another war?

"The impact of war is self-evident, since economically it is exactly the same as if the nation were to drop a part of its capital into the ocean."
--Marx, Grundrisse, The Chapter on Money.

Eastern Europe Forever

The concept of "Eastern Europe" will continue to be active in my consciousness so long as:

There is a shortage of washing machines.

I must register in advance to use one (make a reservation).

I am told that if I want to use one, I'll have to get up early in the morning so that I'm at the front of the line.


There's another concept that gets food when I pay my employer for the privilege of using a washing machine, but I'm too polite to let it find verbal expression.............

overheard

More Good News

Overheard:  You can't understand this unless you work on it full time....

My reaction:  Yeah, and if you don't understand it, you don't understand the world you live in.
And I cannot work on it full time.  So, where does that leave me?

Local News

A couple days ago the local newspapers all said
The Recession is Over!---Yipeee!  Hooo-Rah!

But they did not say:
The tax on food is cancelled.
Everybody gets a raise.
Lunches at work will now include fresh fruit and vegetables.
Everyone will get a decent job.
We will have democracy in the workplace.
Investments will aim at social goods, like full employment, and preserving the environment.

None of that.

There is a bumbling, stumbling Elephant or Rhino in the room,
and his name is Capital.

That didn't get mentioned either.

good song

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j9c1vSIpHA0

censorship?

Is Google.cz or Google.com censoring "Naked Capitalism"? I've tried to go there four times, and I get the banner for the site, and an ad. Nothing else..

It's an interesting idea: insofar as social structures are invisible, we mis-read the actions of other people. As a boy, I certainly misunderstood my father because I failed to understand that the McCarthy era had a permanent effect upon him, and he genuinely feared losing his job should his teenage son turn out to be a communist. So, too, when I gripe and whine about my current situations, I may be blind to social or cultural factors influencing me or others. That is a risk; and, for that reason I have written many times that while I try to say what's true (even if it is a merely "personal" truth about myself) I do not pretend to full scholarly or scientific objectivity. That's the best I can do right now by way of apology should a friend or acquaintance be personally offended by anything I've written here.

mea culpa?

I've just started reading Costas Panayotakis's "Remaking Scarcity", and I'm enjoying it.

Early on, he complains that by saying the money given to bankers amounted to "socialism for the rich", one unnecessarily let pass the assumption that socialism is bad.  It would have been better, he suggests, to simply state that this was an example of capitalism's injustice, or favoritism for a small class of people.

That's all correct enough, and he's right that it might be misunderstood as assuming that socialism were bad; but surely it need not be meant that way.  After all, the point is: if anybody here is getting help from the government (which is what "you"--capitalists and their apologists call socialism) then it's not us, but them.......

Otherwise put, as an ironic utterance, "socialism" is used in a way to echo the capitalist businessman's complaints; not in propria persona (apologies if the Latin is wrong).

And the context is that ordinary people are accused and abused for any help they might get from the government.

Initially, his point seemed to me to be right; however, now I'm not so sure.

At any rate, I am confident that the book will be worth reading.

How many times have I woken in the night?--disturbed because there was enough light to wake me--And, been unable to arrange the shadows in a way that made sense?

How many times have I woken with fear, worried that my father was in trouble?

And how can I be thankful or grateful or in any way understanding when I receive an email informing me when I must move, as if I were a soldier in the army?

How can I be thankful for the shattered nights?

So many shattered nights, and not just on account of this or that email.

Am I to really say or imagine that this is a good life?

As if I were some idiot popularizer of good-feeling and shallow wisdom?

I can taste the bitterness of my isolation and submission,

and there is nothing in that of beauty or reason, or, even, common sense.

No,

I am not used to it,

and,

No,

I don't really believe or accept any of the empty words offered to justify it.

My silence is not assent.

My silent screams are deafening.

dignity in work? that's a joke...............

There are times when my conversations with other human beings are so maddeningly stupid that I feel I would be better off if I never opened my mouth at all.....

My mother is eighty-seven years old and she is still working.  She cares for my eighty-eight year old father.  And, when she waits on him at breakfast, I could burst into tears, or scream.  As she herself says, by now she should have leisure---but she doesn't.

And it's not because there is a law of nature which decrees that we must work all of our lives.

First of all, there are those privileged scum who don't have to work, and who have never had to work.  Indeed, they can pay to have others create propaganda designed to present us from seeing the truth of what I've just said.

But secondly, the health care system in the USA (and the financial system, and the educational system and the political system) is organized around profit and the class who gets the profits.

There's no necessity that my mother should have to work as she does.

However, here in the self-proclaimed center of Europe, it is hard for people to see these facts for what they are.  Much confusion and ignorance about the nature of the USA and capitalism have been propagated since the restoration of capital.  And I was too confused and slow on my feet to say any of this to the person who assured me yesterday that this is all "just the way things are", and so we simply have to accept it.  Now, who benefits from that sort of acceptance, conformity, and passivity?

That's at least something..................

I've been going on for several days about how I don't like it here---in this temporary accomodation.......temporary-while my regular residence is being up-graded...............

But I've just learned that, at least, the rent I'll be paying is significantly lower.

That's something.

On the other hand, would I have complained less if I knew it sooner?

(Did I miss an email informing me of the price?)

Sigh.  (I can't keep up...............)

investments

There are days when I run from a dance studio to catch a train, and I'm unable to really stretch out.
Then, cramped in the narrow confines of the luxurious trains provided for the public in Central Europe, I do, occasionally, get awful cramps in my legs.

Knowing that, during a recent ride on a train, sitting in the most rear seat of the wagon, with the least generous leg room, I found myself forced to elevate my feet by stretching both legs up toward the ceiling.

This might have produced stares from my fellow-passengers, but I don't think anyone actually imagined I was doing something dangerous.

However, the two black-uniformed private police (a private police hired by a public company, mind you) seemed to think otherwise---Or, at least one of them did.

I hasten to add that these unintelligent guard-dogs are a frequent appearance on Czech trains.  They wander the aisles engaging in boisterous conversation with one another (itself very unprofessional, when you get right down to it) staring into compartments, and staring at people, and generally looking for something to do.........Very unfriendly, and they don't make me feel at all safe.

So, the one guard told me that I should sit in a "normal" position. I told him what I was doing---that
I didn't want painful cramps, and he left me alone.

I should have told him that the so-called "normal" sitting position has nothing normal about it. Public transportation seems to be designed by sadists who ignore the fact that human beings have two legs.

In any case, this all lead to a brief conversation with a rather more intelligent (than these guard dogs) woman sitting to my right.

We happened to hit upon the topic of the investment tax......and how it would solve many budget shortfalls.

But, she asked, would investors stop investing?

I neglected to point out that what we have today is an investment strike. Investors are not investing today, so they could hardly stop doing so.

And if there were more money coming into government coffers, and they spent it, that would, quite possibly mean money for new businesses. 

Maybe.

But what sort of "investments" do we have in the real world?  Should I really thank the investors for creating an electronic spying system?  Do I really think the IPad or any other Apple product has made my life better?

No, I don't.

There were books, music, friendships, etc. before there was Apple, and the quality of my life has NOT been improved by Apple.  Indeed, many of the problems in the world are connected to the system that makes Apple possible.

Indeed, there is a capitalist myth, a bit of fantasy that "investment" is some sort of gift to mankind, like Prometheus' fire, but that is pure bullshit.

People who invest want profits; they don't give a damn about human goodness.  If they ever do benefit me, that's an unintended side-effect.

Oh, yeah, I almost forgot:  the poor businessman only gives us what we want.  So, it's all OUR fault!---Yeah, right:  after they have manipulated the hell out of us with billions of dollars of advertising, we know what we want.  What a pathetic lie.  Some call it information asymmetry.  I call it pathetic narcissistic infantile lust for the crudest sort of power.

No "Do not disturb"; no privacy

This is ridiculous!

I hesitate to leave my room and go to the shared bathroom because:  The cleaning lady might come at any minute.  (I hear her moving around outside.)

I hesitate to walk down the hall to the kitchen---the other end of the hall, perhaps twelve feet away.
Ishall have to carry my ...

UPdate:  She's here.  Just on the other side of the door, cleaning the bathroom. (Thank you! It needs it.  Generously applying smelly chemicals.....)

But when she finishes, I shall have to make two or three trips up and down the hall to the kitchen, carrying a bowl of rice, pots, etc. before I can prepare my lunch.  And, of course, once I've cooked it all, I will (sooner or later) have to carry it all back.

I have work to do.  I don't want to socialize.  I don't want to be required to say "hello" or anything else at all to anyone.....

I want my privacy back.

The sterility of a hospital---the excessively chemical nature of the cleanliness---is matched, in some bizarre prelude to hell, by framed reproductions of "great art" hanging on the walls of my room--"official art", as a friend might say.  As if in fulfillment of a law of kitsch, there is, as there must be, a Van Gogh among the reproductions.

Add to this the incessant tapping---not ceasing entirely, there are pauses--which seems to come from a room above me.  And, of course the traffic noise from the nearby street.  I notice that there are fewer motorcycles.  They seem to be the source of pleasure on weekends---a very capitalist sort of pleasure for people who have been degraded all week in what they have to do in order to earn their daily bread.  People who seek to escape, their heads full of degraded images of happiness courtesy of the propaganda system.

At times, in my disgust at the people around me, I nearly equal Plato's arrogance.  But this is an attitude toward people in the abstract, not for anyone I've actually ever spoken to.

I wanted to write, however, of the insanity of washing machines, or the insanity they provoke from the local inhabitants...........

As I have written here before of my difficulties with washing my clothes, I shall assume the reader remembers the broad context.  Here, for foreigners employed by or studying at the university, there is, in effect, a shortage of washing machines.

I was, at the start of the month, compelled to move from my usual accomodation to a desultory and uncomfortable room in what they call a "hotel".  I must go to a different building when I want to wash my clothes.  (Curiously, I know that upstairs in this very building, there actually are washing machines.  But, that seems not to matter.)

And, yesterday, as I was retrieving some clothes in a different high-rise, I had a conversation with the custodian, the door-keeper.  She told me that this building would be shutting down until school started.  I wondered where I would was my clothes.  The washing machines in a second building were now broken.

She calculated that I would be allowed to return to my normal residence in ten days.  And, with a friendly smile, she assured me that I had just washed my clothes, and so, I wouldn't need to wash my clothes again for the next ten days....

What presumption!  What brutal condescension!

Worst of all, she believed that she was being helpful or friendly.

I am still reeling in disbelief at this utter stupidity.  Do I need someone else to tell me when and how often I am going to wash my clothes?

To call this "Eastern Europe" just doesn't go far enough.  I need some even stronger expression.

the abstraction of markets and the willingness to find excuses

Richard D. Wolff says that economists use markets as an excuse. A "market" is an abstraction, but it comes into being as a result of the action of individuals.....

Philosophers use the market as an excuse when they tell potential students: the market is bad.

That's code for:  you may not (probably won't) get a job, and there's nothing we can do about it.

Well, once upon a time, that's how I took it, when as a twenty-year old, I got a letter admitting me to a Ph.D. program in P|hilosophy, and warning me about the bad market.

Maybe the letter didn't actually use the word "market"; it doesn't matter.  That's a word that philosophers do use.

Is there anything they might do to change things?  Could they attempt to influence the direction of public education?  Surely they could have, and surely they did not.  (Like a good capitalist, I judge by results; and lately the result has been for many years that public education in the USA is in decline.)

And why wouldn't they do something like that?  Political action would distract from the research they enjoy and which gains them rewards in our capitalist society................

And what do I think about that?  Well, I don't have such a high opinion of philosophers as I used to.  They seem like very ordinary conformists who keep their heads low, and do nothing out of the ordinary......In that respect, really very average and ordinary.......and not especially admirable..........but also powerless and acquiescent...............

After -thoughts: And what about me?  I've done nothing particularly political in my life.  I am reminded of the dissident who remarked that most people weren't dissidents, and that is to be expected.  But when I think of my youthful self, that letter was damaging.  And, it was especially damaging because I was in no position to understand it.  And today I do think that a letter like that is, at best, morally ambiguous.   Here's a young person who's actually quite ignorant of the class structure in the USA.  Here's a young person who actually understands very little about how the world works--and he (I, in my youth) is in no position to understand that letter---except as a slap
in the face.  ("Yeah you can get a Ph.D., but when it's done, you wont get a job............ So,how can you commit yourself fully to that?)
|
Put this all differently:  Why are there such limits?  Why are there few jobs teaching Philosophy?
Because Philosophy contributes less to human beings than Banking?  --That was a joke.
There's no good reason why there shouldn't be more jobs teaching philosophy, and more chances for people to learn philosophy.  None at all.  There is no mythological market that decreed that we have too many Philosophy Ph.D.'s.....

But that letter, in effect, evoked the myth of the market...............

after a dance workshop

After a week of training

My arms want to move themselves

In the patterns we have established:

 

My right hand would like to touch my left,

and send him on his journey through space.

My hands are dry now,

not cupping water to my face,

but they speak to me,

and each longs for the embrace of the space,

as we move in circles,

smaller,

larger,

answering the movement of hips and spine.

 

My shoulders are itchy too,

and I can hardly stop them from joining their sisters and cousins,

brothers and uncles,

aunts and friends,

who all seem to be saying

that they've had a night's sleep,

and won't wait for the music to start.

 

Sitting won't do,

and walking won't either;

they are all whispering to me,

nodding,

nudging me,

asking me to stand up,

and begin those concentric motions,

maybe even to hum aloud:

„Dummmm, Dummmm-dumm-dumm....“

Mimicking the teacher's voice,

setting them out on that journey,

which never really stops,

and always comes back.

To a place far away and always near.

trapped in an eastern european hotel

I am sure that the cleaning ladies work hard,
keeping this place clean,
and antiseptic-sterile.

But my reaction is:
The cleanliness and sterility is
like nothing so much as a hospital,
a place where people go to die.

eastern europe forever

It must bring no joy to the formerly socialist nations if economic prosperity has not been the reward for joining the EU....

Plato says the dog is a philosophical animal.  It is friendly to those it knows, and barks at strangers.  The vratnice continues to be the most philosophical of university employees.

After a convoluted ten minute conversation with the door keepers in a neighboring tower block,
I learned that I could not wash my clothes there.

I had crossed the courtyard from my own building to the neighboring tower block, carrying two bags stuffed with dirty clothing----and that scarcely exhausts my store of dirty clothing.

After being mis-identified as a hotel guest who had come to play cards, and repeating my original request (I'd like to wash my clothes), I faced the question "Now?".

Errr, well I was toting two bags full of dirty clothes.......

I was told that the washing machines were broken, and I would have to retrace my steps and proceed to another tower block where the washing machines were functional.

That word, "Now?" rings in my ears.

Because once I had arrived at the tower block with working washing machines, I was given a reservation for two washing machines in an hour and a half.

I apologize to Czech friends for whom I have respect and affection, but I am sorry to say that as long as washing machines are rationed in this way, I shall continue to think of the Czech Republic as Eastern Europe.  (And it is irrelevant to point out, as a student once did, that every family in the Czech Republic has a washing machine.  What good does that do me?  Why should I be living at a level of less comfort than the local population?  Because I am a teacher?  Because I am a foreigner?--is that how guests are treated?)

I know that there is nothing intrinsic to the "east" which makes a location poorer.  However, when it is so difficult to simply wash my clothes----and I'll be paying for it anyway----I cannot regard the local standards as acceptable.  It's just too much of a hassle.

Note:
A curiosity:  In the tower block which mainly houses local students the washers cost half as much as the washers in the tower blocks which house mainly foreigners.  But, more than that, I object chiefly to the very fact that my employer is making money from my need to simply wash my clothes.

Do not disturb

It suddenly occured to me that what this hotel needs is "Do not disturb" signs.

Why aren't there any?

It is common enough for policemen or doctors to put a sign on their doors:  "Do not knock!", or
"Wait until called".

Am I to draw the conclusion that an ordinary citizen has no right to privacy?

Well, it certainly feels that way to me.  Last year I was living in this hotel for a couple of months, and the intrusions at regular intervals of noisy cleaning staff caused great irritation.

When I complained about it, loudly, and in broken language, to the staff themselves, I was punished the next day by the manager who evicted me.  (After she had pounded on the door of my rented apartment with great force....)

So, now I find myself back in the uncomfortable hotel, sharing a bathroom and a kitchen.

The doors squeak.  The floors are uncarpeted, and magnify every noise.  The keys are provided with a metal room-number plate which provides clinking and clanging noise in abundance.

Please allow me to emphasize:  The doors squeak, and they cannot be shut without making a noise.

Currently, I am living in one small room, just off a small corridor.  At the end of this entry hall there is another room.  To the right is the bathroom.  If my neighbor enters, he must take out his keys---causing clanging and jangling noises--open the outer door, and shut it.  Opening and shutting that outer door creates noise, especially as it is shut.  Then, entering the hall, he will again make a noise with his keys (the metal number plate inevitably striking the keys like a knocker to its bell) and then he will open another noisy door.  As the floors are uncarpeted, every sound resounds and is magnified.

The noise caused by austere building is one thing.  Quite another things is the omission of a "Do not disturb" sign.  Its absence deprives me of a basic right:  the right to privacy, the right to decide whether or when my work will be interrupted.

And, yes, dear reader, what I do is "work", even if unpayed.  I do not accept the crass commercial evaluation of all things human.  What is truly valuable has no price, and cannot be given a price. 

Indeed, this has been my frequent lament:  I work at home.  My neighbors are chemists and they have their laboratories.  I am not a chemist.  I have no laboratory.  I work at home, with my books, and the internet.  And work requires freedom from interruptions.  Is that so hard to understand?  Work requires the confidence that unexpected events won't intrude, not the tense expectation that any minute a door will slam, or someone will knock at the door.......

In truth, I won't stay here today.  But when I return, I don't know what sort of noises will be waiting for me......

a poem

Note for readers:  Poetry--even if it is bad poetry--- is not prose.  Poetry is not hard fact.  It may use argument as a conceit, but it is not philosophy, least of all the "professional" kind....  Poetry can be lying, but not the way prose is.  So, don't jump to conclusions if you dare to read what I am about to post below.....you cannot make any simple inferences from what I write to who I am, what I think, or what I will do next.

So capitalism is having another crisis?

Thank you very much for telling me!

 

My sweat seems to have been converted on my body

into lively fungi and molds,

or something else living,

detectible by the nose,

but invisible and silent,

something whose name I do not know...

just as much as,

what were once unspoken dreams and hopes,

have rotted away,

and today lay stinking to high heaven beside the decaying corpse of capitalism.

the annals of stupidity

So, here I am back in the Czech Republic (The land of Czechs and no balance).
And, I have not yet recovered from my jet lag.

Oh, how nice.  Bam-Bam-...errr, was it "tap.tap..." ? In any case, once again, my sleep was disturbed.  This time by the manager of university housing, accompanied by a crowd--or so it seemed.

I was on the phone late talking to my parents.  There is an eight hour time difference between West Texas and Central Europe. When it is nine am here, it is one in the morning there.....   My conversation with my parents ended around 3 in the morning.  The morning intrusion occurred around 9:30.

I did not get eight hours of sleep.

Errr, with the Internet, the Manager might have sent me an email.  Don't you think?

The plumber had to adjust the radiators.  Errr, couldn't they have know that earlier?  Warned me in advance?

I am now in a state of half-consciousness due to lack of sleep.  Thank you very much Ms. Manager!

If I had know, I might have cleaned up.  That much the Manager understood, and she said "Doesn't matter..."  But, Dear Lady, it most certainly does matter.  It matters because there is a big difference between getting eight hours of sleep and not getting eight hours of sleep.

There is a big difference between an unannounced interruption and a previously announced intrusion.

But the stupidity I want to mention is this:  I apologized to the Plumber and told him the room was a mess......

This is a guy who's been here before.  And the last time I asked him to repair a drain---which he did not do.  And the last time he stunk to high heaven........(Soap is cheap, even here.....)  I cannot blame him for failing to fix the drain; my language skills are not strong enough for me to be confident that he understood me, but, gosh gee, at the time, it sure seemed that he did.  I mean if I point at a sink, there's only a few possibilities......

So, the guy does his job, and leaves my room.  And, I hear him repeat my words in the hall,  "It was a mess."

How clever.   He couldn't even think of his own words for describing the mess.  Yes, a domestic mess because I've not got a wife who functions as a domestic servant....(Here I outrageously presume to know about the domestic arrangments of the plumber.....)

Yeah right.  What a beautiful world this is!  What stupidity and lack of consideration.............

secrecy versus privacy

Recently Glenn Greenwald appeared on one of the mouthpieces for the establishment.  (aka corporate media)

The interviewer asked him whether governments don't have a right to keep some things secret.

I think the clear implication was that any reasonable person would say they do, or they must, for at least some things.

Greenwald did not say, however, what I think would be an apt retort:  What about OUR right to privacy?  What about our right to non-interference?  What about our right to free association?  What about the right of Afghan mothers not to see their babies butchered by terror from the skies?

G. did not, however, ask any of those questions.

Myself, I think it's logical: If they can read my mail, then I have a right to read theirs.

Link to new article in the Guardian detailing the degree to which our internet activities are monitored:
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/jul/31/nsa-top-secret-program-online-data