Sweden and the Welfare State

One of the trends over the course of European history has been the expansion of the notion of "rights." The liberal tradition first introduced the idea of civil rights, like property and liberty, through the work of people like John Locke. The notion of political rights followed--suffrage in particular in the 19th century. The 20th century marked the dawn of "social rights." Both the right and the left embrace this idea that society is obligated to provide certain "positive goods" to their citizens, whether they be the heroic glory of servitude in fascism or the cradle-to-grave care of the welfare state. 

This article outlines the problem with this trend. Ask yourself--are you entitled to a certain standard of living? And does the emphasis on the provision of "positive goods" by some to others diminish or increase the amount of "positive goods" in society? I think not. This trend marks the increasing "socialization" of Europe over the centuries, and with it, the decline of the self-initiating, responsible individual. Troubling.

One Take on the End of Communism

One of my favorite foreign films is Goodbye, Lenin!, the story of a son and daughter's attempts to protect their mother from realizing that Germany has been reunified. Their mother falls into a coma shortly before the fall of the Berlin wall and wakes from it afterwards, leading to an elaborate scheme. In this scene, however, their mother realizes something is amiss when she accidentally wanders out into the streets of the newly unified, capitalistic Germany. 

What I think the excerpt illustrates is how people under totalitarian societies internalize their own oppression. They come to expect so little of their government that they find themselves totally and completely disoriented by the glut of possibility represented by reunification here (or perhaps, the pink shag lampshade). The image of the statue of Lenin being carried away by the helicopter, moreover, hints to the romanticization of communism in the wake of its passing, as in the song we listened to in class. 

Europe's Future

Danielle, Leigh, and Mia have both been talking of late about European integration and the prospects for future conflict within the European conflict. Mia and Leigh take a fairly optimistic view that Europe is no longer susceptible to the tragedies of the first part of the 20th century, while Danielle seems more skeptical. I would agree with Mia and Leigh that Europe is too traumatized by that experience to let that happen again on its own soil. Europe is too interdependent and interconnected through the EU and the Euro Zone  for war to become a realistic option. What I find more probable is European animosity toward the "other." You see this in the flesh in the hostility Turkish guest workers experience in countries like Germany and even Switzerland. As the rise of India, China, and other centers of economic power causes Europe's dominance to wane on the international scene, perhaps the continent as a whole will become more aggressive to preserve what remains of its global sphere of influence.

I will make a leap here and speculate that in the next 50 years Europe will be profoundly "over the hump," mostly concerned with its own internal affairs as Asia dominates the international scene. America, though not quite the dinosaur Europe will be, will be in a similarly introverted position. The continent will be in no condition to fight wars.

Orson Welles: Playing Himself with a Passion

Orson Welles, the main antagonist in The Third Man, drew mainly upon his own personality when it came to his performances. The textbook example of this is the film Citizen Kane, where Welles' character, Charles Foster Kane, found inspiration in the actor's own megalomania and indefatigable self-importance. Similarly, in The Third Man, Welles' character shows an anti-social contempt for others in his single-minded pursuit of his own wants. The post-war environs of Vienna have become a breeding ground for seedy, slick-talking racketeers like Harry Lime (Welles), perhaps because the war sucked up all that was good and noble in that world.

Another interesting point about Welles was that his involvement in The Third Man was a function of his self-imposed exile from the United States lasting through the 1950s. Some speculate that this was to escape the rising anti-Communist tide that would bring about blacklisting and self-censorship for leftist artists in the States (Welles being among them). Given what we talked about in class regarding the exportation of American culture to the rest of Europe, it's interesting that in some ways Europe became a haven for more radical members of the American artistic and intellectual scene. This was not a first--the "Lost Generation" of American expats after WWI had set this precedent.

Nationalism, according to Geller

I have some issues with Geller's thesis on the relevance of nationalism in the industrial state. He alleges the following: group identities arise because individuals and collectives need to associate with the bureaucracies of an industrial state. If a group controls the bureaucracy, it gets favored status. If not, its identity forms around its isolation from the mainstream.

The problem with his point is that he fails to acknowledge other, countervailing tendencies on the issue of nationalism. Markets in particular tend to break down artificial barriers of discrimination. What Geller is referring to is not the capitalist state, but one that unites economic and political power in a single body (some, including Mussolini, called this fascism). The market and the bureaucracy, in the non-'fascist' state, are inversely proportional. So long as economic forces outpace political forces, nationalism shoud decline rather than grow. In other words, Geller is referring to a particular political situation that can increase nationalism--the fusion of economy and state into one Leviathan. As long as capitalism proliferates faster than bureaucracy, we should be able to avoid this situation.

An example of how markets are anti-discriminatory: let's say I'm a greedy capitalist pig. I want to pay a worker who's real wage value is $15 as little as possible. In this case, say the most I can get away with is $7. My competitor, however, also a greedy capitalist pig, realizes that I am underpaying my workers. They offer to pay my workers $7.01 or something like that. The logic of the capitalist will lead the nominal wages of the workers to steadily approach $15, their real worth.

"But wait, what if they're bigots?!?" All this model assumes is that not all employers discriminate homongenously. Varying levels of discrimination mean that the less bigoted are rewarded and the more bigoted are punished. It may take longer, but the same process will occur.

Closing the Revolving Door on Revolution

Cas posed the question of what differentiated Polish Solidarity from the events of 1968. I think there were several factors at play:

1. Religious support--the Catholic Church played a much larger role in supporting the Solidarity movement than in 1968. This tinted the events with a greater ideological importance and, therefore, greater gravity. 

2. Cause--the Solidarity movement drew off 'bread and butter' issues, as the video today outlined. They had become much more pronounced than even the woes of the Soviet Bloc in 1968, with shortages and revelations of corruption and mismanagement frustrating Poles. This was a much stronger motivation than the student-led protests by political/social radicals of '68.

3. Soviet Response--The Soviet Union wasn't as belligerent in responding to the Solidarity movement as in the case of '68. Perhaps this was because the Red Army was becoming bogged down in Afghanistan or the rise in tensions with the election of Reagan/Thatcher made such a move on Poland less appealing diplomatically.

High-Flying French Filosophy

I think my dear friends Danielle and JED are making some mistakes when it comes to characterizing existentialism. Existentialism does NOT say that stop at the observation that individuals are free to determine their own destiny--it says that people can't treat themselves as essential (i.e. possessing a defined, fixed character). The great conflict that Sarte begins with is the contradiction in the human mind between the fact that we undeniably have 'facticity,' or a material aspect to our lives/memories/past that shapes who we are, and our 'transcendence,' or ability to move beyond the materialistic qualities that shape us. As much as we can't be chained to our facticity, however, Sarte also says that we can't just ignore it. In Being and Nothingness, he uses the example of a gay man trying to come to terms with his homosexuality. He has two voices telling him different things--one a denier, and the other a capitulator to the title of 'homosexual.' Sarte rejects the denier because the gay man's homosexual actions exist in the real world--the way we talk about past actions implies that they have relevance and cannot simply be ignored.

The answer Sarte gives the gay man is to accept the contradiction--the absurdity--of being both a determinate and indeterminate being. While discomforting, I think he does offer us a way out. We have to act only for ourselves, not anything else, and then we'll truly be in line with our natural metaphysical condition.

Two problems with this:

1. I think people do actually have an essence. Evolutionary psychology, linguistics, and anthropology are steadily chipping away at the idea that people are 'blank slates' waiting to be filled with choices. Sarte obviously didn't have access to this info, though.

2. Sarte thinks existence simply 'is'--why does he use the verb 'to be' in a transitive sense when we're always thinking about the outside world (because we're unfortunately always defining ourselves in terms of objects, hence why we say 'to be something') but then treats 'to be' as intransitive when it comes to existence. Could existence be a property as well?

Preliminary Research on "The Third Man" (1949)

I am going to focus my first entry on our research project on probably the most famous scene in "The Third Man"--the famous "cuckoo clock scene." In it, Harry Lime (Orson Welles) and Holly Martin (Joseph Cotten) meet on a ferris wheel to discuss the arrest of Anna, Lime's actress girlfriend, as part of Lime's own criminal racket. There are a couple very cool things about this scene:

1. The music. Lime threatens to kill Martin because of the latter's knowledge of his illegal activity, yet a delightfully syncopated guitar tune opens and closes the scene as Martin waits for Lime at the entrance to the wheel. Quite ironic.

2. Throughout the scene, Lime complains of indigestion and laments that antacids are nowhere to be found in occupied Austria. Perhaps his own internal suffering?

3. Lime makes several overt connections between his thinking and that of the times. As their compartment approaches its zenith on the wheel, Lime comments that the people below them resemble 'dots,' and teasingly wonders if Martin could truly resist the offer of £20,000 for the life of one of them. States don't treat people as individuals, Lime submits, so why should I? This kind of callously utilitarian thinking echoes the brutality and ruthlessness of not only the defeated Axis, but perhaps also the victors as well (Lime is a Brit, for instance, and his language suggests this kind of thinking ought to be universalized. Moreover, he pulls back from pushing Martin out the door laughingly, in a reference to the discrepancy between the actions and rhetoric of the Allies).

4. Finally, Lime's famous line at the end of the scene suggests, perversely, that things won't be so bad--Italy under the Borgias produced Michelangelo, Rafael, and Leonardo, while Switzerland's 500+ years of peace and brotherly love produced cuckoo clocks. There's something very twisted about the detachment and coldness this view conveys.

Don't Hit the Big Red Button

Why didn't America and the Soviet Union destroy each other? In part, the answer may have simply been that the Cold War ended early enough. Having lots and lots of nukes sitting around means that probabilistically, there is a strong likelihood they will be used eventually. The other primary reason, however, is that ultimately conscience and self-preservation prevailed over ideology and fear. During the Cuban Missile Crisis, for example, Russia chose not to challenge the American naval blockade of Cuba to test their seriousness. The escalating spiral of pressure and counter-pressure eventually came to a halt when one party finally decided the stakes involved were two great. The two rival superpowers can be considered as the parties in the famous Prisoners' Dilemma, except in this case the cost of betrayal became persuasive enough for one of the parties to eventually cooperate with the other.