My latest piece for The eXile is now online. Here is an excerpt of “The Myth of the Democratic Model“:
Stanford poli-sci prof and Commissar of Transitionology, Michael McFaul, is quiet no more. After a few years of relative reticence, McFaul, once known as the most gregarious cheerleader for the Yeltsin regime, was smoked out of his academic hole by Time’s recent crowning of Vladimir Putin as the “Person of the Year.” McFaul’s first response was a comment in Slate titled “Putin? Really?” The second was a lengthy quasi-academic condemnation in Foreign Affairs called “The Myth of the Authoritarian Model.” In the Slate piece, McFaul said that Putin’s accolade “most certainly doesn’t ‘feel right,’ and most certainly doesn’t feel like journalism.”
The fact that Time‘s decision doesn’t “feel right” to McFaul shouldn’t surprise avid eXile readers. What doesn’t “feel right” to him is the possibility that “as political freedom [in Russia] has decreased, economic growth has increased.” This is what McFaul has dubbed the “myth of the authoritarian model,” which he argues is based on “a spurious correlation between autocracy and economic growth.” After all, giving Putin any credit for anything except being a mini-Stalin, the second coming of Hitler, or simply a fire breathing hydra, is an affront to academic political correctness.
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Kolya makes some interesting points. I’ve heard Putin described as a “very little dictator” even by those who modestly support him.
One difference I can see from the Yeltsin years vs. the Putin years and the difference in how “free” or democratic each period might feel or seem, is the role of the news media in each time period. Certainly, in the Putin years, even with the multitude of news opinions still available in Russia, most “big media” forms (TV, major newspapers, radio) are in lock-step with the Kremlin.
A second difference is simply how much each leader deferred or followed the US and Western Europe’s lead. Such Putin seems less democratic – he tells us when to get stuffed. EVERYONE who tells the US to fuck off and mind their own business seems like a tyrant or certainly not democratic. Even the French.
Kolya “Robert, whether he’s right or wrong in what he says and writes, McFaul is not a mouthpiece of the Bush administration/State Department.”
I admit that I find it extremely difficult to disentangle think tank thinking from administration thinking. I suppose this is because in the US there is a general consensus across the political divide on foreign policy. There is hardly any difference between Bush and Clinton. Clinton was just a bit more subtle. Is this uniformity the result of the funding coming from the same or similar lobbies?
What we are seeing in Iraq and Afghanistan is standard US policy in weak foreign states as practiced for decades in Central and South America, by both Republicans and Democrats. The ruthless violence was to a large extent masked by the Cold War until recent years.
“What we are seeing in Iraq and Afghanistan is standard US policy in weak foreign states as practiced for decades in Central and South America,”
Well the war in Afghanistan was supported by just about everybody worldwide, and I don’t think the US has gained much from it.
Anyway, I think the larger discussion here is hobbled by the ambiguity of the word “democratic.” The word — and I mean as commonly used, not dictionary meanings — is used to mean different things, which may or may not coexist in a given situation:
– a polity in which policy is decided upon by “the people.”
– a polity in which policy, or at least the persons implementing that policy, is/are decided upon with input by “the people”
– a polity in which policy actually benefits “the people”
– a polity with a plurality of power factions
– a polity with policies that follow a certain normative model — for instance, the polity does not have capital punishment, does not practice state censorship, etc.
Chrisius Maximus “Well the war in Afghanistan was supported by just about everybody worldwide, and I don’t think the US has gained much from it.”
The United States as a nation has gained little from its interventions in Latin America and South America as well. However the financial military industrial complex – the oligarchs? – has had a ball and made billions.
I am not sure how much ‘just about everybody’ really supported the invasion of Afghanistan. They had little choice but to go along with it. People like War correspondant Eric Margolis who actually knew something about the country thought it was insanity. See http://www.ericmargolis.com/archives/2002/12/deja_vu_in_afghanistan.php
His comment in an October 2001 article, about what he called this “truly foolish war”, that “Washingtons ‘experts, would-be crusaders, and re-born Cold Warriors should look twice before they leap.” was spot on.
“I am not sure how much ‘just about everybody’ really supported the invasion of Afghanistan.”
Everybody around Afghanistan supported it, except Pakistan sotto voce, because they viewed Wahhabism as a much greater threat than Americans. In fact as is famous it was to a large extent a Russo-American action.
Although I opposed the Afghan action at the time for knee-jerk ideological reasons I had at the time (“US = bad”), I think I was wrong. I think it likely that the current Russian success in Chechnya is not unrelated to that event.
Yes, Afghanistan drained Chechnya of many foreign fighters, and Iraq even more so.
I think it likely that the current Russian success in Chechnya is not unrelated to that event.
and
Yes, Afghanistan drained Chechnya of many foreign fighters, and Iraq even more so.
Interesting. I’ve never thought about this. Were there really enough jihadis in Chechnya for their absence to make that big of a difference?
I don’t know about our lucky frenchman, but I was thinking of jihadi funding and importation of ideology rather than actual men on the ground, which I don’t think was more than a few hundred at any given time. Supply of money and weapons is something else though. I think the freezing of the accounts of a lot of Islamic “charities” and other organizations after 9/11 is a major factor.
I think the freezing of the accounts of a lot of Islamic “charities” and other organizations after 9/11 is a major factor.
Yes, that makes sense. The freezing of funds is one of the few things I think the Bushies did right. The few successes that have come out of GWOT have resulted from good police work.
“I am not sure how much ‘just about everybody’ really supported the invasion of Afghanistan.”
Interesting about Chechnya. On the other hand there have been allegations that it was the US that stirred up the conflict in the first place.
I think Afghanistan is about two things. Going in to clean up terrorist training camps and then leaving. Or staying on for nation building which is going to require 400,000 men not the current 40,000, since 40 million Pustun do not want to be reconstructed. The first maybe. The second impossible and likely to destroy NATO. Either way the Russians must be laughing their socks off. I actually heard a Russian MP taking the mickey out of a British opposite number the other day.
“The freezing of funds is one of the few things I think the Bushies did right.”
I think that a lot of the native jihadis in Chechnya were actually jihadis of the deed rather than the word, if you see what I mean. If you are a mercenary or just a guy with a gun in parts of the Muslim world, you figure out pretty quick that if you say the right things and blow up the right people, money from the Gulf will start rolling in. I think this is one reason why many were so willing to switch over to Ramzan — there was no more money in the jihad business. I think it should also be noted that if you are a poor rural villager in a place like the North Caucasus (or other places), becoming an Islamist gives you and your family access to their support network.
[Off topic]
Sean, a question about contemporary Marxism. Has there been any recent change in the traditional Marxist reluctance to view human nature from a more biological and scientific perspective? I’m asking because I really don’t know the answer and I’m genuinely curious.
In another thread in this blog I mentioned Peter Singer’s “A Darwinian Left”, a short book published in 1999. I have not read it (well, not yet). It seems that it got a cool reception from both left and right. Some of the criticisms, though, is that it’s too brief and sketchy. For the curious, here is the Wikipedia entry about this book.
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A Darwinian Left: Politics, Evolution and Cooperation is a book by Peter Singer (Yale University Press, ISBN 0-300-08323-8), which argues that the view of human nature provided by evolution (e.g., evolutionary psychology) is compatible with and should be incorporated into the ideological framework of the Left. Evolutionary views of human nature had previously been regarded as supportive of the political Right. Singer’s argument is that the Left will be better able to achieve its social and economic goals if it incorporates the more accurate view of human nature provided by evolution: “To be blind to the facts about human nature is to risk disaster”. For example, Singer argues that the Left’s view of human nature as highly malleable, which he identifies with Marxism and the standard social science model, is incorrect.
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I’m not Sean, but I do know that Stephen J. Gould was heavily influenced by Marxism, especially the writings of Engels. Punctuated equilibrium has clear Marxist resonances (it is a theory of sudden qualitative change, i.e., revolution).
“becoming an Islamist gives you and your family access to their support network.”
sometimes it is the only way to keep your family alive as the form of “support” might be like – “you’ll go with us now or we’ll shoot you now”.
As you remember Germans were also educated and kind people but …
“sometimes it is the only way to keep your family alive as the form of “support” might be like – “you’ll go with us now or we’ll shoot you now”.”
Well that’s also true…
Thanks, Chris. Way back in the past I read some of Stephen Jay Gould’s stuff and once was able to attend one of his lectures. He was a great guy.
Gould and Richard Lewontin, a Marxist geneticist, took a very dim view of E.O. Wilson’s sociobiology. It seems that their criticism of Wilson was heavily influenced by their Marxist sympathies. Now, about thirty years later, the scientific consensus is that both Gould and Lewontin were in the wrong side of this particular controversy. I’m not sure, but I think that in recent years Lewontin moderated and modified his criticism.
Ironically, E.O. Wilson, besides being an enviromentalist, was a very apolitical scientist and was surprised that his work was attacked by many leftist of the time. One of the consequences of this is that although the field he pioneered has made enormous strides, the word “sociobiology” is almost never uttered. What you hear instead is “evolutionary psychology” (or some other variant)–although it’s the same field. A reason for this initial backlash was that some people incorrectly feared that this somehow meant the return of Social Darwinism.
I know that Gould thought sociobiology/evolutionary biology was an inherently (politically) reactionary movement, since (he thought) it apologized for injustices in the existing order, and so was, well, a ruling-class ideology in the classical Marxist sense.
And that was Gould’s very basic mistake, since sociobiology/evolutionary psychology never had a political or ideological stance. Of course, as with many other fields of science, its findings can be used by ideologues of either the right or the left. Ironically, recently the role of evolution and natural selection was explored by a number rather leftis economists, and as a response someone came up with a book titled “Darwinian Conservatism” which, among things, tried to persuade the right not to ignore Darwinism.
Has there been any recent change in the traditional Marxist reluctance to view human nature from a more biological and scientific perspective?
I honestly don’t know. I haven’t seen anything in the stuff I read. But I tend to be into the culturalist stuff which sees everything as a construction even to some extent science itself.
I’ve always generally thought of the culturalist stuff (the various “posts” — or do you mean the Frankfurters and their progeny?) as being generally opposed to at least classical Marxism, which is a rationalist theory. (For instance, see the Sokal affair.) Poststructuralism did arise in France in part as a reaction to Marxism after all.
Which isn’t to say you can’t combine the movements… People obviously do.
Sean, thank you for your reply. You wrote:
“I tend to be into the culturalist stuff which sees everything as a construction even to some extent science itself.”
I want to understand better what you mean, can you flesh it out just a bit? I often hear about postmodernism, poststructuralism, constructivism and so on, but don’t have a clear idea about what those things refer to. I know this is a vast topic and I’m not familiar with the vocabulary (I guess that’s part of the construction), so the purpose of my question is very modest. I’m interested in how scientific and practical empirical knowledge is seen as constructed. What do you mean?
Let me flesh out my question. There are three Americans, one is a strong supporter of the Republicans, another is a strong Democrat, and another shakes his head and says to them that the silly Republican/Democrat divide is simply a distinction without a difference. I can sort of see that the political worldviews of these fellows was constructed and that such construction is an ongoing process. More or less the same thing applies to the worldviews of say, an Orthodox Jew living in a West Bank settlement, a militant Muslim in Egypt, and a fundamentalist Christian in Oklahoma. On the other hand, the fact that this comment can be read seconds after I send it by people living thousands of miles away from me is possible because of science, because of empirical research. That’s why we can fly from New York to Moscow, and that’s why many diseases that were usually deadly in the 19th century are now easily cured. In other words, I see a huge difference between ideological, philosophical and religious beliefs, and the application of the scientific method and the practical knowledge that we have accumulated as a result of it.
Once again, I’m not Sean, and he knows more about this I do more than likely, as I am a Heidegger scholar by training if not by profession and the posties are not my thing, but…
I think a lot of them would say that the various scientific and intellectual paragigms (“narratives,” in postie-speak) exist because they are part of the ideology of domination of society. A favorite instabce of this is Foucault’s observation/interpretation (since I don’t know if it is true) that the idea that there is such a thing as “insanity” arrived at a moment in European history when it was useful for the dominant forces in European society to imprison large numbers of the superfluous population in asylums (my apologies if this is a misrepresentation or misreading of Foucault’s work, which I know only second-hand; postie-ism was never my thing).
Think of this, perhaps, as being like Kuhn or Feyerabend with a leftist twist.
Focuault wouldn’t make such a direct link between a class and an ideological formation. Though the class issue isn’t wholly absent. He just doesn’t make class an agent (for example he says in Discipline and Punish that there is correlation between the rise of capital and rise of the prison. He just doesn’t do anything with it). In fact, my main problem with Foucault is that there are no agents in work.
The development of madness, and specifically the mad was more a result of the discourses on rationality. It was the idea of rationality as something essential to man that produce an idea of madness and then the figure of the madman. Since the latter undermined the former, the mad had to be removed from rational society, isolated, and corrected. Not so much to do away with madness, but to maintain the sanctity of the rational. What is important, it is not that insanity didn’t exist before the erection of the asylum, it is just that the mad played a particular function in Western societies–soothsayers, people who were privy to some knowledge etc.
A better example is the homosexual. F would say that it is not that there wasn’t homosexual sex before the 19th century. Only that there were no homosexuals in the sense that who we fucked didn’t define (backed by a whole host of scientific “truths”) our entire being of who we are.
My interpretation of Foucault on science, and notice that he mostly attacked the dubious “human sciences,” is that it is not so much that the hard sciences itself is based on untruths, only the subjects they create–the mad, the criminal, the pervert–were based on essentializing certain human behavior coupled with class power. The efforts to correct these deviances only reproduced them at a greater, and more scientifically rooted, rate. So being a criminal didn’t have so much to do with the act of crime, but with something within the person that made him a Criminal.
I think present efforts to find criminal behavior within brain patterns is a perfect example of what Foucault was writing against. And he was correct. I think there is nothing more fascist than trying to argue that criminals have particular brain patterns wholly different from “normal” people.
I’ll answer the rest of Kolya’s question latter. I have to hit the shower now.
Yes, I had forgotten about the whole “discourses of power” thing.
I don’t know what it is, but I just never developed an interest in the post-whatevers, despite their connection to Heidegger. The only exception is Derrida, who is sort of obligatory in Heideggerwelt, for better or worse (damn you, John Caputo!).
(I miss academia. *sniffle of nostalgia*)
Chris, my question was not so much whether explanations of the scientific method are constructs, but about concrete and practical knowledge that came to us as a direct result of empirical research. For better or for worse, it is because of science that we can manufacture and use GPS devices, cell phones, smallpox and polio vaccines, nuclear weapons, and so on.
Well, “science” (whatever that is — it’s a fuzzy concept) is the product of human beings, and a recent one at that if we mean it in the modern sense of the term, and in that sense is indubitably a construct. It is also true that a multiplicity — in principle, and infinity — of explanations can be made for any phenomenon you come across, and so that we have decided on this-or-that explanation is also in part a construct.
What I think you are asking, though, is whether the constructs are arbitrary, the answer to which is “no,” since GPS devices and so on exist and work.
Well, I don’t think I disagree with what you wrote, Chris. Although I’m not a scientist (for a while was on my way to being one), my preference for science (at least the way I understand the word) is that is that it has a damn good track record of coming up with explanations that produce great practical results. Another aspect that I like is that by its very nature scientific explanations keep on changing as a result of empirical refinement.
As Richard Feynman (the bongo playing physicists with two Nobels under his belt) said somewhere:
“If you thought that science was certain – well, that is just an error on your part.”
By the way, I wasn’t given you an account of what the posties would say,m but rather what I, the Heideggerian, would say.
To tie the posties in with Russia, I would like to mention that Samuel Bentham cam up with the idea of the Panopticon while living in Russia on Potemkin’s estate. It was something he came up with to monitor Potemkin’s workforce.
To not recognize this and maintain some utopian “rising tides lift all boats” ideology removes the basic fact that capitalism is based on class power and conflict.
Yes, and eventually the conflict between the capitalist societies will lead to war and they’ll destroy themselves, at which point Communism will be ready to establish a new world order.
Sean, unless you want to hit a thick, glass ceiling of your potential as a seriously good commentator on Russia, I’d ditch the 19th century Marxist ramblings about class and get hold of an economics book.
What we are seeing in Iraq and Afghanistan is standard US policy in weak foreign states as practiced for decades in Central and South America, by both Republicans and Democrats.
As practiced since time immemorial by practically everybody. The idea that the US is unique, or even unusual, in its behaviour in Iraq or Afghanistan comes not from reading history.
The few successes that have come out of GWOT have resulted from good police work.
Libya’s coming clean about its nuclear program is a pretty astounding success, and probably wasn’t a result of much police work.
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