domestic product, our principal measure of economic well-being, is a child of the manufacturing age. It conflates progress with production and consumption. It is out of date. Invented in the U.S. in the 1930s, it struggles to make sense of modern economies in which the quality of services and the pace of technological change are paramount.

In terms of GDP, there is no ‘bad’ production …. If a factory produces chemicals, steel, plastics or electronics, everything it makes contributes to GDP. And any pollution that it pours into the rivers or spews into the air is — from a statistical standpoint — invisible. But the negative side of production is not, as we might imagine, somehow subtracted. Quite the reverse: Money subsequently spent on cleaning up the mess, or on treating cancers associated with toxins, also counts towards GDP. [….]

Can we not simply factor the hidden cost to nature into all our products and then call a halt to growth, as some environmentalists advocate? My view is that those who advocate an end to growth on environmental grounds are deluding themselves.

First, people in wealthy countries have no moral authority to tell people in poor ones that, because rich nations have messed up the world, poor ones must pay the cost by staying poor. That simply doesn’t wash. Second, if countries want to catch up, so do individuals. Everywhere, the less-well-off want to close the gap with the wealthy. The rich, for their part, want to preserve their privilege by becoming richer still. Government policies may temper this rat race. But human nature is a powerful force that is likely to keep the perpetual-growth wheel spinning. Doomsayers may claim that this condemns humans to lunge blindly over the precipice, destroying nature and themselves in the process. They may be right. Yet there is just a chance we can have it both ways: keep growing and preserve the resources that make growth possible. But only if we redefine what growth means.” [emphasis added] The full article is here.

*           *           *

Critiques of the GDP index of economic growth have been around for at least 40 years, so this is nothing new, although as global economic crises accelerate, perhaps mainstream economists and privileged policy makers will wake up from their deep sleep. After George Land, there are three principle forms of growth: accretive, replicative, and mutual, with conventional forms of economic growth being essentially accretive. As Raghavan Iyer (one of my former teachers) wrote in 1979, the predominant form of socio-economic growth

“… cannot continue indefinitely. Even more important, such growth is inequitably distributed around the globe, proliferating like a cancer in the industrialized world, while condemning billions elsewhere to famines and poverty. [….] The real question, as in post-Paretian formulations of social justice, concerns the elevation of the bottom line of the impoverished. Growth per se is less the cause of the current crisis than is its anarchic nature. Unlike living Nature, which effortlessly exhibits orderly organic growth, we have no general scheme for harmonious development of the world, even though mankind’s salvation depends on the possibility of just such a global plan. This is not a matter of merely drawing up a world-wide economic program but rather of finding a pattern of development which respects the regional diversity of the planet, a global system of interdependent components, each of which would contribute its economic, cultural, and natural resources to the whole. The pluralistic character of the earth, its plasticity of function, must be preserved. We cannot be theoretically committed to any monistic conception of ontological scarcity or survival for its own sake. [….] Political, social, and cultural changes are also relevant to any new global organization and critically affect the possibility of fundamental economic reform as well as being affected by it.”—From the chapter, “Global Pointers,” in Raghavan Iyer, Parapolitics: Toward the City of Man (Oxford University Press, 1979): 242-245. (This book is dedicated to ‘heroic pioneers and humble exemplars everywhere.’)

Suggested alternatives for measuring and assessing different sorts of “growth” (classified as both ‘replicative’ and ‘mutual’) which go beyond the presuppositions and assumptions of neoclassical and welfare economics are found, for example, in these titles:

• Brighouse, Harry and Ingrid Robeyns, eds. Measuring Justice: Primary Goods and Capabilities (Cambridge University Press, 2010).
• Ghosh, B.N. Beyond Gandhian Economics: Towards a Creative Deconstruction (SAGE Publications, 2012).
• Nussbaum, Martha C. Creating Capabilities: The Human Development Approach (Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2011)
• Nussbaum, Martha C. and Amartya Sen, eds. The Quality of Life (United Nations University and Oxford University Press, 1993).

I have several compilations germane to this post:

• Beyond Capitalist Agribusiness: Toward Agroecology & Food Justice
• Ecological & Environmental Politics, Philosophies, and Worldviews
• Global Distributive Justice
• Marxism

Philosophy of Education, Education as Philosophy & Education for Democracy (I)

 

(This is the first in a planned series on the interrelated topics indicated in the title of this post.)

“In The Claim of Reason [Oxford University Press, 1979: 125], Stanley Cavell imagines that a child ‘little or big, asks me Why do we eat animals? or Why are some people poor and others rich? or What is God? or Why do I have to go to school? or Do you love black people as much as white people? or Who owns the land? or Why is there anything at all? or How did God get here?’ and he goes on to describe confronting such questions—confronting them in a thoughtful way, as opposed to repeating ‘forgone conclusions’—as ‘a task that warrants the name of philosophy.’ ‘It is also the description of something we might call education,’ he adds.

John Dewey would have certainly have applauded these words. Indeed, writing in 1915, he anticipated Cavell’s identification of philosophy with education, writing, ‘If a theory makes no difference in educational endeavor, it must be artificial. The educational point of view enables one to envisage the philosophical problems where they arise and thrive, where they are at home, and where acceptance or rejection makes a difference in practice. If we are willing to conceive education as the process of forming fundamental dispositions, intellectual and emotional, philosophy may even be defined as the general theory of education.”

[….] If one wishes to pursue just about any topic in Dewey’s thought, it is … necessary to keep Dewey’s thoroughgoing radicalism in mind at all times. Although Dewey was not an economic determinist (or, indeed, a determinist of any kind), he did see philosophical ideas and their conflicts as products of the conflicts and difficulties of social life. Members of a privileged ruling class cannot be expected to see the world in the way it is perceived by those having to struggle for their bare existence. A commercial and manufacturing society cannot be expected to see ‘the needs and possibilities of life’ as they would be seen by a feudal society or a society like that of ancient Athens, and a society which has experienced a series of crises and upheavals cannot be expected to see them in the same way as a society whose conditions have been static for a long time. In particular, Dewey suggests that the prevalence of various dualism in the theory of knowledge is the product of the hard and fast walls which mark off social groups and classes within a group, for example, rich and poor, men and women, nobles and base-born, ruler and ruled. Dewey’s argument is that such barriers mean the absence of fluent and free intercourse, and that this absence results in a kind of sealing off of different types of life experiences from one another,* ‘each with isolated subject matter, aim, and standard of values. Every such social condition must be formulated in a dualistic philosophy, if philosophy is to be a sincere account of experience. Among the dualisms that Dewey wished to account for in this way are the dualisms of inner and outer, mind and body, reason and emotion, action guided by self-interest and action guided by principle, and still others.”—Hilary Putnam and Ruth Anna Putnam, “Education for Democracy,” in Hilary Putnam (James Conant, ed.) Words and Life (Harvard University Press, 1994): 223-224.

* For a contemporary work on democratic theory and praxis that takes seriously the reality and consequences, as well as the prospects for overcoming the “sealing off of different types of life experiences from one another” in contemporary democratic societies (such as they are), please see Robert E. Goodin’s Reflective Democracy (Oxford University Press, 2003), a taste from which follows:

“Here I shall be attempting to identify deliberative democratic methods for evoking more reflective preferences as inputs into the political process. Properly crafted deliberative processes can produce preferences which are more reflective, in the sense of being:

• more empathetic with the plight of others;
• more considered, and hence both better informed and more stable; and
• more far-reaching in both time and space, taking fuller account of distant periods, distant peoples and different interests.

The key innovation I shall be offering is, in the first instance, a theoretical one. What is required is a new way of conceptualizing democratic deliberation—as something which occurs internally, within each individual’s head, and not exclusively or even primarily in an interpersonal setting. It happens in interpersonal settings, too, of course. Indeed, that is a central plank in my argument on this score. The philosophy of mind and language teaches us that, even in face-to-face conversation, much of the making sense of what the other is saying to you goes on inside your own head. You have to imagine yourself in the place of the other in trying to decode what she seems to be trying to tell you. If that is what goes on in ordinary interpersonal discussion, the same sort of mentally imagining oneself in the place of others might well occur in the absence of any actual other. A suitably informed imaginary might serve the same internal-discursive purpose.”

Goodin proceeds to draw several inferences from the above, including the proposition that “cultural institutions and policies matter;” that “policies and institutions that facilitate social mixing—having people whose social circumstances are radically unlike your own living nearby or, going to school with you or your children, riding public transportation alongside you—can again serve as an aid to the political imaginary;” and that “consultative procedures [e.g., study circles], even of an apparently toothless sort, could also actually have far more democratic bite than we might ordinarily suppose.”

Ubiquitous (and inexcusable) ignorance in a “knowledge society” during the “information age”

I’m sharing the following, sans substantive comment, from the beginning of Daniel R. DeNicola’s book, Understanding Ignorance: The Surprising Impact of What We Don’t Know (MIT Press, 2017):

“In the familiar metaphor, our ignorance (whether individual or collective) is a vast, fathomless sea; our knowledge but a small, insecure island. Even the shoreline is uncertain: both the history of the human race and psychological research suggests that we know even less than we think we do. Indeed, our ignorance is extensive beyond our reckoning. [….]

[Moreover,] [d]espite the spread of universal, compulsory education; despite new tools for learning and great advances of knowledge; despite the breathtaking increases in our ability to store, access, and share a super-abundance of information—ignorance flourishes. [….]

[The sort of ubiquitous ignorance found] “in [our] ‘knowledge society’ during the ‘Information Age,’ … is what might be termed public ignorance, by which [is meant] widespread, reprehensible ignorance of matters that are significant for our lives together. Functional illiteracy and innumeracy are examples. Such ignorance might once be explained, if not excused by lack of educational opportunity; but that seems obtuse when applied to countries with rich educational resources. [And yet these ‘educational resources’ may be subject to grossly inegalitarian distribution for proximate reasons, say, of class and race, so ‘lack of educational opportunity’ need not be an ‘obtuse explanation.’¹] Besides, the rate of functional illiteracy may be higher in today’s America than it was in colonial New England.² Stubbornly high rates of illiteracy and innumeracy are a public shame, no doubt. This is remedial ignorance. The need is for learning—except that many such forms of ignorance thrive despite years of schooling.”

Notes

1. And of course even an abundant supply of “educational resources” may not suffice to remedy obdurate problems and obstacles that may be rooted in the regnant philosophies of education and/or pedagogical strategies and methods, as is perhaps suggested by reference to the apparently high rate of “functional illiteracy.”
2. An endnote somewhat qualifies this claim and speaks to the meaning of “functional literacy.”

A Catholic Response to Janus v. AFSCME

         I will begin with papal teaching.  In June, 2017, Pope Francis issued a ringing endorsement of labor unions.  Unions, Francis makes clear, serve vital social functions.  They are, indeed, a manifestation of the “social nature of the economy.”   It is a falsity, it is a denial of objective reality, to describe economies as being by or about individuals.  Economies are not formed or sustained by monads dealing with other monads.  They are built by people coming together, organizing groups, drafting rules, buying and selling goods and services, and in the process distinguishing just from unjust practices.

          Within this larger framework, according to Francis, who reiterates more than a century of Church teaching, robust labor unions must have a place.  They serve a prophetic role in defending the vulnerable and “the discarded” from being marginalized or reduced to numerical computations of profits and loss.  (Pope Francis, “Audience with Delegates from the Confederation of Trade Unions In Italy, June 28, 2017).  But they also serve as a means of mediating the power disparities between employers and employees.  As early as 1891, Pope Leo XIII recognized that there was a great gulf in power between economically vulnerable workers and economically powerful employers (para. 47, Rerum Novarum).  Leo saw the Bible itself as endorsing this view.

          This line of thinking was substantially developed by St. John Paul II in his reflections on the principle of solidarity. In his encyclical Sollicitudo Rei Socialis – “On the Social Question” -- he described “solidarity [as] undoubtedly a Christian virtue” (para. 40).  Solidarity, abstractly considered, was the sense of social unity that drew persons together and allowed them to perceive other members of the group as possessing fundamental rights.

          St. John Paul equally made clear that the principle of solidarity must shape labor relations.  Indeed, he dedicated an entire section of his encyclical Laborem Exercens (1981) to the theme of “Worker Solidarity” (section 8). The great danger, the sainted pope argued, that one must confront was the domination of employees by employers.  In many places, John Paul acknowledged, the labor movement was strong and should be maintained.  But one must always be on guard against “power systems” that permit “flagrant injustices to persist or [that] have created new ones.”  Solidarity, the formation of strong labor associations with the purpose of “achiev[ing] social justice,” must be allowed to flourish.

          The strength of individuals, bonded together for better wages and working conditions is not only a Catholic teaching, it is reflected in the National Labor Relations Act.  Employees have “the right to self-organization,” to join or form “labor organizations,” and “to bargain collectively.”  The Congress enacted the National Labor Relations Act and the President signed it precisely for the purpose of equalizing bargaining power

          In the whole history of the United States, there are few clearer examples of the convergence of Catholic social thought and American public policy than the National Labor Relations Act.  The two systems of thought converge precisely on the importance of solidarity.  Solidarity is a Christian virtue that aims to promote social justice; it is also the foundation of American labor organizations and a precept of federal law.

          And while the National Labor Relations Act does not apply directly to Janus v. AFSCME, the spirit of Catholic social thought, and the original intent of the National Labor Relations Act can both be productively accessed for interpretive guidance. 

          The facts in Janus v. AFSCME must be the starting point in analyzing this case.  Illinois, like many states, has adopted statutes permitting the formation of public-employee unions and these unions are allowed to assess mandatory union dues from all public employees, whether they belong to the union or not.  A similar system was upheld in Abood v. Detroit Board of Education (1977).

          In that case, the Republican Justice Potter Stewart upheld a similar mandatory fee program assessed by a teacher’s union in the Detroit public schools.  He acknowledged that not every teacher belonged to the teacher’s union and they were free not to join.  He acknowledged as well that they might have differences with the political positions the union had taken.  One employee might object to unions on principle while another employee might feel that the union has compromised its integrity in its dealings with management.  One employee might disagree on moral grounds with the decision to cover family planning as part of the health care package, while another might be concerned that there were still gaps in coverage.  “[I]deological objections,” Stewart conceded, might be boundless, and these objections did have some constitutional merit.

          But, Stewart reasoned, there was a larger principle involved.  While he did not use the word “solidarity,” it fairly screamed its presence between the lines.  Citing case law dating to 1956, Stewart argued that formation of the group -- the collective bargaining unit to use the formal language of the labor law -- must outweigh the constitutional considerations.  Labor peace, wages, hours, working conditions, all of these factors were of greater weight to Justice Stewart than worries over whether dues-paying non-members of the union might dissent from one or another position the union has taken in the public square.

          The argument rejected by the prudently conservative Justice Stewart has made a comeback in our own, more deeply libertarian age.  Lawyers for Mark Janus, the plaintiff in this case, argue simply: speech is sacred in the United States, and it is a fundamental principle of American constitutional law that no one should “should subsidize the speech of a third party that he or she does not wish to support.” [Brief For Petitioner, Janus v. AFSCME (quoting Harris v. Quinn)].  Harris v. Quinn, cited by the brief, was decided in 2014 and similarly sought to restrict public employee associational rights.

          Read literally and expansively, Harris v. Quinn would cause havoc for government continuously subsidizes speech with which others might disagree.  Television licenses are a form of public subsidy, and so are radio licenses.  The granting of parade permits and the use of public security personnel at protest gatherings are another. Janus would have the Court read Harris in potentially mischievous ways.

          Balance in the name of larger social goods, that was the principle Abood stood for.  Balance historically has been seen as a conservative principle.  It recognizes that society is reflects many competing social values, and that it is just and appropriate to limit some rights in the name of preserving balance between groups and interests.  The brief for the State of Illinois, defending its system of financing public employees, indicates that the law has repeatedly struck such balances.  The Supreme Court has sustained congressional and state limitations on the free-speech rights of public employees in the name of maintaining neutrality between competing political viewpoints.   The Supreme Court has also upheld the right of state bar associations to impose mandatory fees on members, even where individual members might dissent from a stance taken by the association.  Janus properly should be read as belonging to this line of cases.

          And to return to our original point: balance in this context also conforms to the principles of Catholic social thought.  Leo XIII, John Paul II, Pope Francis, and all of the other popes of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries have insisted on the centrality of labor.  It is bedrock teaching of the Catholic magisterium that labor has rights that must be respected by public authorities.  It behooves a Supreme Court whose majority is Catholic, to take seriously the teaching of the Church.

Self, Selves, and Persons: Questions of Human Nature & Personal Identity—A Very Select Bibliography

I have been reading about human nature and the notion of “self” (and selves) after being inspired by P.M.S. Hacker’s consecutive chapters on “the self and the body” and “the person” in Human Nature: The Categorial Framework (Blackwell, 2007), as well as several titles by Raymond Tallis. As a result, I’d like to share a list of books I’ve found helpful in thinking about human nature and personal identity. It is comparatively short, and I cannot claim it well represents the philosophical literature on these topics although several of the titles have, in fact, been very influential among professional philosophers. This compilation is therefore unabashedly idiosyncratic, yet I’m convinced its contents should be of help to anyone leisurely or systematically exploring questions of human nature and personal identity.

• Albahari, Miri. Analytical Buddhism: The Two-Tiered Illusion of Self (Palgrave Macmillan, 2006).
• Cassam, Quassim, ed. Self-Knowledge. Oxford University Press, 1994.
• Duerlinger, James. Indian Buddhist Theories of Person: Vasubandhu’s “Refutation of the Theory of a Self” (RoutledgeCurzon, 2003).
• Elster, Jon, ed., Multiple Selves (Cambridge University Press, 1986).
• Fingarette, Herbert. The Self in Transformation: Psychoanalysis, Philosophy and the Spirit of Life (Basic Books, 1963).
• Ganeri, Jonardon. The Concealed Art of the Soul: Theories Self and Practices of Truth in Indian Ethics and Epistemology (Oxford University Press, 2007).
• Ganeri, Jonardon. The Self: Naturalism, Consciousness, and the First-Person Stance (Oxford University Press, 2012).
• Gillett, Grant. Subjectivity and Being Somebody: Human Identity and Neuroethics (Imprint Academic, 2008).
• Hacker, P.M.S. Human Nature: The Categorial Framework (Blackwell, 2007).
• Hacker, P.M.S. The Intellectual Powers: A Study of Human Nature (Wiley-Blackwell, 2013).
• Hacker, P.M.S. The Passions: A Study of Human Nature (John Wiley & Sons, 2018).
• Hutto, Daniel, D., ed. Narrative and Understanding Persons (Cambridge University Press/Royal Institute of Philosophy, 2007).
• Midgley, Mary. Beast and Man: The Roots of Human Nature (Routledge, revised ed., 1995).
• Parfit, Derek. Reasons and Persons (Oxford University Press, with corrections, 1987).
• Ram-Prasad, Chakravarthi. Divine Self, Human Self: The Philosophy of Being in Two Gītā Commentaries (Bloomsbury Academic, 2013).
• Rorty, Amélie Oksenberg. Mind in Action: Essays in the Philosophy of Mind (Beacon Press, 1988).
• Schechtman, Marya. The Constitution of Selves (Cornell University Press, 1996).
• Siderits, Mark, Evan Thompson, and David Zahavi, eds., Self, No Self? Perspectives from Analytical, Phenomenological, and Indian Traditions (Oxford University Press, 2011).
• Smith, Christian. What Is a Person? (University of Chicago Press, 2011).
• Sorabji, Richard. Self: Ancient and Modern Insights about Individuality, Life, and Death (University of Chicago Press, 2006).
• Strawson, Galen. Selves (Oxford University Press, 2009).
• Strawson, Galen. Locke on Personal Identity: Consciousness and Concernment (Princeton University Press, 2011).
• Tallis, Raymond. The Explicit Animal: A Defence of Human Consciousness (Palgrave Macmillan, with a new preface, 1999).
• Tallis, Raymond. I Am: A Philosophical Inquiry into First-Person Being (Edinburgh University Press, 2004).
• Tallis, Raymond. Aping Mankind: Neuromania, Darwinitis and the Misrepresentation of Humanity (Acumen, 2011).
• Taylor, Charles. Sources of the Self: The Making of Modern Identity (Cambridge University Press, 1989).
• Velleman, J. David. Self to Self: Selected Essays (Cambridge University Press, 2006).

Black History Month: Reading Guides

In honor of Black History Month, I’m posting bibliographies germane to the observance and celebration of Black history, although some of these lists consider that history in global or cosmopolitan terms.

Africana & African American Philosophy

After Slavery & Reconstruction: The Black Struggle for Civil Rights, Freedom, and Equality in the U.S.

Blacks and Food Justice: A Guide to Resources

Blacks on the (Radical) Left

The Black Panther Party

 

 

 

 

 

Detroit: Labor & Industrialization, Race & Politics, Rebellion & Resurgence — A Select Bibliography

Frantz Fanon—A Basic Reading Guide

Pan-Africanism, Black Internationalism, & Black Cosmopolitanism

Slavery

South African Liberation Struggles