Eric Hobsbawm (1917-2012)

British historian and truth teller Eric Hobsbawm died yesterday at age 95.

Requiescat in pace.

 

Callenbach Considered

Ernest Callenbach passed on a couple of months ago.

I first encountered his writing in a college introductory philosophy course.   The professor was a committed environmental activist, a devotee of “deep ecology.”  So, instead of reading the works of Plato, Spinoza, or Sartre, we were assigned less hoary tomes such as The Monkey Wrench Gang by Edward Abbey and Steps to Inner Peace by Peace Pilgrim.  These weren’t bad books to read, but they weren’t what I signed up for. 

Adolescent wiseass that I was, I seldom passed up an opportunity to make snarky comments or ask loaded questions impugning the professor’s beliefs.  My bad attitude toward the class made me not fully appreciate its highlights, such as the time Norwegian philosopher Arne Næss guest lectured.  But the one thing I remember most from this class I took more than twenty-five years ago was gritting my teeth through Ecotopia Emerging by Ernest Callenbach.

Ecotopia Emerging, published in 1981, is the prequel to Callenbach’s earlier novel Ecotopia (1975).  The premise of both books is that northern California, Oregon, and Washington have seceded from the United States to create a self-isolated green society.  In certain respects the novels were quite prescient.  Some of Callenbach’s predictions have come to pass, such as widespread recycling, car-free zones in some cities and planned greenbelts in others, as well as a developing trend toward more sustainable forms of transportation and agriculture.  On a darker note, the eco-anarchism embraced by his characters is a premonition of the ELF and other spectral manifestations of the environmentalist movement.

Mr. Callenbach has a deserved reputation as an environmentalist elder statesman whose principles are aptly summed in his final published essay.  I’ve retained a certain ambivalence about his best known writings.  As literature, as with so many works of fiction meant to explicate a philosophic or ideological stance, they simply don’t hold up.  Probably my main objection to both the Ecotopia novels, then and now, is their flakiness.  Callenbach’s utopia is constructed from an amalgam of green sci fi tech, New Age spiritualism, and 1960s free love.  Ecotopia often says more about Callenbach’s personal biases and private fantasies than it does any realistic vision for the future. 

Moreover, the novels betray a decided lack of political correctness by today’s standards.  An aspect I find simultaneously amusing and cringe-inducing is the promiscuous, syncretic appropriation of Native American cultural motifs by Ecotopia’s blissful natives.  Callenbach occasionally indulged in ethnic stereotyping, as seen in his description of urban enclaves dubbed "Soul City" whose inhabitants seem to have been lifted directly from an early Seventies blaxploitation movie.  His answers to such perennial social ills as violence are positively risible. In a memorable episode from the first novel, two men, decked out in war paint and drugged on psychedelics, square off in hand-to-hand combat, after which the winner carries off a maiden spectator as his prize.  This is supposed to be Ecotopia’s placebo for war and aggressive team sports.  Clearly, Callenbach was not above objectifying minorities or women to illustrate his ideal world.  

While the novels’ shortcomings often get in the way of the message, many of Callenbach’s ideas are nonetheless worth serious consideration.  For instance, Ecotopia’s correctional system is just that: Instead of large, industrial-style prisons, we see small numbers of offenders housed in the community, with their partners or family members if they so desire, gainfully employed in regular jobs but otherwise confined until their sentences are up.  Another attractive aspect of Ecotopian life is its freedom from electronic media and a return to more traditional amusements as music, poetry, and storytelling.  Ecotopia's city planning precepts are a harbinger of contemporary New Urbanism, with housing, schools, and shops contained within communitarian, kid-friendly neighborhoods. 

But by far the strongest theoretical element is Ecotopia’s social, political, and economic decentralization.  Capitalism hasn’t disappeared entirely; instead, small enterprises make up the economy’s backbone.  Worker self-management prevails, and even small family businesses must allow hired employees to take part in management decisions and profit sharing.  Because big corporations no longer exist, this obviates the need for a large state bureaucracy to regulate (and protect) them.  Ecotopia is politically devolved with as many policies made at the community level as practicable.   I’m very sympathetic to the idea of subsidiarity as social order and this element alone makes Ecotopia appealing (if only in an abstract sense).

Its virtues notwithstanding, there are better alternatives to Callenbach’s fictional paradise on earth.  The primary flaw of the Ecotopia novels is that they are too simplistic.  Callenbach to the contrary, we cannot simply compost, meditate, and screw our way to a just and equitable world.  For me, a more realistic view of an environmentally sustainable future can be found in the novel Pacific Edge, part of the Three Californias trilogy by Kim Stanley Robinson.  (Robinson, incidentally, is the editor of the anthology Future Primitive: The New Ecotopias.)  The world of Pacific Edge is much different from and yet quite the same as that of the present day.  People have mostly embraced environmentalist principles and green technology, but many contemporary evils persist: Avaricious developers clash with anti-growth activists before town councils and zoning boards, the profit motive continues to conflict with human need, and politics remain the art of compromise. 

Robinson’s future is more plausible because it accounts for the truth that progress is almost always evolutionary, with few instances of punctuational change.  Even the swiftest, most violent revolutions do not produce the rapid degree of sociopolitical change that Callenbach appears to propose in the Ecotopia series.  Whatever victories are won by the green movement, rest assured they will be incremental and none of us know what the end state will look like.  But change must be imagined to be realized.  The lesson of Ernest Callenbach’s writing is that dreams of even an imperfect future are better than accepting an even more flawed present.

© 2012 The Unassuming Scholar

In Memoriam – Joe Bageant

Joe Bageant died a year ago last week.

I never knew him personally, but I felt his loss nonetheless.  I discovered Joe’s writing sometime early in the reign of Bush the Second.  I was immediately drawn to his straightforward, often blunt commentary on the death of the American dream and the power of hierarchy in our supposedly classless society.  For my money, Joe Bageant was hands down the pithiest observer of America’s debased mores during the ‘aughts. 

A son of rural northern Virginia, Bageant dropped out of high school to enlist in the Navy.  Building a career as a journalist and editor, he only began writing political commentary during his last decade of life after returning to his hometown.  His first book, Deer Hunting with Jesus, was a sharply-focused snapshot of blue collar America that looked beyond the hackneyed trailer park-country music-NASCAR fan trope.  His subsequent effort, Rainbow Pie, described his childhood.  Probably only Jim Goad has done a better job as chronicler of folks from the other side of the tracks.

Bageant did have his flaws.  He tended to idealize his redneck neighbors while downplaying darker elements of their lives.  Sometimes he overreached in his efforts to humanize his subjects.  One example was his essay, “Mash Note for the ‘Girl with the Leash,’” about convicted Abu Ghraib guard Lynndie England, averring “she never had a chance.”  (For her part England has shown a decided lack of contrition, saying in a recent interview her victims got “the better end of the deal.”)  On the whole, though, Bageant drew his characters with nuanced lines, allowing them to rise above the stereotypes.

Also, the recurring point in his writing—our country is not and never was a true meritocracy—was wholly valid and cannot be emphasized enough.  The Matthew Effect is very real, and there’s a small but visible segment of the population who were born on third base believing they’ve hit a triple.  Meanwhile, the rest of us just hope for a turn at bat.  The fundamental truth is that one’s origins profoundly affect one’s life chances.  And life chances matter, not least in terms of material success.  Some of us overcome adverse circumstances, many of us do not.  The negative traits we popularly associate with the poor are partly a response to immiseration, of being stuck in a corner you can never seem to get out of. 

Understanding is not excusing, however.  Bageant reminded us often that the American working class has been committing slow suicide.  The dirty secret of the Republican Party’s triumph was that it appealed to working class whites’ prejudices to get them to vote against their own interests.  By pandering to blue collar biases conservative policymakers have been able to mask the broader implications of their goals, which is to harness the forces unleashed by deregulation and globalization to create an appropriately servile underclass. Social marginalization is the sine qua non of the process: In this narrative the poor suffer from a fundamental flaw, undisciplined offenders against the Protestant work ethic.  (Charles Murray’s latest polemic is just one of many volleys fired in the propaganda war on the disadvantaged, with the twist that this time Murray is now blaming poor whites rather than blacks for their lack of economic success.)

Joe Bageant knew, as did Pierre Bourdieu, that economic capital correlates with social capital.  Opinion makers in our culture (as in all cultures) tend to reify their beliefs, obviating any relativism of taste and social positioning.  Joe also knew that dominance on the narrative field reflects the real dominance in socioeconomic relations.  It’s for this reason, among many others, that we should remember his work.

Rest in peace, Joe.

© 2012 The Unassuming Scholar

A Lament for a Lost Movement

I was born and raised in a “blue” state, and I live there still.  However, I also spent my childhood in a small rural town.  Coming of age during the Reagan era, I absorbed a lot of the conventional wisdom of the time.

Given my upbringing, it’s no surprise I developed progressive views relatively late.  But having lived through the past decade, I’m amazed that more people haven’t turned leftward.  In fact, I’ve been hard pressed to find a place where my neighbors share my ideas. 

For the last few years I’ve lived in a mountain resort community where I teach at the local college.  When I first arrived in Treetop (not its real name), it seemed like just the nice, free-thinking sort of place I’d been searching for.  I hoped to find friends who thought and felt as I do.  I thought it might be the where I’d realize a long-nurtured ambition to start a free alternative school.  I yearned to breathe free in the clean alpine air.

Treetop does have a reputation for having a free-spirited, youthful, alt vibe.  What I discovered underneath, however, was a pretty typical small town, right down to the weekly Rotary, Kiwanis, and Lions Club breakfast meetings.  The conversation at the wine and cheese parties differs little from what you’d hear in the suburbs.  Town ordinances ensure that one downtown building looks much like all the others.  

I shared my misgivings with an acquaintance, telling her I wished Treetop was more socially progressive.  She was taken aback.  “But Treetop is very progressive,” she protested.  “We have snowboarders, artists, and yoga studios.  I listen to NPR and read The Huffington Post every morning!”

I didn’t bother to argue.  While Treetop isn’t exactly the kind of place Sinclair Lewis would have satirized, neither is it a refuge for aspiring bohemians or dissidents.  My exchange with the neighbor underlines an important fact of American political life.  Progressivism is a fringe movement, probably more so than at any other time in our history.  Oh, we have a loose cultural tolerance we call liberalism.  But being a liberal is largely a matter of style over substance, just another meaningless fashion statement.  I blame this on the legacy of the 1960s.  More precisely, I blame it on people taking away the wrong lessons from that era.  The individualistic, do-your-own-thing, let-it-all-hang-out countercultural ethos seeped into the mainstream without transforming the soul of “square” society.  This is why you have kids today with long hair, tattoos, and body piercings who vote Republican and unabashedly seek business careers.   

The biggest roadblock to reviving progressivism is our essential, small “c,” conservatism.  We don’t like change.  We stubbornly believe individual initiative and hard work conquer all.  Despite mounting evidence to the contrary, we think the system is basically fair and should stay the way it is.  Most importantly, we don’t want to lose whatever social and economic privileges we’ve managed to hold on to.   In short, our national narrative and decades of propaganda have convinced us progressivism just isn’t a good idea.  It helps explain why the Occupy movement has failed to take off.  It hasn’t been police repression or official harassment.  It's been public skepticism and apathy.

So, what’s the solution?  In my humble opinion:

What we need is a compelling counter-narrative.  We need to take back the symbolism and heroes of our past.  We need to remind ourselves of the taken for granted gains made by our forebears.  We must let go of our preconceived notions.  This is easier said than done, but I believe it has to happen.  It may be a bridge too far to win over older generations whose members feel they have too much to lose.  Perhaps we can count on the open mindedness of youth to rebuild the movement.

To build a future movement, we have to look to the past.  We must revisit the experience of the 1960s New Left, the political movement that faded into historical oblivion even as the decade’s music and fashion became cultural icons.  Our goal should be nothing short of a revival of the New Left.   This next New Left must not simply engage in activism.  It must win the cultural war against reaction and corporate hegemony.  It will have to rely on moral suasion to remake our basic cultural values.              

This last charge – to fundamentally remake our collective beliefs – is the most critical and the most difficult.  I’ll mull the possibilities in a future post.

© 2012 The Unassuming Scholar