Notes
On A Cultural Renaissance
In A Time Of Barbarism
By James Petras
15 May, 2007
James
Petras Site
Introduction
We live in a time of barbarism
and the barbarian elites employ an army of linguistic and cultural manipulators
to justify their conquests.
The great crimes against
most of humanity are justified by a corrosive debasement of language
and thought – a deliberate fabrication of euphemisms, falsehoods
and conceptual deceptions. Cultural expressions are a central determinant
in class, national, ethnic and gender relations. They reflect and are
products of political, economic and social power. But just as power
is ultimately a social relation between antagonistic classes, cultural
expressions are also mediated through the lenses, experiences and interests
of the dominant elites and their rebellious subjects.
Even as the writers of the barbarous elites have fabricated a linguistic
world of terror, of demons and saviors, of axes of good and evil, of
euphemisms which embellish the crimes against humanity, so have new
groups of writers, artists and collective participants come forth to
clarify reality and elucidate the existential and collective bases for
demystifying the lies and creating a new cultural reality.
In the face of elite barbarism,
a cultural renaissance is born. Revelations of crimes are made through
journalistic investigations, plays and songs. Affirmations of integrity,
social solidarity and individual rejections of the monetary enticements
strengthen moral commitment in the face of ever-present threats, assassinations
and official censure.
The great crimes of the imperial
powers and their local clients include the massacres and daily death
counts, propaganda, which pronounces every victim a criminal, and every
criminal a savior. The political delinquents have not, do not and cannot
silence, deafen or blind a new generation of critical intellectuals,
poets and artists who speak truth to the people.
There are several themes
which are essential in the advancement of the emerging cultural renaissance
and our challenge to the reign of barbarism: These include the politics
of language, conceptual misconceptions and intellectual courage in everyday
life. The great conflict is between the power of the mass media and
collective solidarity, and the false association of class with high
and mass culture.
The Politics of Language
The corruption of language
is a prescription for complicity in political crimes. Corruption of
language takes the form of euphemisms concocted by propagandists, transmitted
through the mass media, echoed in the pompous language of academics,
judges, and translated into the gutter language of the sensationalist
yellow press. Monstrous crimes against rural communities perpetuated
by the police state are described as ‘pacification’; reduction
of salaries and social services are described as ‘stabilization’;
and the elimination of labor legislation protecting employment from
arbitrary firings and weakening of trade unions is described as ‘labor
flexibilization’.
Human rights advocates defending
victims of military violence are called ‘accomplices of terrorists’;
systematic state and paramilitary violence is called national security;
opposition to military and political linkages to death squads is called
terrorism; large scale counter-insurgency plans designed and funded
by foreign imperial powers are labeled measures for ‘national
salvation’.
There is also the pretext
of providing a pseudo-scientific neutral terminology to inhuman acts
– destroying thousands of communities and displacing millions
is described as ‘liquidating subversive elements’ and likened
to the extermination of noxious insects.
Euphemisms are a form of
collective anesthesia – to tranquilize the population not directly
affected by state violence. The imagery evoked by euphemisms is always
portrayed as benign to obscure the malignant reality. To ‘pacify’
suggests a ‘pacifier’ and allows a parent to gently calm
an infant and eliminate its irritable cries. ‘Pacification’
of a people means the opposite: the violent eruption of military forces
into a tranquil community that causes screams of pain and shudders of
death.
Stabilization in the mouths
of state authorities means to reduce trade and budget deficits by lowering
wages and salaries while retaining subsidies and tax-exemptions for
the ruling class. Stabilization for big business and the banks means
de-stabilization for the working class and the poor: the loss of health
services, increases in the prices of basic commodities like food and
transportation and the loss of employment leading to family break-ups,
children leaving school, single parent homes and rising rates of suicide
and alcoholism.
The dress rehearsal for any
political and social transformation is linguistic clarity – speaking
and writing in a language in which words and concepts evoke the reality
we live, especially the differential class impact of specific policies.
The unmasking of euphemisms is not a job for linguists but for all committed
intellectuals and artists.
Language and the
Left
Too many times the left fails
to elucidate the meaning of euphemisms – resorting to the lazy
device of hanging quotation marks around the targeted phrase. The quotation
marks are meant to indicate irony and criticism or rejection of the
euphemism – but they are just as obscurantist as the euphemism
they seek to discredit. For example, many writers deal with authoritarian
or police state regimes which claim to be democratic by simply putting
quotes around ‘democracy’ – as if the quotes are self-explanatory.
The critics fail to take the time and make the effort to elaborate a
more precise term, which captures the cognitive meaning of the political
system. The resort to quotation marks has a long tradition of abuse
on the left, an abuse that serves to undermine the pedagogical purposes
of educating the popular classes and providing a new and useful political
vocabulary.
More recently, especially
among intellectuals who have a pretence of communicating or leading
the working class and peasantry, they abuse popular understanding by
swearing. When using ‘swear words’ intellectuals abdicate
their responsibility to widen the vocabulary of the working class or
peasant activists. When workers or peasants resort to swear words, much
depends on the context and tonality to determine meaning. The same swear
word can be a denunciation or a term of affection, depending on the
context. But when there is a political vocabulary that is more precise
and varied, the pseudo-populist intellectual should introduce and define
its meaning instead of pretending to establish rapport on the basis
of the most limited and simplistic level of communication: vulgarity.
The intellectual playing
down to the workers and peasants doesn’t raise their understanding;
instead it reduces the literacy of the intellectual.
The other side of the coin
is the problem of the exoticism of the intellectual: The use of an unfamiliar,
abstract language derived from highly specialized texts, which fail
to connect to the concrete realities and struggles of the workers and
peasants. The task for intellectuals is to take complex ideas and make
them comprehensible – to illustrate ideas from everyday practice.
It is easier to write for other intellectuals than it is to take the
effort of explaining the content and meaning of a concept to the popular
classes. But that is what must be done without condescension or over-simplification.
Conceptual Clarity:
Between Democracy and Barbarism
Conceptual perversion is
the opium of the intellectual apologists of state terror. What are the
concepts, which are most often perverted? What are the most frequent
acts of perversion? How and why do these obscene activities take place?
The most frequent concepts
subject to perversion by state power are democracy, citizenship (or
citizenry), civil society and free elections.
Democracy, as it is used
by foreign and domestic apologist of the terror state, reduces democracy
to a set of electoral procedures, competition by two or more competing
parties and legislative and executive institutions based on the elections.
The most essential elements of democracy, the freedom to speak, organize,
assemble and protest are excluded; death squad, police and military
violence resulting in systematic assassination, kidnapping and disappearances
undermine the entire context leading up to the election. In other words,
state terror undermines the political context for free elections, for
competitive parties and critical candidates. The widespread and intensive
use of force and violence in the run-up to the elections determines
the consequences of the elections: alternation of leaders within the
narrow confines of the ruling oligarchy. Electoral procedures subject
to state terror and systematic assassinations and intimidation are clearly
incompatible with any substantive conception of democracy. The systematic
physical elimination of political opponents and the psychological intimidation
of the mass electorate define a police state.
Associating state terror
and political threats with democracy is a gross perversion of the very
foundations of the democratic process: the freedom to choose to run
for office and to pursue alternatives to the existing system. Some writers
refer to death-squad-democracies – states in which state-promoted
death squads condition electoral processes. The irony of this expression
– the linking of opposites is a reminder of George Orwell’s
phrase ‘slavery is democracy’. Likewise, some speak of imperial-democracy
to refer to the US in which domestic policy is democratic while the
imperial foreign policy dictates the harsh rules of violence and dictatorial
regimes. These hyphenated terms however are static conceptions; empire
building, especially in periods of defeat and domestic unrest can lead
to the usurpation of dictatorial executive power – imperial democracy
becomes an imperial police state.
Another concept, which has
been corrupted by the apologists of state power, is civil society –
namely the social classes, organizations and associations that are independent
of the state. The apologists of state terror, who call for the defense
of civil society, refer only to specific elite civil organizations and
obfuscate their intimate inter-relations with the police state. Their
virtuous civil society excludes the independent peasant associations
and class-oriented trade unions. While speaking in defense of civil
society, they defend the police state engaged in the assassination of
civil society leaders as constituted by independent jurists, lawyers,
peasants, workers, students and others. The decimation of civil society
in the name of civil society describes a state of barbarism –
the barbarous state under the façade of competitive oligarchic
electoral politics.
Citizenship and the
Barbarous State
The full or partial exercise
of civic virtues is a perilous undertaking in the barbarous state. The
record is clear in Colombia: 3 million forcibly displaced rural citizens,
40,000 citizens killed by the paramilitary and military, tens of thousands
of citizens forced into exile or into hiding. For many citizens the
decision to continue to fully exercise their civic duties, exercising
their social rights to organize civic action and their political rights
to question arbitrary oligarchic rule is fraught with danger, on a daily
basis. For many others, the more prudent citizens, they choose to operate
within the institutional parameters imposed by the oligarchy, using
Aesopian language, to voice their dissent against state violence. Presidents
of barbarous states who publicly denounce citizens exercising their
civic rights are writing a death sentence – usually exercised
by sicario-motorcyclists shooting trade unionists going to work, human
rights lawyers leaving their offices, peasant activists tilling their
fields.
The everyday exercise of
civic virtues in a state of barbarism is a heroic deed. Civility, in
the face of death threats emanating from political leaders with immunity
is a virtue that can only be attributed to the citizen. Civility is
not embedded in the political system; it exists despite and against
the barbarian state. Under extreme conditions, civic consciousness can
include non-voting or abstention. These can be considered meretricious
acts particularly where the oligarchs control the political process
and voting only serves to provide a veneer of pseudo-legitimacy to the
barbarians in power. Where political alternatives emerge, free of oligarchic
control, citizens may choose to exercise their political rights to assemble
and collectively decide to break with the system and apparatus of violence.
Political Tragedies
or Political Criminality?
Many progressive writers
and artists, when writing of the lost potentialities of countries with
great human and material richness because of misrule, speak of political
tragedies. This is a serious misconception, which misconstrues the nature
of tragedy and the abuse of political power. A political tragedy exists,
in the classical sense, when well-intentioned rulers with flawed characters
inadvertently commit acts of horror – family killings –-
or plunge their countries into devastating wars over slight pretexts;
out of individual pride (hubris).
The barbaric acts of violence
of the oligarchic rulers are not the result of individual flaws; they
are products of collective, deliberate, systematic acts of pillage,
exploitation and the usurpation of small land-owners. The acts of war
are against the communities in their realm. The reasons for war are
not personal slights, but the defense of indefensible privileges, illegitimate
power and great concentrations of wealth.
The systematic long-term,
large-scale violence of a succession of oligarchic rulers against their
citizens and the impoverishment of a potentially rich country is not
a tragedy. It is a political crime, or more accurately a crime against
humanity. When we speak of political tragedies, let us speak of ancient
classical Athens or Shakespeare’s Hamlet, not contemporary Colombia,
a state where the narrative is more akin to the genealogy of the Mafia.
Tragedy speaks to good rulers
who through excess pride commit a political crime. The audience of a
tragedy identifies, at least at the beginning with the ruler and their
apparent virtues and benign rule. As the ruler moves inexorably to their
fall, the audience is repulsed by the crime, but as justice is meted
they experience a catharsis – a sense of civic virtue redeemed,
even a feeling that political absolutism, even exercised by a once virtuous
ruler, has been duly punished. A sense of citizen ambiguity regarding
the human condition, even among those occupying the highest sphere of
politics, remains in the public consciousness.
In contrast, contemporary
oligarchic rulers begin their tenure in office as homicidal delinquents.
Their very electoral campaigns are plagued with murder, mayhem and massacres.
Upon becoming heads of states, there is no ambiguity: The Presidents’
closest associates are oligarchs, their Congressional supporters are
elected by the illicit funds of narco-traffickers and the rule is imposed
by guns and machetes of paid assassins.
Criminal acts of rulership continue in perpetuity with no redeeming
virtues. At no point in time does the audience – the citizens
– express any emotional identification. On the contrary, as the
crimes multiply, their emotional indignation and repudiation grows more
intense. With the system of justice so thoroughly corrupted and the
mass media complicit, the people find no publicly expressive redemption
– no sense of justice emerges because, unlike the Greek or Shakespearean
tragedies, there is no end to the horror. Political criminality that
permeates the contemporary barbarous state will not emerge from an elite
redeemer.
Colombia: Heroes
in Everyday Life
Many are the literary critics
and large is the public that looks to celebrities in film and sports
and Nobel Prize winners as their virtual heroes and heroines. I must
confess however that my heroes and heroines are neither saints nor notables,
not even the great critics and world-renowned intellectuals in the US
or Europe.
The most admirable are those
Colombians who work steadily with great energy and purpose in pursuit
of the civic virtues of class solidarity with the victims of the barbarous
state and affirm their civic dignity through their defense of human
and social rights. Cultural celebrities and intellectuals -- notables
especially in the North -- have their world reputations to protect them
from the predator states when they criticize injustice. For them it
is an occasional grand moment – a press conference, a public meeting,
signing a petition. These small acts have meaning and carry some moral
weight.
But, to me, they shrink in
stature faced with the everyday acts of courage and solidarity, which
engage trade union activists – beverage and farm workers, coal
miners --and human rights lawyers and professionals in the face of daily
acts of murder and threats of death. There is a great moral distance
between putting your life on the line every minute of the day, as do
Colombian peasants active in their movements, and the academics who
speak from the protection of the ivory towers of prestigious universities
in Europe and North America. The latter actions, because of their celebrity
status, may pressure the barbarous state to release a victim of torture
– and that is not insignificant especially for the individual
in question. The temporary lessening of intimidation provides a moment
of relief but once the celebrities, the Nobel Prize winners turn away
to their other professional pursuits, it is the workers, peasants, the
activists and social movements which have to face the life and death
threats and challenges in their everyday work, in their families and
neighborhoods. Their virtues of solidarity and civility, of militancy
and their consequential beliefs are what inspire me to believe that
barbarism is neither omnipotent nor is it our destiny.
Despite the pompous pronouncements
by experts and critics of mass communication who proclaim the power
of the mass media, we know that millions everywhere defy the media messages.
They organize popular protests, uprisings, general strikes despite the
fact that every mass media is against the mass action. Against the mass
conformity of the mass media, the spirit and traditions of class, family
and community solidarity have been far more successful than the media
experts admit. In Venezuela every major private mass media monopoly
denounced President Chavez and supported a coup against him –
and yet he was reinstated in power and elected three times each time
by a larger majority.
The truth is that the barbaric
state is vulnerable, tactically powerful because of money and arms but
strategically vulnerable: No institutions, even those that buttress
a police state, can stand in the face of a sustained cultural and political
resistance that exposes its deceptions, its criminal acts, its corruption
and depredations. The President of the United States and his most loyal
client in Latin American can still engage in mass murder but nobody
believes their lies and deceptions: When their justifications for brutality
relies solely on their control of force they have already lost the political
struggle.
To further their political
demise and above all to ensure that another barbarous oligarch does
no replace them, a profound cultural revolution must accompany the rupture
with the political past. The passing of barbarism requires a cultural
renaissance; in which the best of art, language, dance and music is
not defined by class boundaries and taboos.
James Petras is the Professor Emeritus, Binghamton
University (New York), Adjunct Professor, Saint Mary’s University
(Halifax, Nova Scotia)
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