Structural Patterns

I’m reading Boyer’s Understanding Media book as I do research for a current project. Boyer calls the book an essay and it’s brief and clearly written… Below is a passage about the value of objects produced and distributed in a global market… it doesn’t present anything new, but I like the writing:

Marx recognized that every society at every point in history had some kind of gap between objective value and subjective value and he called this “estrangement.” But he asserted that capitalism, with its central institutions of wage labor and private property, made human estrangement total, since it reduced all or most human activity to activity oriented toward markets and money.

To understand how estrangement connects to the medial, try a small thought experiment. Think about your sneakers or, for that matter, any other thing you use routinely. Subjectively, what makes your sneaker valuable to you is their comfort, their ability to keep your feet dry and protected, and likely also the image or status they convey. But, none of these subjective needs an desires iv you a legitimate claim upon those shoes in a market-oriented society with institutionalized private property. What gives you a claim is your ability to pay their objective, market-determined price. How are you able to earn enough to buy them? ONly through some other kind of activity compensated by money. Does your need for money alter even if you don’t like the activity you specialize in? Sorry, no. But this seems normal since we’re socialized from an early age to feel that it’s impossible or at least very difficult to opt out of the monetary economy altogether.

And what are you really paying for in the price of those sneakers? It would require an enormous amount of detective work to determine that precisely but the answer would be something like: the market-determined costs of materials, labors, rent, management, machinery, storage, transport, advertising and marketing, among other inputs. None of these inputs have anything to do with your subjective need for shoes either, nor do they have much to do with the subjective value of the time and energy invested elsewhere in the making and marketing of those shoes by the suppliers of the raw materials, by the shoe assemblers, perhaps in Indonesia and China, by people involved in freighting the shoes between Asia and North America, by advertisers and marketers and sports-scientists affiliated with the sneaker company and, of course, the salespeople in the store where you purchased them.

At every link in the production chain, subjective values are coordinated by objective value, human interests and idiosyncrasies are converted into an abstract logic and language of supply, demand, price, utility, equivalence, value and so on. One of the key effects of this continuous conversion process is that we can use routine objects like our sneakers with no sense whatsoever of the many human hands that contributed to the production, passage, and marketing of them. And, yet, without those hands, no sneakers; the other side of a complex exchange system of specialized producers is that most of us do not have the time or skill to produce useful things like sneakers for ourselves.

pgs. 33-35

In July I wrote an entry on corporate citizens contributing to U.S. elections, Corporations Aren’t Citizens concerning the Citizens United vs. Federal Election Committee case that the Supreme Court began deliberating on on Sept. 9th… Well, it’s a done deal. The conservatives on the Supreme Court bench have ruled to corrupt democracy (even further that it generally is) by allowing the free flood of corporate spending in political campaign. This wouldn’t be so troubling if the United States had a politically informed and active population. Unfortunately the vast majority of this country’s population is easily swayed by media influence and hollow ideologues. The majority of this population does not thoroughly inform themselves or try to uncover nuances or consider challenging concepts… So those with the most money, the so called corporate citizenry will decide the vote of the general citizenry through the purchase of television, radio, web and publication ads.

One of the dissenters on the Supreme Court bench, the ever-thoughtful Justice John Paul Stevens “read a long dissent from the bench. He said the majority had committed a grave error in treating corporate speech the same as that of human beings. His decision was joined by the other three members of the court’s liberal wing.” The change that Obama seeks to bring just seems to be undermined as his presidential tenure proceeds. Read the full article from the NY Times – Justices Overturn Key Campaign Limits.

The Port-au-Prince earthquake brings to mind the 1972 Managua earthquake and in wondering about the future of Haiti, I can’t help to question if old parallels between Haiti and Nicaragua will continue or if the 21st century presents a better future. I bring up a 40 year old earthquake, because there are so many historical parallels between Haiti and Nicaragua:

both were once Banana Republics of the United States.

both were once ruled by dictatorial dynasties supported by the U.S.: Somoza Dynasty (1936-1979) <=> Duvalier family (1957-1986). It’s uncertain to whom Roosevelt was referring to when he said “He may be a son of a bitch, but he’s our son of a bitch…” whether it was Anastasio Somoza or Trujillo of the Dominican Republic, but it could have been made by later presidents about Papa Doc or Baby Doc.

Today both countries remain amongst the poorest of the Americas and both countries are susceptible to natural disasters.

In the late 1960s or very early 70s, Howard Hughes was in talks with Somoza to establish Nicaragua as a tourist destination due to its natural beauty. Had these plans come to fruition, Nicaragua today could be much like Costa Rica, but in 1972 the capital of Nicaragua, Managua was struck by a 6.5 earthquake which destroyed nearly 90% of the city and Hughes soon left the country along with his plans.

International aid arrived and Somoza became even wealthier. Rather than using the relief money to rebuild Managua, create jobs and homes for the poor, Somoza stole foreign aid and stifled industry. Today the ruins of old Managua remain in place with poor people living in them, the new Managua has been built around the ruins with little organization or long term planning. Shanty towns can be found adjacent to the old downtown and there are many sections that do not have running water or formal electricity. Nicaragua, where the streets have no name, remains amongst the poorest countries of the Americas, usually second to Haiti. The history of course is a lot more complex than the 1972 quake, none the less, the earthquake and its scars are very much present.

It’s 2010, a corrupt dictator does not rule over Haiti, however in an impoverished nation with weak civic infrastructure it’s not difficult to envision the future Port-au-Prince in today’s Managua.

September 9th the Supreme Court will begin deliberation on a decision that will allow unlimited corporate campaign spending. Imagine the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth times a $$$$$MILLIONS.

Just when it seemed that we had made progress, that change had come, that the little people could unite to raise funds and get an intelligent individual into the office of the president, along come the Supreme Court judges to squash the power of the people.

Currently in NYC, following some deal making, Bloomberg Inc. is in the midst of buying a third mayoral term. The next presidential elections will also be bought by big money.

There’s been little coverage on Citizens United vs. Federal Election Committee. Here’s the opening sentence from a Slate article by R. Hansen:
“If Republicans were wondering how their 2012 presidential candidate is going to compete against President Obama’s $600 million fundraising juggernaut, the Supreme Court seems poised to provide an answer: unlimited corporate spending supporting the Republican candidate, or attacking Obama.”

From NY Times Editorial:
“If Citizens United prevails, it would create an enormous loophole in the law and allow corporate money to flood into partisan politics in ways it has not in many decades. It also would seriously erode the disclosure rules for campaign contributions.”

The word must get out, pressure to the Supreme Court during this decision might be the only way to maintain some semblance of democracy!

Sitting at the window of the Washington Commons in Prospect Heights / Crown Heights a few weeks ago, I couldn’t help but notice an undercover cop heading out wearing a Che Guevara t-shirt.  Generally, it would only be an amused observation, but I happen to be re-visting Barthes and reading Catherine Belsey’s Poststructuralism, A Very Short Introduction, so I just had to take a picture to capture the moment.

Undercover police prepare for a night at work.

As Belsey puts it “Postmodernism celebrates the capability of the signifier itself to create new forms and new rules.”

The following is a concise article on the current worsening situation in Nicaragua:
Feb 19th 2009 | MANAGUA, From The Economist print edition

Daniel Ortega’s slide to autocracy

LATER this year Daniel Ortega will celebrate the 30th anniversary of the revolution that toppled the notorious American-backed dictatorship of the Somoza family and brought his left-wing Sandinista movement to power. Though Mr Ortega is once again president, as he was in the 1980s, in other ways Nicaraguan politics have changed radically. Most of his fellow revolutionary
leaders have left the Sandinista Party and are now in opposition. And Mr. Ortega is well on the way to establishing an autocracy, albeit a bankrupt one, in cahoots with former somocistas.

The latest step came last month when the Sandinista-controlled Supreme Court quashed a 20-year sentence for embezzlement against Arnoldo Alemán, a former president (and once an official in the Somoza dictatorship). Several years ago Mr Alemán forged an unacknowledged alliance of convenience with Mr. Ortega, which Nicaraguans call “the pact”. This wavered when Mr Ortega ignored the opposition’s complaints that a pliant electoral authority allowed the Sandinistas to steal municipal elections in November, which independent observers were banned from scrutinising. But hours after Mr Alemán’s absolution his Liberal Constitutional Party ended a filibuster in the National Assembly and voted to let the Sandinistas run the legislature’s affairs.

The next step, opponents fear, will be to get the assembly to vote for a constitutional reform that would allow Mr Ortega, like his friend Hugo Chávez in Venezuela (see article), to stand for re-election. Or it might involve adopting a semi-parliamentary system in which Mr Alemán would run for president but Mr Ortega would cling to power as prime minister.

The result of November’s municipal elections, in which the Sandinistas claimed to have won Managua, the capital, have still not been published. That has not stopped Mr Ortega from holding a floodlit ceremony to acclaim the new mayors. But if Nicaraguans have had to swallow the results, foreigners have not. The United States and the European Union have suspended much of their aid (some $200m between them) pending an electoral review. Since there is no sign of that, “There is a real risk that the [aid] programme will be withdrawn,” a European spokesman says.

Until recently Mr Ortega could scoff at these threats, since he enjoyed the largesse of Mr Chávez. But the fall in the oil price means that this is drying up. Nicaragua is one of the poorest countries in the Americas. The budget, already cut by 4% compared with last year, is “unsustainable”, according to Bayardo Arce, a Sandinista leader. Capital is fleeing and remittances are falling. Mr Ortega is looking to Russia for support.  (Nicaragua is the only country other than Russia to grant diplomatic recognition to South Ossetia, an enclave carved out of Georgia.)

Already unpopular, Mr Ortega seems to have miscalculated in alienating aid donors. Since the municipal election he has deployed gangs of uniformed thugs to break up opposition protests. So far they are armed only with staves, stones and homemade mortars. His regime is starting to resemble the dictatorship he once helped to overthrow. One of the original Sandinista leaders now in opposition says he feels obliged to meet contacts in secret, “as we used to do under Somoza”.

Pearl Friedberg
LAC Program Associate

Illustration by Claudio Munoz

On Samuel Huntington, a big idea man “whose major work didn’t just explain historical transformation but seemed to crystalize it – in ways that altered how the rest of us looked at the world, for better and also for worse”

…”in the desire to explain so much, big thinkers tend to skip over complicating factors and counterevidence.  Painting broad and often brilliant strokes, they often miss the shadows and crevices.  The very seductiveness of power thinking – its promise that everything fits together or can be made to seem so – is also the source of its danger.  It offers something irresistible, the possibility that we can change, or at least control, our lives by means of ideas, even though those ideas are themselves abstract inventions.”

Lee Siegel’s observation is not original, such has been the long standing critique on essentialist constructions.  But Siegel’s statement is so nicely written that I wanted to put highlight it.

In November, the Nicaraguan municipal elections were held and the Sandinista Party claimed the majority of victories as ballots were found in the trash.  Since Ortega re-wrote the constitution to retake the presidency in 2006, the county has become increasingly destabilized in every aspect – political and economic.  Ortega doesn’t seem to care and any protest against his regime is silenced by Sandinista mobs, a tactic once used by Somoza.

Senior fellow in foreign policy at the Brookings Institution in Washington, Kevin Casas-Zamora has written a plea to he international community to pay attention to the worsening situation in Nicaragua.  The following are excerpts from Casas-Zamora’s article:

“As the second-poorest nation in Latin America, Nicaragua can’t afford to descend into violence as it did during the cold-war days of the 1980s…

“A prosperous and democratic Nicaragua is crucial to stability in the region…

“If the current institutional arrangements prove to be – as they increasingly appear – impregnable to change, it is very likely that future political disputes will turn bloody. It has happened in Nicaragua before. The international community must not allow it to happen again…

“Ortega’s recent actions and statements are slightly more reminiscent of Zimbabwe’s Robert Mugabe. The latter, another former guerrilla leader who doesn’t seem to understand democratic ways, was allowed to wreck a small nation under the complacent gaze of its neighbors. Ortega is not yet another Mugabe.

“By using leverage now, the Western Hemisphere can help keep him from morphing into one.”

I was sent this video, I don’t know who made it or where it’s from.  The icon at the lower right corner looks like WHUT PBS, but can’t seem to find a link to it anywhere.  The video is great, so I’m posting it…  La Recession en USA:

Resident Voting Cart Documentation is also on YouTube: