Sunday, August 30, 2015


Donald Trump and the new Prophets of Deceit


Leo Lowenthal's Prophets of Deceit (co-authored with Norman Guterman) is one of the most significant pieces of social research done by the Frankfurt School in America. Along with Adorno's work on anti Semitism, it considers the role of the (generally right wing) agitator in American society beginning in the New Deal. These have of course close links to the Frankfurt School's analysis of the Authoritarian personality, It traces the psychological tropes and social context of the anti semitic and anti communist themes of the agitators of the 1930's and early 40's


Lowenthal's work still has resonance today. It is important first of all for its prescience,  For what was once the domain of marginal thinkers, the "agitator." has gone mainstream, Since Reagan (and probably Nixon) at the least, the mainstream of the republican party has run on the backs of classical scapegoats, the welfare mother, the African American criminal (Willie Horton), and now the immigrant, It apes the fire and brimstone rhetoric of the preacher with it's moral pieties. Lowenthal and later Marcuse in his 1970 introduction broaches the question of whether the agitator who works on the margins will enter the mainstream. Lowenthal argues that we are at a turning point in the analysis of social movements. He wonders whether the agitator will become more prevalent as late capitalism develops, Marcuse writing 20 years later said:
“If we compare or contrast the agitator of the thirties or forties whom this book examines with the political leaders of today, the shift in the target, tone, vocabulary seemed slight, , , , What has happened on this road is the introjection of the agitator into the legitimate political machine/”(v)
Writing about the tension in late capitalism, the phony mobilization of the Vietnam war and the Nixon era Southern Strategy Marcuse notes that the difference between the agitator and the political mainstream has become blurred. As Lowenthal and Marcuse predicted, this situation has become worse today. The recent rise of the Donald Trump candidacy, whatever it’s ultimate success, seems to be a harbinger of things to come. In the future we may well see more Donald Trumps as a reflection of a political party system that no longer can maintain the loyalty of the populace. Still Trump is not sui generis, The Trump phenomenon is the result of longstanding problems in American life.


The second reason we should re-examine Lowenthal's work has to do with the kind of explanation that he gives for the rise of the "agitator" Many contemporary analysts wonder why the middle and working classes vote against their "true interests" They look with some justification and the dumbing down of America, Others take a more value oriented approach, They reject the idea that individuals are motivated by strictly economic interests, and claim that many seek the communitarian values he see missing in liberal ideology. However Lowenthal following Horkheimer's (and to an extent Adorno;s) in looking for the latent or unconscious motives involved in the agitator's appeal. It is not that people are inherently stupid, (although it might be fair to say the level of discourse has no doubt declined) or longing for a unified community as much as they are alienated by their condition and situation. When we look at the appeal of the agitator or today the mainstream politics we should not look at the manifest content or the explicit message , We should instead look at the implicit message, the one which create a psychological bond between the speaker and his audience.
Horkheimer’s diagnosis


Lowenthal follows Max Horkheimer discussion of the rise and decline of bourgeois culture in late capitalism, The bourgeois idea of the individual was being superseded by the mass man of late capitalism, Horkheimer spoke of the end of the individual in late capitalism. He thought that advanced capital was eliminating democratic possibilities and becoming more like the authoritarian state.  It was becoming completely controlled by big business and cartels who had allied with welfare state to replace the free market and rules though collusion. With this change the idea of the autonomous individual was lost. Unlike Marcuse or later Habermas, he saw no possibilities for democratization or social movements in this transition. To the contrary the end of the high bourgeois era, meant the  end of the autonomous individual bereft of the capacity to use his own reason or make free decisions, and instead shaped by the mass media. Of course Horkheimer's does not believe that the bourgeois actually realized individuality  en masse, but it did remain a possibility for some. In his view the state control of socialization through schools and mass media means that independent subjectivity is absorbed into the repressive whole/ (say more) Marcuse had earlier taken a similar position in his essay on fascism. He saw liberalism in its classical sense as being superseded by fascism. Certainly in retrospect Horkheimer and Adorno both underestimated the counter tendencies of late capitalism, yet certain parts of theory analysis ring true. Certainly late capitalism put stresses on the individual which have increased as neo-liberalism intensifies


Lowenthal does not explicitly employ Horkheimer’s analysis of advanced industrial society but follows conclusions regarding the decline of the individual. He analyzes the latent content of the agitators appeal in terms of the alienated powerless individual who is because of his psychological state is open to manipulation.


Lowenthal thinks that the results of these  social and economic changes and the decline of the individual. is the rise of a kind of “social malaise.”  an alienated individual who can not make sense of her situaltion:
“the modern individual’s sense of isolation, his so-called spiritual homelessness,his bewilderment in the face of the seemingly impersonal forces of which he finds himself a helpless victim, his weakening sense of values . . . This malaise reflects the stresses imposed on the individual by the profound transformations taking place in our economic and social structure” (15)
Elements such as the atomization and depersonalization of mass society,  the breakdown of personal bonds and changes in family structures have had an effect on the individual. They continue to intensify and put pressure on the individual. “Malaise” he claims, “is a consequence of the depersonalization and permanent insecurity of modern life.” But these are according to Lowenthal only indirectly related to grievances.  Nonetheless, these feeling are there:usly of oppression .


Individuals in mass soceity  share a sense of economic political moral and cultural grievances that have become if anything more prevalent today. Immigrants are taking jobs, our nations has become morally and culturally bankrupt, losing our patriotic spiritual and  christian roots. As a result of which groups of people feel distrustful disillusioned and have sense of deprivation. Others are taking the resources and money that they deserve.


The problem with the malaise of the late capitalist era is that it does not lead the individual to a clear sense of what is wrong. People felt distrustful or delusions, as he they felt their lives were not under their own control.


For Lowenthal then it is not the manifest content of the “agitators” message that counts that is the specifics of his message, it is his appeal to the latent content of the discontent of atomized mass society that is crucial. The agitator crystallizes discontents by providing a vehicle for the malaise of individuals. It is not really what he says but that he supplies an emotional vehicle. We have to remember however that emotions are not just raw feels, but express our relation to the world, When we are anxious or fearful or resentful, these sensibilities are not just a reflection of the individual but her position in the world what she expects to happen or a sense of what is possible. The person who feels victimized or threatened by social and economic condition is as Lowenthal argues often oppressed to some extent, Without a reflexive understanding of the situation they tend to  Their understanding tends to be unfocused The agitator appeals to the sense of the world that is vaguely shared. However, the agitator unlike the reformer or the revolutionary does not attempt to make sense of suffering and malaise but uses it to reinforce the dominant power, Instead of looking at the role of business, agitators in the 1930’s and 1940’s blamed the jews or the foreigners, Today we see a sustained hostility toward immigrants especially undocumented ones, and against immoral liberals who don't follow “christian values. Where today’s agitators address economic issues they blame the foreigners like the Chinese or the Mexicans as we see in Donald Trump,
    Of course the current situation presents a more serious challenge, Clearly the mainstreaming of the agitator as shown in the  rise of Donald Trump as a potential republican candidate has illustrated how powerful the agitator can become, I think that  in neo-liberal capitalism the pressure on the individual has increased, The declining fortunes of the middle class and he poor, and the difficulties of adapting to a multicultural world has increased the sense of unease of many Americans.  Still I think that Jodi Dean’s analysis of the trump phenomenon In these Times misses the mark in some respects. She thinks that Trump is the only “honest” politician “Where other candidates appeal to a fictitious unity or pretense of moral integrity, he displays the power of inequality.” Trump does not hide his power he flaunts it  and revels in it. Trump according to Dean expresses all the racism sexism, and the sense of superiority and entitlement of the wealthy that exempt them from ordinary morality. The notion of manners and morality are really only the facade for an unbridled will to power. The “truth” then of American politics is the reality of the wealthy that can and will do whatever it wants without remorse or guilt. Rather than rejecting this lack of remorse, Dean thinks that individuals identify with Trumps flaunting of convention and with the desire to rule over others and clean out or sweep away the vermin. She thinks it is a pure form of jouissance, Lacan’s term for a kind of primary pleausre. But doesn’t she leave out the sadistic element in the equation,


No doubt the sadism of the leader or agitator is an important in the attachment of  the follower. And i think against Dean that it is more a matter of sadim than jouissance. To reduce the issue of  sadism to a kind of transgressive pleasure really misses the key point: transgression can apply to any rejection or norms for good or bad, but the sadism of the agitator really does not attempt a change of power but the reinforcement of existing power. Sadistic pleasure in punishing others is distinct from the happiness one might obtain in rejecting an oppressive norm or freeing oneself if only partially from domination. Thus it is not the just happiness at rejecting a norm but the disgust toward the other that is part of what the agitator expresses. I don't think Dean’s notion of pleasure in transgression gets at this point which she acknowledges in her analysis.


When one says that Trump is the only honest politician it mean using the term honest in a restricted sense. Surely it can’t be honest to play on the racism and fears of others without regard for the consequences. He is no more authentic than others glitters throughout our history. No doubt we can argue as Christopher Lasch argued some time ago that this era represents the of the elite rather than the revolt of the masses. The elite have withdrawn from contact and engagement with the urban poor and  and no doubt the elite have come to devalue the ordinary citizen, but we ought to be careful not to fall back on the Manichean view of our situation that Dean seems to construct. The capitalist class becomes the embodiment of pure evil.  Even Marx did not go that far. The sadism that Trump expresses is not really as new as Dean thinks, After all as I noted above, Reagan expressed the same type of sadism against the “welfare queens” who live high off the hog on the government dole, while ordinary people have work long and hard for their daily bread. The poor and downtrodden and the outsider are the targets of this sadism. Trump’s version ramps up the nativism and the agitator performance.This growth of American politics,  was already well known for a while -- and it has been effectively harnessed to maintain the status quo and even to support deregulation and,greater inequality and the transfer of wealth.


It seems to me what is different in the further mainstreaming of the agitator is the growing distrust among a segment of the population and growing malaise which doubts not only government but the leaders of the republican party. Where Reagan especially had the trust of the conservative and fearful elements of the population the growing economic and social disquiet has lead to a greater distrust in established authority and the yearning for a “leader” to come in and clean up. In short it is a more radically anti democratic sentiment. Of course 9/11 initiated a new sensibility in many but it has not been mitigated over time but had fused with economic and social malaise.












Friday, August 14, 2015

New School Same Old School

New School, Old School? The New School Fiasco, Again and Again


ACT-UAW Local 7902's rally, held on March 16th, with adjunct faculty, graduate assistants, students, union workers, officials, & supporters at The New School in New York City
© ACT-UAW Local 7902









In mid March, The New School was having problems with its contract negotiations, and Brian Caterino, who had taught there years before as a contract worker -- though he was paid the same measly compensation adjunct faculty were paid -- commented that this was nothing new. 

I asked him if he would write something about this, and he did...



A few weeks ago, part time faculty at The New School held a day of protest over stalled contract negotiations and work conditions. The part timers who teach 85% of The New School courses have been without a contract since August 2014. The current proposals included reductions in health care benefits to part time faculty and other cuts. Part time faculty want -- among other things -- better health care benefits, adequate payment for online courses, and job security. They point out the discrepancy between the wages of part timers and the extravagant salaries paid to some faculty and administration while others just scrape by. 

While part time faculty make about $16,000 per year, the President of The New School, David Van Zandt, earns over $700,000, and Vice President and CEO James Murtha over $1. 2 million. The New School also opened a new building at the cost of $352 million.

The University Center at The New School
© The New School









These compensations continue the precedent set when ex US Senator Bob Kerrey became president. Not only did he get over $900,000 yearly salary, but also he received a $1.2 million golden parachute when he left in 2010 and continued getting a six figure salary as emeritus president. 


Under Kerrey, The New School was reorganized to follow the model of the corporate university rather than the progressive university founded in 1918 by war protesters dismissed from Columbia University and supported by Charles Beard and John Dewey.

Yet the problems at The New School did not begin with Kerrey. This kind of treatment of adjuncts is nothing new at The New School. In the late 90’s, I was involved in a project funded by FIPSE to develop the existing online DIAL program at The New School. This was a distance learning experiment, as most of the faculty lived outside of New York City. 

When I got involved, I was somewhat stunned to find that the pay for online faculty was only around $1000 per course; that was considerably lower than the already poor wages I received teaching part time at a SUNY campus in New York state.

As the project unfolded, it came out that one of the rationales for expanding this program was to generate revenue to support full time faculty. It was assumed that the part time faculty taught elsewhere, and this was just a side gig where they would use material they already had.

Of course this was not true.

Many either had no jobs or were part timers, and although I might have been the loudest voice to complain, few were happy with this situation. Because a lot of us were unhappy, the project was terminated and many of us were too.

I wrote a letter to Lingua Franca criticizing them, but I don’t recall any response. Being far away from NYC, I was pretty much isolated form the situation. 


I really expected more out of The New School, but I can’t say I was totally surprised. The seeming willful ignorance of the situation of part time faculty still reigned. Though I liked the person in charge of the FIPSE project, she seemed to have little notion of the depth of the problem. She claimed to be a kind of Frankfurt critical theorist.

Other critical theorists there -- some of whom I had met as a graduate student and had some contact with -- did not as far as I could see speak up or help. Certainly no tenured faculty contacted me with any message of support.

But then they never do.

One well known faculty at The New School who will remain nameless mentioned something about problems in an interview I read several years later, which I can summarize as follows. "It’s up to adjuncts to organize and do something about it..." 


That’s it.

Some of these same people were prominent critics of Kerrey’s economistic model years later when he took office.

Not being there I can’t say for sure, but every account I read focused on the lack of faculty autonomy and consultation, not on the treatment of adjuncts.


I guess what I got out of the experience was a deepened sense of the aleination from academia that I already felt. Not only in the face of the intransigence of administrators but also in the willful ignorance of faculty to the conditions developing around them... I felt betrayed.


By the late 90’s it was not news that contingent employment was taking over academia. Earlier when I got out of grad school, faculty seemed to think that the part time trend was a blip and that employment would pick up. Even they missed the boat on the real causes of the adjunct problem. 

When things changed they never caught up.

In some disciplines like philosophy, which had been expecting job shortfalls for years, students were subject to a rather draconian ranking system. In the philophy department at a school I attended, faculty would support a small group of those they saw as their star students and push them for jobs; the rest were on their own. Faculty -- whatever their ideological stripe -- simply accepted the logic of the market and never bothered to look at the forces that were shaping the market and their own profession.

Now that things are so apparent that they cannot be denied, they are paying attention.

Given the strength that the forces of marketization have gathered, it might be too late to change things. If they had woken up and acted earlier, we might not be in this situation. But I have come to believe that most tenured faculty are -- despite the usual slings and arrows of fortune -- happy and secure and have little interest in what comes after they retire.

In the end, I did not leave academia, though it left me.





Despite the fact that I had some really strong recommendations and have -- in rather trying circumstances -- managed to publish articles and edited a pretty well known collection in my field, I could never even get a look for a full time position, As I got older too, I found that younger, more compliant people got even the crumbs of part time work.

That’s not a way I was willing to live.

Needless to say, I do not have a lot of respect for my academic colleagues.

For the most part they are phonies who are impressed by pedigree academic or familial, and who defend their position and privilege with pieties about the academy for tenure as a bastion of critical thought, while their peers are struggling.

Support for adjuncts is totally lacking.

The more my situation became desparate, the more I was hung out to dry by full time faculty and peers.


The author of the aforementioned article on The New School protest was a student at The New School just a few years ago and notes the increasing culture of alienation between students, faculty, and administration. While I know full time faculty were extremely unhappy with Bob Kerry, and they gave him a vote of no confidence in 2008, still I did not see the displeasure extended to the teaching conditions of part timers.

I just read another report, this one from the California Faculty Association, which stresses the economic insecurity of our times. They are increasingly discouraged and frustrated with little hope for their own future and that if their profession. The constant anxiety over jobs and money is a real soul destroyer. 


I don’t know anyone who would want to do it anymore.



Letter to Lingua Franca is written below, for your convenience. It is dated August 1997, New York City: 

"I do not condone all of the Mobilization's proposals for change at The New School, nor its offensive attacks on individuals like Nancy Fraser. However, if The New School administration is as unresponsive to student concerns as it has been to those of part-timers, I can understand the students' frustration. I am a contract instructor offering courses in the on-line DIAL (Distance Instruction for Adult Learning) program. As an "independent contractor," I am barred from listing myself as a member of the faculty or as an affiliate of The New School. This bit of legal legerdemain allows the school to avoid paying social security, let alone pension or health care.  
Already, it pays some of the lowest part-time wages I have encountered, $965 per course. Moreover, we have been told that we should not expect raises because the adult division is designed to subsidize the other -- presumably more important -- academic divisions. Nevertheless, we are told how lucky we are to teach at The New School, where we can offer the courses we choose. 
Despite our low wages and lack of job security, our love of teaching and our dedication to our work are supposed to justify sacrifices no tenured academic is asked to make. If tenured faculty at The New School are sympathetic to legitimate institutional reforms, they should demonstrate their commitment by working toward a living wage and decent benefits for part-time faculty." 


BRIAN CATERINO 
ROCHESTER, NY











Brian Caterino is an independent scholar who lives in Rochester, NY. He works in non profit independent media and is the co-editor (with Sanford Schram) of Making Political Science Matter and articles on critical theory, social theory, and social science research. He has also published in Perestroika: the Raucous Rebellion in Political Science as well as articles and reviews in a number of journals. His most current publications are "Phronesis and the Participants Perspective" in The British Journal of Sociology (Volume 64, Issue 4, December 2013) and “Lowering the Basement Floor From Community Colleges to the For-Profit Revolution” In New Political Science.

The Decline of Public Access in the Neo-liberal Media Regime


The Decline of Public Access and Neo-Liberal Media Regimes

                                                                                                             

Public access television has been described as the most interesting and controversial experiment in democratic control of the media” (Kellner)[1] and as America’s Electronic Soapbox. (Linder)[2] It certainly represents the largest success of popular democratic initiatives within the mass media. At its best public access television created participatory public space in which views not heard in broadcast media were given voice, and critical discussion of public issues was facilitated.  Yet in many respects these achievements are under siege: public access TV in the US has undergone a severe decline. The number of stations and funding has decreased. A recent study by the Busked Group and The Alliance for Community Democracy comparing funding between 2005 and 2010, found that in “over 100 communities from 14 states, PEG centers have become endangered or closed down entirely. 45 channels in California alone have been closed 12 in Los Angeles.[3] Other centers have faced serious cuts, with an average funding drop of 40% annually.[4] Many long term operators who have built successful public access operations have been terminated and replaced with more limited alternatives or have had service shut down altogether.

For one group of critics the decline of public access is an inevitable result of the evolution of technology. Public access has been rendered obsolete by the rise of internet technologies. Videos can be posted on You Tube, Facebook or other internet outlets instead of public access television. The ease of making and disseminating videos for these media means, according to these groups, that public access is not needed. The individual has sufficient outlets and opportunities for free expression. For technological optimists this decline is not a bad thing.  It follows from the technological changes in the media brought about by the internet. According to the technological optimist, the internet has brought about a more radical democratization of media. Anyone with an internet connection and high speed broadband can be an internet content provider. The creation of the vast number of independent, producers yields an internet public that is the most democratic found thus far.[5] It promises a rapid and expanding flow of information. Skeptics, however note that the internet has become a source of information overload and a home for flamers and ranters and doesn’t encourage reasoned discussion. In fact for these critics the current generation which has grown up on the internet is largely ignorant of history civics, geography and even math skills. Internet culture fosters the creation of isolated individuals who lack creative spark.[6] For others like Ben Agger, the internet encourages oversharing. Users “divulge more of their inner feelings, opinions and sexuality than they would in person or even over the phone”[7] He thinks oversharing blurs the boundaries between public and private and reproduces pathologies of the self that create unhappiness.

It is mistake I think to draw a direct link between technological development and the expansion of democracy without including social and political factors which dictate the way technologies are employed. The history of information technologies in the industrial era and especially the 20th century have all followed a similar pattern: following a period of anarchic freedom corporate power steps in and centralizes control and authority over new technologies. Already internet and social media providers hold lot power over what can be said on the web.  What looks like a wild frontier may look entirely different five years down the line of telecommunications companies are able to institute policies for differential or tiered access to broadband. 

I think that the democratic potential of the internet in its current form is if not exaggerated both unrealized and open to disruption. Technological optimists equate isolated individual expression with the creation of a vital public life. The internet, like other new technologies certainly does increase the scope of interpersonal contact across physical distance and exchange of information, yet it may not increase reasoned discussion and debate. Certainly it has not yet eclipsed television as the dominant media as critics claim. For the poor and the elderly internet connectivity and mastery is not always accessible. More important the internet is mostly privately owned. It does not represent an open public forum free from interference.

The technological evolution argument fails to take sufficient notice of the political/economic forces in the era of neo-liberal capitalism, I argue that the primary threat to public access is not the internet, or the evolution of a new technology that supersedes television, it is a more closely connected to issues of media consolidation the attempt to  neo-liberal policies that seek to reduce the public obligations of broadcast and telecommunications media,  These changes threaten the ability of public access to operate as an alternative or oppositional public sphere. Waning commitment to the pubic obligations of broadcasters had a major effect on the democratic character of the media, and these forces work to limit political participation and a democratic public life.  Public Access advocates have not always thematized the nature of this threat.  While Sue Buske of the aforementioned Buske Group notes that the biggest threat to public access is the emergence of statewide franchises which bypass the well-established local franchise agreements and lead to the elimination and /or underfunding of access centers[8], she fails to put this insight in the political/economic context. It is tied to the neo-liberal attempt to reformulate and deregulate media policy. Many access proponents adopt a liberal marketplace of ideas approach which does not allow much criticism of market processes. This neo-liberal political economic constellation rose to prominence before the internet, however its consequences for public media is just now becoming fully apparent. More than just an economic outlook that had led to “deregulation” and concentration of media power, neo-liberalism also seeks to forcibly dismantle the achievement of the Keynesian welfare state that accepted public goods and social rights. This neo-liberal communications policy is implicitly and sometimes explicitly opposed to the maintenance of a lively public apace in which popular democratic participation in the media can be facilitated. It also discouraged notions of citizenship that rest on social rights and the development of capacities to be effective citizens.

After an historical discussion of public interest obligations behind the rise of public access, I want to argue that neo-liberalism impacts public media in several important ways. The decline of public interest obligations has led to a decrease in focus on public access. First of all media concentration has an effect on public media when the increasing power of a few corporations  allows it to bypass established procedures and force changes in the relationship between cable companies municipalities and citizens and changes in the philosophies of regulation affect the FCC: the waning commitment to the public obligations of broadcasters means less funding and less visibility for public media: changes the nature of non-profits lead them to seek strategies that stress profit-making operations or at the least administrative and managerial philosophies that stress results, rather than commitment to social rights and citizens participation.  I think taken together these elements create a legal context and a political economic one that leads to shrinking public media.




[1] Douglas Kellner Television and the Crisis of Democracy Boulder: Westview Press, 1990
[2] Laura Linder Public Access Television: America’s Electronic Soapbox New York Prager 1999
[3] The Buske Group, Analysis of Recent Peg Access Center Closures, Funding Cutbacks and Related Threats Prepared for Alliance for Communications Democracy April 8, 2011
[4] Lindsey Sanders, “Cracking the Case of Disappearing Public access channels” the save the news blog http://www.savethenews.org/blog/11/05/11/cracking-case-disappearing-public-access-channels
 
[5] See for example Mike Rosen Molina, Public-Access TV Fights for Relevance in the YouTube Age Media Shift  December 17, 2008 http://www.pbs.org/mediashift/2008/12/public-access-tv-fights-for-relevance-in-the-youtube-age352/
[6] Robert McCloskey Digital Disconnect: How capitalism is turning the Internet against democracy (New York: The New Press, 2013). For a brief discussion Samuel Morse’s view of the public uses of the telegraph (he wanted it to be owned by the government to avoid commercialization) in the 19th century see Ralph Engelmann, Public Radio and Television in America: A Political History Thousand Oaks Sage 1996 12-13.
[7] Ben Agger, Oversharing: Presentations of the Self in the Internet Age Routledge 2012 p xi
[8] Jeff Delong Support, funding dry up for community access TV USA Today November 4, 2010 http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/news/nation/2010-11-04-accesstv04_ST_N.htm