Letters to the Editor - Nov/Dec 2009 
A NON-TRIUMPHALIST VIEW OF GOD
I want to respond to Jay Michaelson's excellent article (Tikkun, September/October 2009) -- in which he brought to our attention the presence of true monism native to Judaism -- and thank him for the richness of the background and the quotations. He makes the case for a change of perspective based on an appreciation of the limitations of the traditional model. Given the paradigm shift that we are now experiencing, the old model can inform our thinking but is no longer sufficient in and of itself ... we can no longer pretend to believe in the ultimate reality of dualism. All of what happens in this world takes place within a single system, which includes both what we call the good and the evil.
It is true that there is that element of ayn od milvado, that total oneness and the nonexistence of anything else still God, and the very sense of the tradition that brings us that awareness, and that revelation also has some very important things to say about how we are to deal in the lower regions of creation and awareness.
Let me spell this out: When we speak of Ayn Sof, the infinite, that is the one who was before there was a world. As the hymn has it, you were the master of the universe before there was a world. About this thing -- when you think about the before, it certainly is not in the temporal sense, but as if to say prior to the reality that we inhabit, which is the second part of the Adon olam hymn. It says that during that time when everything was made according to his will, from the Big Bang to the last Black Hole, He is Melech, He is King in that Divine present.
"After all will be consumed, He will reign alone." And at that time we are right back to the Ayn Sof, that was, that is, and that will be one. However, there are other elements that we have to keep in mind which are the worlds that are known as Beriyah, Yetzirah, and the plane on which we live, Assiyah.
The insistence on monism has also been found in Vedanta where they speak about advaita, non-duality. Still Ramakrishna was very well aware that he had to engage on another level, which was an awareness of the non-duality within the duality. Devotion calls for duality, the devotee and her Adored One. The possibility of there being an I-Thou relationship is what we intuit is the intent and will of that Ayn Sof.
In this way when our sages state that "the Holy One blessed be He, had a desire, a longing, a passion to dwell with us here below" and everything else that comes with "make Me a sanctuary and I will dwell with you" and with it come all the instructions as to how to live life in such a way that the entire world becomes the sanctuary. In the I-Thou relationship, which is the place of the heart, there the monism does not work.
Reb Shneur Zalman, whom he quoted, speaks of a level that seems way beyond our capacity -- a level that we could reach in total self-abnegation and the deepest surrender in which we become the naught for his being. I don't like the way in which Bittul Hayesh is being used. Most of the time, the translation speaks of a total removal of personhood. This is not quite what we get in the anthropic principle that speaks about the end of the action of the world of action in which we find ourselves arising first in the divine thought. It is here that we have to allow for that willingness to create human beings who will mirror the Ayn Sof to Itself. Therefore, I like to speak instead of the destruction of the self as the transparency of the self. The self still is whole but being transparent without resistance or opacity to God. Existing in transparency, an instrument for the divine will we can take on the responsibility that we have in relation to tikkun olam. It is the point Tikkun constantly makes for tikkun olam, not only for ourselves, but for all the species.
We need to surrender our narcissism in which we each see ourselves as prime subject. We need to surrender to being a cell in the organic Melech Ha-Olam, a bio-monism for the planet in which we are all living cells contributing to the planet's life.
The reason why this is not simply a heresy is because the monistic approach is in greater harmony with what we know about the composition of the universe. In transcending dualism with monism, we are now able to create a theology that allows us to massage the differences between the particularly Jewish and the universal, so that we can develop "files" of our own that are compatible with those of others.
I believe that our question today is whether we can reformat Jewish tradition in such a way that the old files of rabbinic and biblical Judaism will remain compatible with what we create. Will we have to jettison a lot of what we have inherited? Some of it is, without a doubt, incompatible in the present.
We need to write new Jewish software that is intentionally created/designed so that it can read files created in traditional applications and operating systems that are no longer current. Such software needs also to be capable for Judaism to be more ecumenical and in harmony with the needs of current life ... we need to engage poets and dreamers to breathe life into our mythic world, which is in great need of re-enchantment. Without entering into a feeling/empathic connection with Earth, all our intellectual cogitation will not save human life on this planet.
REB ZALMAN HIYYAH SCHACHTER-SHALOMI
Boulder, CO
David Theo Goldberg and Saree Makdisi (Tikkun, September/October 2009) argue that an aggressive and well-funded pro-Israel lobby attempts to silence alternative views on American campuses. This may be true in some cases, but it is also only one part of the story.
In Australia (and almost certainly in most Western countries including the United States), there is a well-organized pro-Palestinian lobby that argues for the destruction of the existing State of Israel, and for its replacement by an Arab State of Greater Palestine. This lobby has achieved virtual hegemony in key sections of the academic and intellectual Left and actively seeks to silence two-state advocates who attempt to present a balanced view of the Middle East conflict that supports moderates and attacks extremists on both sides. This lobby, which sadly includes some so-called left-wing Jews, uses all the obnoxious tactics described by Goldberg and Makdisi, including the use of poison letters to universities in an attempt to intimidate their critics.
Goldberg and Makdisi's contribution would have been far more useful if they had exposed extremists on both sides of the debate.
PHILIP MENDES
Victoria, Australia
What is particularly sad and frustrating about the phenomenon described in "The Trial of Israel's Campus Critics" is that the people who attack critics of Israel also claim to bear the banner of a religion that has something called The Ten Commandments. Commandment Nine is commonly translated as: "Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbor."
That these people bear false witness against Israel critics in the court of public opinion does not speak well of their adherence to the religion they claim to represent. Since the tenet "the ends justify the means" is not acceptable in Jewish tradition, these actions proclaim the hypocrisy of these so-called "defenders of the faith."
WILLIAM GLASNER
Victor, NY
The article "The Trial of Israel's Campus Critics" is very consistent with my observations.
I have a simple (possibly naïve) question. When assertions/accusations are far from the truth and are damaging to someone's reputation, are our libel laws possible tools to help fight this stuff? If not, what other recourses might there be? I believe progressives for peace need some powerful tools to effectively counter these assaults.
JOE RITACCO
via email
In their recent article, professors Makdisi and Goldberg tried to discredit my report on the Gaza war symposium sponsored by UCLA's Center for Near East Studies last January. Yet in defending the event, they confirmed what many attendees and I described as a biased, anti-intellectual attack on Israel.
They admit the symposium was unbalanced, writing that it would have been difficult to find an "advocate" of Israel's alleged violations of international and humanitarian law. It did not occur to them that the "other side" wouldn't take this position but would argue that Israel is not guilty as charged because, in fact, it did not commit these violations, a view supported by ample evidence. Such evidence would have been included if this were a serious academic event.
They tried to prove the event was "civil" -- yet acknowledged policemen were needed, and that the audience often applauded, even admitting this is unusual for symposia (though not for political rallies). They didn't mention the extremist statements that elicited applause, such as the declaration that nations like Israel should be "the enemies of all mankind."
They never challenged my accuracy about their comments, which are also available on tape, though the audience reaction and question period are not on it. Makdisi did not deny his preposterous claim that Israel releases a gas to stunt the growth of Palestinian children, or that he manipulated facts to malign Israel's motives, such as his mistranslation of Israeli leaders' comments.
Instead, they accused me of "ad hominem" arguments -- not citing one since there were none -- and then engaged exclusively in such attacks. They didn't check to see that I am a historian with a Ph.D. from UC Berkeley and do teach a course at UC Irvine. They attacked Professor Judea Pearl, arguing that he gullibly accepted my report even though he consulted other reports, spoke with students who had attended, and listened to the tapes.
Disturbingly, their main ad hominem attack is that Professor Pearl and I, "StandWithUs," and other groups "support Israel," which they think should automatically disqualify our views. They believe that Zionism and the Jewish State are -- and should remain -- indefensible. Paradoxically, they don't see their own impassioned activism (which is anti-Israel rather than pro-Palestinian) or their heated advocacy for dismantling Israel with a one-state solution as disqualifying the reliability of their own extremist views.
They complain they are victimized by groups like StandWithUs that challenge them and their compatriots in the increasingly strident anti-Israel lobby. They accuse us of trying to silence them, while simultaneously demanding that our voices be silenced. They engage in intellectual thuggery while pleading victimhood because some dare to challenge their methods, their assault on serious scholarly inquiry, their intellectual responsibility, and their fairness.
Those who hope Israelis and Palestinians realize their national aspirations should be troubled by this demonization of Israel, which fosters intolerance instead of understanding. Those who believe in scholarly integrity, professional standards for faculty, and the free exchange of ideas should be disturbed by this effort to hijack the University for a partisan political agenda parading as scholarship and victimhood.
ROBERTA P. SEID
Santa Monica, CA
David Theo Goldberg and Saree Makdisi reply:
We are grateful to those who sent comments appreciative of our essay "The Trial of Israel's Campus Critics." Philip Mendes's letter calls for the sort of greater balance about which we are critical in the article. Treating unequals with the sort of equality called for in the letter constitutes another way of deflecting criticism without taking seriously, let alone discussing, the sorts of issues we have raised.
We are truly surprised about the complaints Roberta Seid directs at our article. In taking to the field for a second time, she carries with her another set of demonstrably false claims. Anyone who thinks for a moment that there might be an ounce of merit in what she has to say has only to compare the lurid claims of her letter with the publicly available live recording of the actual event: (www.international.ucla.edu/cnes/podcasts/article.asp?parentid=104802). For example -- as the podcast proves -- at no point on the panel (or anywhere else for that matter) did Saree Makdisi claim, as Seid alleges in her letter, "that Israel releases a gas to stunt the growth of Palestinian children." Nor did anyone on the panel say, as Seid alleges in her letter, "that nations like Israel should be ‘the enemies of all mankind.'" Lacking any capacity to recognize irony in our article, she cannot prevent herself from turning a standard academic event (about sensitive political issues, police presence and all) into a political rally. Even if Seid imagined she heard these things during the talk, the least she could have done before writing about it is to check the podcast to make sure that what she thought she heard was actually said; even if she couldn't be bothered to check the podcast before writing her original piece, she could certainly have done so before writing this letter. Seid's letter suggests that she is deeply confused between what was actually said, what she heard, what she imagined she heard, what she was herself writing down, and indeed what we actually wrote in the article. We suggest that Seid simply listen carefully and accurately to the podcasts, and carefully reread what we wrote. If she does, and finds herself still imagining that things were said and written which were not, there is, alas, very little if any grounds for exchange. We are all in favor of debate and discussion, as our article emphasizes. What, after all, is "extremist" about a plea to find a political accommodation that would allow people to live together peacefully? But to attempt to exchange ideas with someone who persistently imagines that one is saying or writing things that one is not constitutes neither debate nor discussion but rather a simple waste of time.
ALICE WALKER ON GAZA AND RWANDA
It's one thing to run articles with which you have strong disagreements in the name of publishing a wide diversity of opinion. It's quite another to give up your long-standing editorial and intellectual integrity just so you can sprawl the name of a famous person on your cover.
Alice Walker's vitriolic screed (Tikkun, September/October 2009) is a perfect example of someone who left home with her mind made up and was not going to allow facts, actual history, or reason to stand between her and her prejudgments. And so, in her narrow, prejudiced world, it's white, European, colonial men who cause all the pain now suffered by women of color. The fact that the perpetrators of violence upon women in Eastern Africa are young African men who were not born when the last Belgian left that part of the world is of no import to her.
Her version of Israeli history and ignorance of Arab and Muslim culture is so one-sided as to read like an Ahmadinejad speech. And I say this as someone who has opposed the occupation since 1972. Gaza women's support for Hamas and the rocketing of kindergartens in Sderot; or why Israel would build a security wall in the first place; or how Israeli shelling of Gaza is always in response to the latest missile, mortar, or sniper attacks are all just inconvenient truths that don't fit her thesis. Nor does the treatment of Bedouin women by their own husbands and fathers. Her implication that Muslim men placing their women's modesty ahead of their physical safety is the result of living in an "afflicted society" (i.e., under European colonial rule) would be funny if people's lives were not at stake.
Ms. Walker shows she is not anti-Semitic but only opposes the government of Israel by recounting the tales of Jews who became martyrs in the U.S. civil rights movement. Hers is the Hollywood version of Jews. We're good people as long as we die for a cause but not if we try to defend ourselves or have the temerity to win a war that we did not start on our own. Oh well, I guess I'm just not Ms. Walker's kind of Jew.
Back in the USA, the only bombing before 9/11 was a "black community in Oklahoma?" Really? I guess the 1995 bombing of the Oklahoma City Federal Building or the 1965 Birmingham church bombing never happened. Since the latter killed only African-Americans, you'd think it would be on Ms. Walker's list of terrorist acts.
The real wrong done by the publication of this article is the disservice it does to the millions of women on this planet who really do need to be empowered, who deserve to have full rights as human beings. They need to have their affluent, free sisters speak up on their behalf. They don't need the damage being done by an Alice Walker.
If I wanted to subject myself to people who make up their minds first and never allow themselves to be confused by facts, I could watch Glenn Beck, listen to Rush Limbaugh, or read Norman Podhoretz. I never expected that Tikkun would sink to this level. Please cancel my subscription.
DAVID STOLOW
Millburn, NJ
While Alice Walker's feature article in the current issue of Tikkun may not reflect the magazine's position, the blurb on the cover reading "Alice Walker on Rwanda and Gaza" does. Tikkun has now equated the plight of the Gazans to the genocide in Rwanda, and has chosen as spokesperson someone who may be a popular American novelist but by no means an expert on the Middle East. I was particularly bemused by two statements: the first, that "Hitler learned from the Americans how to 'cleanse' Germany of the Jews," and that "Israelis have cut down millions of trees planted by Arab Palestinians." As a Tikkun writer myself, and as a Palestinian Jew (born in Haifa in 1939), I have been engaged in bringing reconciliation between our two people. But reconciliation can only be based on facts, not on fantasy. Hamas the other day objected to the teaching of the Holocaust in UN-sponsored Gazan schools. This is certainly not a helpful step towards reconciliation, but rather smacks of Iranian influence. Moreover, hospitals and schools, as Ms Walker argues, were not bombed as targets, but rather served Hamas as human shields for their men whose fire was answered with fire. Indeed, the Gaza attack was tragic. But so was the relentless firing of rockets on Israeli citizens for months on end, a war crime according to the UN. Publishing unbalanced articles will not bring peace, but rather more conflict.
RABBI MORDECAI SCHREIBER
Potomac, MD
I do appreciate Tikkun's ethical stand. But somehow no one ever challenges Israel directly, as happened in South Africa. The recent decision to go ahead and build more Israeli settler housing, despite all the nice speeches, makes me think sanctions or something like what happened in South Africa is necessary to get Israel to move in a positive direction towards a real two state answer.
Israel doesn't seem to be hearing Tikkun or the United States for that matter. By Israel of course I mean the present government.
To be specific, I would like to see an American Jewish group propose sanctions or even a cut in U.S. funding to Israel if it won't join the U.S. and Palestinians in cooperative work toward a two-state solution before this West Bank situation gets any worse.
BARRY WRIGHT
Gilroy, CA
SAVING PARADISE
I read with interest the article on "Saving Paradise" in your July/August 2009 issue. It seemed an exercise in fitting Christianity into the template of the authors' political and social agenda.
Yes, the Old and New Testament both portray God as intimately concerned with how we treat our fellow human beings on earth. One passage along these lines in the New Testament would be Matthew 25:31-46, the illustration of the sheep and the goats, where God will settle the eternal destiny of people based on their works.
But to cast Christianity as a "this-world" faith is missing the obvious point of what Christ, and then Paul and the other writers of the NT, said. Christianity is deeply focused on our eternal destiny after this life is over, and this teaching saturates the New Testament. I wonder if the authors were so obsessed with the other "sacred texts" they were reading that they failed to read the New Testament, or, having read it, if they managed to conveniently forget it. If we want to know what the original Christians thought, the New Testament is the first place we ought to look.
The authors also perpetuate the annoying habit some on the left have of conflating Christianity with conservative politics. To be sure, many conservatives identify themselves as Christians and tend to come up with Christian-sounding reasons to support their political agendas, but it is a huge mistake to evaluate Christianity based on what goes on in the political arena.
While Christianity is concerned with how we live out our lives in this world, the whole import and focus of Christianity as taught by Christ himself is that this world is not all there is, and that there is an eternal life in heaven or hell following this temporary existence. Jesus himself claimed to be the doorway to that life for those who would follow Him.
DANIEL HOCHBERG
Seattle, WA
UPLIFTED AND DIGNIFIED
Jonathan Granoffs article ("The Foundation of Dignity" in Tikkun's September/October issue) was touching. We lose sight of the dignity of the spirit, and it takes someone like Jonathan to bring light to it. Let's have more from this special person. He seems to enjoy it and, as in all his work, he is very good at it.
MITCH GOLD
Toronto, Canada
I am feeling very weary today on this journey we call life.
Weary, indeed.
From all of my trials, all of my challenges, and all of my failures ...
I just needed to tell you that your article is infinitely moving and inspiring
Absolutely gorgeous.
Thank you for sharing it with all of us.
You have blessed me, today, and although I am reluctant to speak for others -- surely, you have blessed all who have been touched by your words ...
Dignity, indeed ...
Infinite blessings to you, Jonathan.
L'shalom,
PENNY JOY SNIDER-LIGHT
Greater Boston Area, MA
[For more inspiration from Jonathan Granoff, go to www.tikkun.org/daily and put Granoff in the search box.]
TOO MUCH IDEALISM
I can understand your concerns with regards to President Obama's handling of profound health care reform in the United States (Tikkun, May/June 2009).
I want to share with you the following worry, better expressed in the following Spanish saying: Ni tan adentro que te quemes ni tan afuera que te hieles.
This saying may be translated approximately as, "Not so inside that you get burnt, not so outside that you freeze."
My worry is that by being so idealistic we may end up being frozen.
I hope that you are feeling well now.
CLAUDIO DURAN
Toronto, Canada
Rabbi Lerner replies:
Thanks, Claudio. Politics is often a process of compromise between opposing forces. Unfortunately, many progressive and liberal people are liberal about their liberalism, not fighting with all their capacities to push their elected officials toward their views. In that case, the elected officials feel much more pressure from the Right, so the compromises that they make end up being far less principled than they would be if there were a strong force coming at them from liberals and progressives. As long as the elected officials feel that they can count on the liberals to be wimpy rather than demanding and insistent, the nature of the compromise becomes more offensive; whereas the more insistent and powerful we are in our demands, the more likely that the compromises that inevitably take place in politics will be compromises that reflect some of our values.
ELIMINATING THE PROFIT MOTIVE FROM HEALTH CARE
I very much appreciate what Arnold Relman has to say (in his online article on tikkun.org). Sometimes there are fine points that may be significant, and sometimes splitting hairs is just too picky. Unfortunately for me, I am a clinician and have a crusty tendency to perfectionism (though I am often a bit sloppy, imperfect and less than thorough). I am picky with you and Howard Dean and some of my other colleagues (including me) when we don't say things quite precisely even though everyone knows what we mean. Howard seems not to understand that "single payer" may not be a sine qua non of health care reform, but "single claims processor" (which is what we really mean by "single payer") is crucial to making health care fair and accessible, for to have a single transparent processor would mean everyone would have to play by the same rules. "Expansion of coverage" is not a clear enough phrase, for to too many preconditioned minds "coverage" means "insurance" and fits too slickly with sick ideas like "individual mandate" or other ideas which mean every person needs an insurance policy. The last thing any person needs is an insurance policy; what we need is health care, person to person caring, the least expensive technique of all (not so expensive as neglect or not-caring, and not nearly so expensive as insurance which interferes in care or economy). But you knew that.
NATHAN POLLACK
via email
Arnold Relman replies:
I agree with Dr. Pollack that providing an affordable insurance policy for everyone isn't the essential requirement of health care reform. What we need is guaranteed access to all medically justified care in a not-for-profit, high quality system that is affordable. To achieve that, as I note in my article, we will need tax-supported funding of a reorganized medical care system that is based on not-for-profit multi-specialty group practices and salaried physicians.
HOW TO MOVE TOWARD NATIONALIZED BANKING
David Schweickart's "What To Do When the Bailout Fails" (Tikkun, May/June 2009) outlines an appealing model for economic democracy. It offers an alternative vision of how we might respond to the economic crisis capitalism is now in. This is one of those ideas that has been lying around and whose time has come. In order to move in that direction we now have to look at the possibilities in the present situation for making changes.
The bailout of the banks has presented the opportunity to nationalize them without having to get approval of Congress. The TARP program gave broad administrative discretion on the use of the $700 billion to save the banks. This could have been used to buy a major public share of ownership, making them public-private banks. If government used its ownership share to change management, reduce bonuses, and institute new loan policies, this could then become the institutional base from which a national industrialization policy could be implemented. Given the public anger with the banks, such nationalization would be highly popular. And the economic benefits that would flow from such policies would win popular support for making this nationalization permanent. There would be little that the 'just say no' Republicans could do to stop it.
What would probably be easier to do than nationalize all the banks in this way, would be to create one public bank that could then compete against the private banks and provide an alternative - a public option in banking. That is what has existed in the State Bank of North Dakota for the past 90 years. As Ellen Brown has pointed out http://www.webofdebt.com/articles/state_bank_option2.php it has been very successful in giving the people of that state some control over their future and helps account for the fact that North Dakota is one of only two states that is not now in great financial distress.
One problem in a national public bank is how to make it democratically accountable. And so another strategy would be to turn many of the small local banks that have been failing into public banks. Every week the FDIC has been taking over small failed banks. Rather than selling them to larger private banks (thereby furthering the consolidation of banking, which is likely to be one of the main outcomes of the crisis as presently handled), they can be reconstituted as local public banks under democratic control. This would move us a long way toward your model without incurring the wrath of the mega banks. As part of their economic development mission these local public banks could finance the formation of worker owned cooperatives.
A crisis is a terrible thing to waste. Unfortunately, so far the opportunities it has opened up are being wasted as the Obama administration has acted to restore the status quo ante rather than bring about a change we can believe in. There is a possibility for a progressive populism. But without a progressive program on the agenda, the crisis is fueling a reactionary populism that is very dangerous. Bailing out the bankers has reinforced the popular distrust of government that is now being reflected in the angry disruptions of town hall meetings. If people could see government as on their side, these brownshirts would have little traction. And the Republican party would be rejected as the obstructionists they are.
Your model of economic democracy gives us a vision of the direction we can go. Let's take the first steps on that path. The stakes are high. It's either economic democracy or barbarism.
CLIFF DURAND
Center for Global Justice
GRAPPLING WITH CAPITALISM
I have worked long and hard to support Barack Obama in his quest to become president and his mission to be a transformative president. You envision a utopian world that we all strive to achieve. It would be in fact heaven here on earth. You correctly condemn the capitalist marketplace for its selfishness and greed, but it is the world's economic system. It has worked better than any system in history. I believe that with all its faults it is part of God's plan for the evolution of the world to God's heaven here on Earth. It too will pass away, but no one has yet envisioned its replacement. The predominant economic system before capitalism was slavery. It lasted from before the time of Abraham until 1865. While there were many opportunities for God to condemn it, the Bible never does. Obviously, humanity and human designed systems had to evolve. Market capitalism is reality and we must work with it. President Obama's health care reform will not be perfect nor will his cap and trade program but they will be steps toward the Utopia that we all desire.
CECIL RHODES
U.S. Risk Energy Division
Rabbi Lerner replies:
The best way to work within capitalist societies to make it possible for them to achieve all that they can is to push for more utopian visions, creating the energy within the system to take steps toward that larger vision. That's how social security and unemployment insurance and many other advances happened--through the pressure created by utopian groups that were able to create a source of critique that embarrassed and finally pushed establishment liberals to develop the New Deal and the Great Society. So, if you happen to be in Congress, your task is to work within the system and get passed what can get passed. For the rest of us, we have to light a fire under our elected representatives, because only by doing so are we likely to get them to do all that can actually be achieved in the current system. Without such a fire, we will never get to experience what the limits are of the growth of our system. And it is precisely this strategy that made it possible for our capitalist system to grow in such a way that it was able to incorporate the demands of women, gays and minorities in ways that previously seemed "utopian." I hope you'll help us be that prophetic voice by making tax-deductible donations to Tikkun or the Network of Spiritual Progressives.
WHAT COMES AFTER CAPITALISM?
John Sanbonmatsu's (May/June 2009) entreaty that capitalism not be saved, and description of the cataclysmic events it has already unloosed on the world, not to mention those that will follow were it to continue are unfortunately, an all too simple superficial analysis of our economic and political plight, and simply ignores the American grain. The immediate question of course is with what would it be replaced?
Our country for some time has been neither completely capitalist nor socialist. The question always has been how much socialism and how much capitalism. Problems with "capitalism" have arisen because regulatory bodies established to limit and regulate anti-competitive practices, and even unsafe and corrupt actions of corporations, have had their power emasculated. Billions of dollars probably trillions have gone uncollected and been lost to the public through inadequate staffing levels of the Internal Revenue Service and other regulatory bodies. A major player in unmasking corporate corruption, was Elliott Spitzer, then Attorney General in New York. Spitzer on taking office began legal attacks on corporate price fixing, investment bank stock abuses, and other corporate frauds and abuses. Does anyone imagine these problems had just appeared? They had been going on for years. And why did it require a State not a Federal prosecutor to unmask the perpetrators and get convictions?
Whatever precisely "socialism" may mean, most would not object to the view that there is a modicum, albeit all too little, for the impoverished in social safety networks, Medicaid, and similar support. As there is in public education, public health programs, fire, police and other public safety organizations, and many others. The FDIC a depression era government initiative removed the specter of panic and fear of bank failures. (This is a measure that not even Britain with a Labor government appears ever to have enacted!) And ironically, we even have a government agency, "socialist" if you will, the Securities Investment Protection Agency, to protect capitalist shareholders! But one must regret other types of federal government intervention, however, for example those protecting corporations from competition, of providing subsidies from taxpayers that enable agricultural corporations to sell crops below the cost of production, and numerous other actions, all types of "socialism" whatever the corporations or government may choose to call it.
And whatever "capitalism" may mean, most would agree that the technological revolution associated with personal computers has been beneficial, and one brought to us almost entirely in the last twenty years from competing private companies. It required competition from Japanese carmakers to enable Americans to recognize that a new car might be expected to be mechanically dependable. While pharmaceutical companies in this country have somehow lobbied successfully to charge our government programs much more than in other countries, there still is truth in their claim that profits are needed to fund development of new drugs. The capitalist model of venture capital firms funding new biotechnology companies has had many benefits for the public. The synthesis of human insulin by Genentech, of hepatitis vaccines, etc. are in a sense, tributes to capitalism. Incidentally, in the many years when some scientists behind the iron curtain were doing outstanding research in physics and chemistry after the war, many Soviet and other physicians and surgeons may have been undertaking good research, but I am aware of no major pharmacological discovery from the self-styled Marxist states. These have emerged from the "west" and Japan. All this is not to deny there have been egregious predatory capitalistic practices in this country.
One must be amused that that last iconic embodiment of a communist Marxist-Leninist state, the People's Republic of China, has decided to set up corporations, sell shares, establish a stock market, and indeed embrace a type of state-sponsored capitalism. Obviously, a less doctrinaire, more flexible leadership has decided to create its own rather peculiar hybrid of socialism and capitalism. But reflect on that fact: a country whose ideological forbears were Marx, Engels, Lenin, and Mao has embraced, with hope, capitalism!
We have been let down not by capitalism but by fearful politicians who have not taken obvious steps to fix controls on its practice.
ERNEST B. HOOK
San Rafael, CA
John Sanbonmatsu replies:
Mr. Hook makes a common error when he says that the United States "has been neither completely capitalist nor socialist," but rather has been a bit of both. In fact, it is no more possible for a national economy to be partly socialist than it is for a woman to be "a little bit pregnant." Either you is, or you isn't. Socialism is democratic (or popular) ownership of the wealth and productive apparatus of a society. Capitalism is monopoly ownership of most of the national wealth and productive apparatus by a single small clique or class. By this definition, the United States has been capitalist since the founding of the Republic, and so it remains.
I certainly agree with Mr. Hook that many existing federal policies effectively promote the interests of corporations, rather than human or social need. I also agree that there is "all too little" federal support for "social safety networks, Medicaid, and similar support" to assist the impoverished and disadvantaged. When it comes to protecting the most vulnerable members of society from the worst social effects and predations of an inegalitarian economic system, many other capitalist states (chiefly in Western Europe) clearly do a better job than we do.
However, the question Mr. Hook neglects to ask is why the state exists in the first place. If one looks at the federal budget, one sees that the bulk of it is devoted to fighting wars and building weapons to ensure continued U.S. dominance over the world capitalist economy. The rest of the federal budget can be divided into two broad categories: (1) agencies directly promoting the interests of private capital, like the Chamber of Commerce, the Federal Reserve, the Department of Commerce, and the Interior Department (which leases public lands for private corporate use -- e.g. 300 million acres of "below ground mineral estate"); and (2) agencies whose reason for being is to "socialize" (here used ironically, however) the social and ecological costs of capitalist production. The latter include federal agencies like OSHA (created to protect workers from the harms inflicted on them in the workplace by unscrupulous owners), the EPA (set up to monitor, and clean up, the toxic waste and ecological disasters produced by corporations), and the Office of Surface Mining (which "regulates and manages the development of mineral resources" by the most powerful private energy companies). Even the Justice Department can be seen largely as an artifact of capitalism, since most crimes are committed by the poor. (Don't worry about the two million poor people locked up in American jails -- capitalism can always be relied on to replenish the depleted ranks of its criminal class at large, too.)
In practice, of course, most government agencies are in bed with private corporate interests (sometimes literally, as in the case of federal civil servants with the Minerals Management Service who, in 2008, were found to have had sex, and snorted cocaine, with industry representatives). Thus, the FDA ostensibly protects the citizenry from unsafe drugs, but in practice often looks the other way as Big Pharma peddles unnecessary or unsafe medications. Similarly, the Department of Agriculture, widely supposed to promote the public interest in maintaining a strong agricultural base, has functionally become an appendage and propaganda organ for the meat, dairy, and slaughterhouse industries. And so on.
The larger point, however, is that if we really want to have a just society, one in which human beings have meaningful work, in which the citizenry is not poisoned by its food supply, in which the poor do not die in our streets, in which other animals are not subjected to the horrific conditions of "factory farming," and so forth, it is hard to imagine a less efficient way to go about achieving such a society than to use the state to prop up, legitimate, and clean up after the very system that produces much of the inequality, social conflict, and ecological havoc in society. In this regard, the perennial problem for the free market liberal is that he or she can only conceive of the state as a sort of battlefield physician whose charge it is to decide which victims are to live and which to die. The one question the physician is never permitted to ask is whether the war he is fighting is justified in the first place. This is to say that, aside from disciplining the citizenry, the liberal state is permitted only one other social function, domestically, and that is performing triage. That's why state assemblies in the United States are right now agonizing over which public services "need" to be cut, and why every Congress engages in the same debate each over which public programs are to be cut, and which increased, for the following year's federal budget. Should we expand the border patrol, increase funding for drug treatment programs in the inner cities, set aside more monies for Superfund clean ups -- or build new federal penitentiaries? After all, we can't have it all ... And so the two parties argue and haggle over the particulars. But left intact after every legislative session is the underlying source of the myriad problems plaguing society, whether inequalities in education, a rising crime rate, oil spills, mining disasters, substance abuse by the poor, blow-back from U.S. military aggression abroad, or the forced migration of labor: namely, the national and international division of labor, wealth, and resources under capitalism.
But what about technology, Mr. Hook asks? Mr. Hook is certainly right that few of the important technological and medical innovations of the last century came from behind the Iron Curtain. Of course, to hold that fact up as evidence that capitalism is therefore the best possible system for achieving technological progress is like saying that only a slave-owning culture like ancient Rome could have invented torsion artillery, plumbing, or the overshot water wheel. In other words, Mr. Hook sets up a false dichotomy between capitalism and Communist totalitarianism. In fact, neither I nor any other contemporary socialist I know would hold up the USSR or its satellites as exemplars of technology, society, or good government. What we seek is something else entirely.
But there is another issue here worth discussing. And that is that capitalist technological dynamism has not always, or even often, been an unalloyed good. The H-bomb, white phosphorous, electronic surveillance, and the LD 50 test spring to mind as examples of capitalist "innovations" that many would find to be of dubious social or ethical merit. But even the more prosaic, seemingly benign technologies have brought their share of trouble too. Capitalism gave us the automobile -- but also global warming, the destruction of the natural landscape, and the deaths and maiming of hundreds of millions of animals each year (including a million human ones worldwide). Capitalism gave us the cell phone -- along with a new culture of social atomism and mutual indifference (in the First World) and millions of tons of toxic waste from abandoned phones (in the Third). Capitalism gave us some treatments for cancer -- but only after having introduced hundreds of poisons into the natural environment, and promoted the over-consumption of animal products, both of which have caused us to get...cancer. In short, technological "advance" often brings with it not social and ethical progress, but social and ethical regress. (Are young people in our society today better off for having iPods, violent video games, the internet, and downloadable porn than they were in the 1950s or 1960s, when they did not? Are they happier? Are they wiser? The evidence seems to suggest that they are not. On the contrary, literacy rates are declining, attempted suicide among teens has increased, and millions of kids now suffer from psychological disorders like depression and ADHD.)
This isn't to say that technological innovation can't be a good thing. But surely we, the people, ought to have a say about whether a particular technology is or is not brought into the world, since it is we and our children who will have to live with its consequences. The power to choose our culture's artifacts -- artifacts that cannot but shape our values as a society, and condition our relationships with one another as individuals -- should not rest exclusively with a small number of wealthy entrepreneurs or investors. In a truly democratic socialist order, fundamental decisions concerning which scientific projects ought to be funded, and which ones not, would be taken democratically, not left to powerful industrial lobbies more concerned to please their stockholders than to promote the social good. The primary criterion for funding science would no longer be to generate profit, but to meet human and animal need.
What would a genuinely democratic socialist society look like? We cannot say for sure, since no national experiment has been allowed to succeed (Chile under Allende came closest, but that experiment was ended by force in 1973). But we certainly know what it would not look like. In this regard, Mr. Hook ends his letter by praising China for having adopted a hybrid of socialism and capitalism, opining that the leadership there has embraced "hope." Yet what is transpiring today in China reveals on the contrary just what is so wrong with unfettered capitalist development. The Chinese countryside has been savaged, with millions left in poverty by the mass migration of young people to the cities. China's ecological order is in ruins. Whole rivers are dying, forests and mountains are being leveled, toxic waste is poisoning thousands of children, animal species are being thrust to the brink of extinction by development and hunting. The Chinese state, meanwhile, continues to torture and imprison dissidents, and its officials continue to lie about and cover up every instance of government malfeasance -- when they are not busy looking the other way as private companies and local party officials fleece the people. If this is what it means to embrace "hope," I would hate to see what it means to embrace capitalism's despair.
WHAT ABOUT THE ENVIRONMENT?
Of all issues facing us, environmental degradation is the most serious, yet you fail to mention this in the call for action in the October 2009 issue. This is the over-riding issue for the world and you even have a special section on the environment recognizing its seriousness. Rethink your priorities.
JOYCE SIEGEL
via email
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