Why I Am Not a Conservative Also, can someone explain to my why those on the right are considered "reactionaries" by those on the extreme left? Isn't Marxism just a reaction to capitalism? Aren't they then the true reactionaries?
No, because they didn't want to go backwards. They didn't want to go from capitalism back to feudalism. To be "reactionary" doesn't merely mean that your philosophy/programs are a reaction to the current dominant ideology. It ALSO means you want to turn back the clock. The liberals who want to go back to the Great Society are reactionaries. Newt once called liberals reactionaries, and ca. 1993, there was hella truth to what he said. Not Clinton, but Congressional Dems. One reason (of many, redistricting being the biggest) the Reeps made gains in '94 is that they had new ideas.
superdave has it about right. During the "Enlightenment" (you know, the time when conservatives were categorically stating that a democratic republic was impossible and denouncing the American Founding Fathers as terrorists, traitors and damned rebels), the rise of such lefty ideas and programs as democracy, equality, liberty, etc., were seen as the march of progress. The Right, which has always either supported or wanted to restore the aristocratic privileges of birth (but has since learned to disguise their desires in pesudo-democratic or pseudo-egalitarian cant), was seen as a "reaction" against progress. For more on the origin of the term, please read Albert Hirschman's excellent "Rhetoric of Reaction".
Just to add in...the Communists in Russia and the rest of the former Soviet bloc are reactionary. I think one could argue that Castro, today, is reactionary. So the left can be reactionary. But, by nature of the ideology, it's obviously going to be more rare than reaction on the right.
Well, Stalin and those regimes that copied his version of state capitalism were a reaction against the real leftists among the bolsheviks in particular and socialists in general. Today, you can say that leftists in Europe are "reacting" against the Right's resurgance that has followed the success of American elites and some European and Asian elites in imposing their globalization-from-above on everyone else. But the original "reaction" was among those opposed to equality and liberty in favor of aristocracy or plutocracy. That's where the term came from and it is still the definition recognized today.
Which would make the anti-WTO crowd counterreactionaries, right? joseph...I was talking about the Russian communist party of 2002. Did I confuse you, or are you using Stalin as another example? BTW, if Colin wants to take on a cliched language construct that is unfair to conservatives, what about archconservatives? I've never heard of an archliberal, have you?
I guess, if you hold onto the original and still-accepted definition of "reactionary". You could just call them "progressive", perhaps. It would save you from typing so many characters. I knew what you meant re: the "communists" of Russia today, most of whom are really unreconstructed Stalinists. I was just using Stalin as an example of a reactionary who seemed to come from the left. I guess you could say that he was still to the left of, say, the czarist restorationists... Who is really a "conservative" these days? What are they trying to conserve? Most of the so-called "conservatives" I see on the modern American poltical scene are more accurately described as "radical reactionaires" in the sense that they want to send us hurtling backwards to Dickensian bad old days of the 1880s when plutocratic families ruled supreme and the lower classes knew their place and behaved with undilluted servility to their masters. I suspect that political commentators say "arch-conservative" because if they used the more accurate term "reactionary" they might be mistaken for Marxists, since that's the group most historically associated with the term "reactionary". No mainstream media figure would dare risk sounding like a Marxist in these days of neoliberal Economic Correctness and academics wouldn't risk it either or they'd promptly lose their corporate-sponsored tenure.
As a Marxist leaning academic myself, I resemble that remark... Seriously, are Joe and Daniel suggesting there is NOT a liberal slant to most academics? Come on... Perhaps in schools dominated by the professional programs, the ratio approaches 50/50, but certainly most Arts and Sciences schools are (blessedly) overrun with leftists of various sorts. And don't dismiss the liberal media bias so quickly, as on social issues, there probably does exist a substantial lean towards the good guys. Even Badigikan and Chomsky can recognize this.
Writing as a recovering Chomskyite I'd have to disagree with you that he would recognize any kind of liberal bias in the media. He always claimed that the vast majority of public intellectuals were sheep and that they were subservient to the corporate elites. While this claim of his might still leave room for allowing that there is a slight liberal bias on certain social issues, I never actually heard him say this nor did I see it in his writings. Besides, he only used the term liberal in its 19th century sense. I once heard him refer to his own political philosophy as libertarian socialism. In other words, just a few laws and regulations short of communitarian anarchism.
It probably depends on the school and, equally if not more importantly, the department. Maybe you just happen to go to a radical school like Wayne State. In most other places, though, universities are following the money trail and with corporations becoming the chief source of funding for universities, they are getting more and more say in what gets taught and who gets this or that department chair or tenure. Therefore, while the more geriatric academics may still be "liberal", they sure aren't being replaced by "liberals". So, while you're cultural classes like Theatre, Graphic Arts, English, etc., are probably overrun with professors who sympathize with "the Left", you'll look in vain for that kind of slant among young post docs and professors in Economics or PoliSci or even nowadays in Journalism or Communications departments. In this age of neoliberal Economic Correctness, all Econ students know that you're not getting a professor gig in the Econ department of most universities unless you are willing to spout nothing but the current neoliberal religion, for example. Journalism students may start out as idealistic, "liberal" freshman but by the time they'll be teaching in the field they've learned how the process of self-censorship works in most mainstream media outlets. People like Robert McChesney have become extremely rare in media studies jobs on campus. Even the supposed "radicals" in cultural studies really aren't what they seem. I refer you to the critique of the "Cult Studs" made by the crew of The Baffler magazine. If you can't dig up any back issues of The Baffler, you can also get it from their book "Commodify Your Dissent". I also recommend Lawrence Soley's book "Leasing the Ivory Tower" for a decent introduction into the growing phenomenon of corporate influence in academia. The book was written in '98 so it's a bit dated but if anything the trends it reviews have gotten stronger, not weaker. For a good review of this why the mainstream media are liberal on strictly social issues that do not threaten to affect the economic and political power structure in America (like gay rights and racism) but strictly reactionary on political and economic issues, read Daniel Bell's "Cultural Contradictions of Capitalism" which sounds from the title like something Lenin wrote but isn't. Most CEOs don't really care what people think about prayer in public schools, the OJ trial or gay marriage. They DO care what people think (or, more accurately, what they don't think) about trade agreements, regulations to keep them from literally killing us with unsafe products and workplaces, taxation, private versus public power, corporate wealthfare, labor issues, etc. This explains the schizophrenic nature of media bias in the mainstream media in the US.
Oh! You wanted a serious discussion. Well, you should have said. Seriously, my academic experience carried an ever so slightly leftish bias. Note the intentional use of a "h" at the end of that word. I only met two truly leftIST profs in my six or so years in academia. Radical fascists were hard to find, I admit, but there were one or two guys who were so conservative that they thought this "fire" notion should be seriously debated before it was put into widespread practical use. My undergrad degree was a double major in history and PoliSci, and I can safely say that the historians as a rule were significantly more conservative than the political junkies. But even after years of slowly swinging back towards the center, I think I can safely and definitively say that I'm much further left than all but two of my profs ever were. Seriously? It all depends on where you stand. From where Joe and I stand, the academic bias looks more conservative than liberal. By the way--he's a lot more radical than I am. But I used to stand out where he's at. I've always stated that the Washington Post's reputation as a bastion of liberal bias is completely overwrought. The only people who read the Moonie Rag are the right-wing nuts of the Republican party. Even moderate Republicans read the Post. So of course from the Neo-Fascist point of view there's a "liberal bias". Now, if you want to say the Post has a bias among the Editorial Department towards the Democratic Party, then I'd agree with you. But that's a very different thing.
Joe, why would you buy a product that kills you? Do you think that there is a big demand for such products?
No, but you'd certainly be less ignorant if you did read them. Yes, actually. Have you? Have you met any US Presidents? Then how can you say anything about them? Have you lived in Iraq or met Saddam Hussein? Then how can you make any comments on the situation? Get the point?
Colin, has it ever occurred to you at any point in your life that maybe, just maybe, not every single company ever tells 100% of the truth about what they make or how they make it? Have you ever speculated that perhaps, just perhaps, one or two companies in the history of capitalism have ever sold a product they knew in advance might be dangerous to the product's consumers but failed to tell consumers of this danger? I know these scary, disturbing ideas are heresy to your worldview, but have these thought ever crossed your mind? Ever?
Telling someone to read three books certainly makes you a jackanapes, though. You've drastically missed my point. I'm interested in your unsubstantiated assertions that the academy is someone moving toward conservatism. Putting aside the assumption that you're so far to the left that most everything appears conservative to you, I'd be interested in reading something about "conservative creep" in higher education. But I simply don't have time to wade through three books to get the point. Quite a few, actually. I get the point that you've once again missed mine. You continue to set up CEOs as the "elite" - bogeymen on whom to blame the world's problems. Your assertion that they sit around (presumably in smoke-filled back rooms) gnashing their teeth trying to influence what people think "about trade agreements, regulations to keep them from literally killing us with unsafe products and workplaces, taxation, private versus public power, corporate wealthfare, labor issues, etc." is as laughable as it is paranoid. It's like something out of the X-Files.
Perhaps they would, but I'm guessing after people started dropping like flies from using their product that it wouldn't be a real winner of a strategy. Also, isn't fraud a crime? If someone is sick enough to deliberately sell a product that has a tendency to kill people when used properly, what makes you think a few regulations will give them pause? And isn't this is why we have groups like Public Citizen to warn me about cars that might explode, or Eric Schlosser to tell me that fast food isn't the healthiest thing in the world? You'd think that people would be willing to pay good money for people to warn them if a particular product might kill them.
Ask the tobacco companies. Again, ask the tobacco companies. At least with regulations, you can go after the guilty parties for breaking the regs. With no regulations, you have no recourse other than naivley truting businesses to behave themselves depsite 150 years of proof that they can't. Last I looked, Nader and Schlosser are not part of the government and therefore do not have the ability to legally enforce safety regs or impose quality standards on products or services. If this has changed, please let me know. You'd think people would be smart enough to get together to use their government to try to keep businesses from selling dangerous products and creating unnecessarily unsafe working environments in the first place. I guess the Cato Institute is proof that a few of them aren't that smart.
It's a two-edged sword. As the regulations increase, the affected parties start writing them and getting competetive advantages. I suspect that this is the major reason why the RNC/DNC can generate hundreds of millions of dollars a year. As fas as dangerous products go, there are risks everywhere. Look up the number of people who got polio from the miracle vaccine. Nobody in his right mind would risk his company on that today.