Further materials towards a theory of the man child

Ha, ha very interesting Minx! I actually have been reading Steven Pinker's book on violence. So his thesis is that these things (capitalism, democracy, wealth and peace) go hand-in-hand (well, actually he argues democracy and trade and then wealth before peace - but I haven't finished the book yet!). The cases you give are interesting but America isn't the only liberal democracy we have so do you think you're extrapolating a bit? It is true that liberal democracies are more transparant than alternative regimes - they have to be to engender trust in other trade partners (other countries who are like them i.e. liberal democracies). Pinker also argues that lib. dem. do go to war but with much less frequency and lasts shorter periods etc. As you say, I'm not sure how this extends to economic sanctions. Happy reading (I will do so as soon as I replace the Kindle I broke, grr).

Thank you LeBFG I have just done a quick google. I will do some reading. But my first thoughts are:

*Democratic leaders are forced to accept culpability for war losses to a voting public;

Has Tony been tried as a war criminal yet.

*Publicly accountable statesmen are more inclined to establish diplomatic institutions for resolving international tensions;

Well I guess the WTO, The FED, IMF, world bank are orgainisations, but all of these institutions further capitalist hegemony, set up trade barriers and indebt third world nations. They offer loans and aid but only on the basis that countries neo-liberalise their economies, ie allow corporations, overwhelmingly American to exploit for profit, make all public services private etc,

*Democracies are less inclined to view countries with adjacent policy and governing doctrine as hostile;

This is true but I don't think this is to do with politics as much as it is to do with economics. During the cold war Maggie wasn't protecting us from the soviet menace, she was trying to further and protect the interest of capital.

*Democracies tend to possess greater public wealth than other states, and therefore eschew war to preserve infrastructure and resources;

Yes.....but if you look at history you see that those countries in the West developed first, they became capitalist countries, they created empires to exploit the natural wealth of other countries. Although we don't have colonies we are still acting on behalf of capital to exploit and demand access to resources. We are wealthy because they are not, our wealth being built on this inequality.

Chile was a democracy with a democratically elected leader but he was a socialist, so the Americans stirred up a coup and supported a dictator who went on to kill millions of his own people in order to neo-liberalise the Chilean economy. We all know what a nasty man Pinochet was but Maggie had her reasons for liking him!

Cuba is interesting, America has tried everything and still they hold out. They have one of the best health care systems in the world, an excellent education system and a longer life expectancy than us, they are also contrary to popular belief a democracy.

Iraq is interesting, we sponsored Saddam, we gave aid to his dictatorship when he was gassing Kurds but when it became clear he wouldn't privatise the oil and let in uncle sam, we waged an economic war. It could be argued that we killed more Iraqis before the war than during the war because of the sanctions.

Similar situation in Korea, we use carrot and stick and they won't budge. Capitalism needs to expand, it needs to seek new areas of investment and exploitation. It will not tolerate socialist countries or even countries that won't privatise every last thing. Its what people on the left refer to as imperialism.

The theory of Peaceful democracy I would think is right wing subterfuge, its ideology that those who benefit from the system want you to believe and endorse. I will do some more reading but I am a bit cynical moi

Thanks for the book recommendations!

It's the democratic peace theory Minx. I guess the 'peace' comes from the controlled nature of the exploitation. Better than all out war I suppose, at least when that is the alternative.

Can I ask what you have been reading LeBFG to get a very different perspective I would recommend Michael Parenti Against Empire and America Besieged.

I agree with Freya, the only reason we appear to live in a peaceful society ( i can't quite bring myself to say democracies in regards to the Liberal west) is because we are exploiting and war mongering across other societies.

I have just read some more of the Materials, anyone else read IV "the young girl as commodity" I'm not certain but I get the impression that the figure of the young girl has been used as an analogy for the commodity "money" What do others think?

As for people accepting they're going to have to give things up, it happens anyway, whether you want to give them up or not. The generation I am in do not have the standard of living that people of my parents' generation had. My children don't have the childhood I had. They'll facing challenges in adult life that I haven't had. It has happened whether we like it or not. It has happened more severely in other countries. The population of Greece have not exactly had a choice in losing things like some basic health care. It just went, and very rapidly. Some of the care of the vulnerable and disabled has just gone in this country in the last ten years, and the general population has pretty much accepted it. We haven't all taken to the streets, either out of moral indignation about what has been done to others or fear of what happens to us if we become disabled. We've pretty much let it happen.

Our liberal democracies are generally only peaceable and provide basic human rights if you are a citizen of them. They are not peaceable to the countries they strip resources from. Many of the products we consume are based on the suffering, slavery, exploitation and war in other countries. How peaceable would we be if we had to consume only that which we had produced or fairly gained from other countries?

The viable alternative to capitalism will be those systems that replace it when it collapses. Some of them will probably not be very nice. it's a good idea to try and work on the nicer alternatives now rather than running around in a state of complete trauma and misery when the inevitable collapse happens.

This thread is very interesting (just about hanging in there understanding it ). I've been reading about the theory of peaceable societies and liberal democracies going hand-in-hand - and by extention, these socities are (all?) capitalist. I think this reflects human nature pretty fundamentally - we all want to keep our slice of the cake. And obviously, peaceable socties are good for everyone - I can't imagine women's rights would be bettered if we were constantly in a state of war.

This reminds me of a debate I have on an unrelated theme - my friend thinks the world will come to protect the planet/natural ressources etc through the force of education. She's committed to this. I always argue that people are fundamentally too selfish to ever do this. At times, an intellectual elite may agree or campaign to do this but it's an idea that can't 'spread'.

In terms of capitalism, people would have to stop consuming (in excess of their basic needs). I've seen very few people who would even accept to give up their yearly holiday!

I'm sure the ancient Egyptians, the Assyrians and those isolated tribes think that they have reached the pinnacle of human civilisation too I'm sure slave owners thought that they had reached a stage of economic development that couldn't be improved as well.

I'm sure at some point humanity will look back on this age and think we are savages for allowing people to starve, for exploiting Africa and other nations, allowing child labour so we can wear cheap clothes, privatising water and health and all the other many things we are driven to accept so that the wheels stay on this outdated and barbaric system, one we wage war to extend and protect, killing many millions of people.

Are there viable alternatives to capitalism?

Shot answer: No
Male or female no one wants to be average. We inherently judge people, we want status.
That's what give people the drive to improve on themselves thus making the world a slightly more comfortable place to live.

Are there any liberal democracies that aren't also capitalist in essence? I wonder how these things go hand-in-hand...if we can't get away from people exploiting other people then we just have to plod on, working away from inside the system to make improvements.

No, unfortunately ended with Marxist feminists and materialist/socialist feminists in different camps. And I think you have nailed it really, if you go back to the writings and read it, you won't come away with a different understanding that is particularly female centric . The odd thing is though because men have been dominant they develop a position that is often exclusionary to women. Or to turn that on its head, is it that feminists in the late 70s felt that they needed a different theoretical starting point. But then men as producers focused on production and couldn't see how the theory extended to reproduction.

Marx employed the concept of class more flexibly than many socialists do now. He referred to women as a class,

He compared the position of women to ?slaves,? within the bourgeois family. ?In private property of every type, the slavery of the members of the family......always implicit since they are made use of and exploited by the head of the family.?

Classical Marxist theory [insert male centric and reconstituted for male approval, trade unionist misogynists etc] defined class in terms of exploitation, how surplus product/surplus labor was appropriated from the workers.

Classical Marxism applied this concept of class to former modes of production, feudal etc, but that would also include slave labour, which of course is unpaid labour, the slave is owned and exploited for no pay. Much as women were historically seen as property that reproduced a product (child) the value appropriated by slave owner (husband) in ways such as dowries and exchange of property between families and inheritance.

And I totally get what CurryEater says, what else can we do but just keep plodding on.

I don't know anything about Evo-Psych, there was a poster a while back who knew quite a bit about it.

My starting point is always historical materialism. Some feminist have tried to develop a historical materialism that is more feminist, critiquing Marx and expanding upon his theory. I'm not certain that the undertaking was necessary, except that Marx was taken up by men, analysed by men, understood and explained.......by men. So you end up with a male centric reading, ho hum, as with everything I suppose!

But it is the male pride that needs assurance or is it to do with patrilineal inheritance?

Must read Foucault, never have, adds to the to do list.

I have just read all of the Nina Power piece. She says "What, ultimately, would it mean to let the Young-Girl speak for herself and not through the categories imposed upon her by a culture that heralds her as the metaphysical apex of civilization while simultaneously denigrating her, or even the categories that Tiqqun mobilize to take her apart in a subtly different way? Behind every Young-Girl?s arse hides a bunch of rich white men: the task is surely not, then, to destroy the Young-Girl, but to destroy the system that makes her, and makes her so unhappy, whoever ?she? is" I don't know but so far reading the material, I haven't yet encountered the notion that the "young girl" is responsible for the predicament. Instead it seems to say that as people become more invested in themselves, more introvert, anxious, depressed "exist­ence has become a battleground upon which neuroses, phobias, somatizations, depression, and anxiety" are played out, that capital again seeks to fill the void with promises of fixes, more consumer products to cure the individuals malaise.

In fact Tiqqun seems to liken the colonization of the person by capitalism to a drug rather than as a social system that values everything and nothing. The condition isn't social in the respect that it is about relations between people, but maybe that is the point. maybe relations between people have been obscured, are no longer visable because we are all becoming narcissistic and self absorbed. Not only does it prevent people from understanding the exploitation inherent in capitalism but stops anyone from noticing the inequality in the first place.

To say that the young girl is the apex of civilisation and then to denigrate her, seems to mirror the conflicting messages women receive, go to work and make use of your education, stay at home with the children, we know you feel guilty. Women is needed as worker, consumer and mother. We must invest to realise social, emotional, sexual capital. We must also invest our energies into the next generation, this requires working, consuming and mothering. Men really are superfluous to the needs of capital and yet we still have the rich white men.

So if the history of humanity is driven by property relations and competition between men, they really have started an end game. mmmm, I may of course got this all wrong!

I see where you're going. Some EP is gumph but the better stuff makes predictions that then then turn out to be supported by the evidence. What makes me crazy is how the press and other 'interested' parties like to interprete it as 'biological determinism': the debate has been had - our understanding of the brain (as it is at the present moment) does not support this.

Buffy, if you're interested, a lot of this comes from evolutionary physcology (sorry, bit of dirty word on these boards).