"Hate the Rich" and other self-indulgences

Recently a user posted a copy of Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz's March 20, 2007 Counterpunch article "Hate the Rich" on the PERC forums. I would not have thought twice about it except it has also started to appear as graffiti around Ottawa. Fine, so I read it.

And now I want to talk about it because it is highly symptomatic and representative of an impulse that is apparently highly appealing to a particular despairing subculture within the progressive movement, a subculture that is highly destructive to the progressive movement as a whole.

My most damning criticism is that Dunbar offers no reason to hate the rich, no logic as to how this will help the struggle for global justice. Her position seems to be that in reality 'we' hate them anyway, so we should be open about it and go ahead and do it.

Why would I put energy into something that does not contrbute to the cause? Why would I engage in an impulse just because I have the impulse? I am human, of course I feel, at various times, rage, anger, hate, and a broad range of other emotions. I also have impulses to (over)indulge in chocolate, alcohol, acts of violence, sloth, acquisition of consumer goods, etc. So what?

Many would argue that a major reason we are in the mess we are in is the common belief that our every impulse deserves to be acted out, be it for sex, money, a new car, or what have you.

I am not so impressed with myself that I think that just because I have an impulse it should be acted out. In fact, on the whole both the world and my own life are better for the fact that I find the majority of my impulses and inclinations to be trivial and/or destructive and hence to be dismissed.

Dunbar states that "organized hatred is the element missing in all that we do", as if "the" should be emphasized. I would argue i) it is far from the only thing missing, asuming we are referring to things that are necessary or useful, ii) hatred is not missing, it is just not as universal as Dunbar would like, iii) the fact that something is missing is not de facto justification for it's inclusion.

My own observation is that while some of the hate/violence advocates within the movement are thoughtful, intelligent people, the majority are merely self-indulgent. Their motivations are complex and mixed, and the relative importance vary from individual to individual, but in general they are not rooted in any sort of analysis or politic of substance.

One major source of an impulse to hate and violence is despair. As we feel increasingly helpless we tend to feel greater anger and hate. Granted anger and acting it out can feel empowering. If we are feeling irrelevant or ignored an act of violence says "you cannot ignore me, I am someone."

Defiance is empowering. This is true on both the personal and political level, the more so as we feel our politic personally. However, defiance does not have to be violent or motivated by hatred. The angry person screams and attacks, someone who feels in control calmly goes about acheiving their ends.

Associated with that is the gendered assumption that violence is power. The impulse to lash out as a form of problem solving is all too evident in the levels of domestic violence in our society. Unfortunately it is not only males who engage in domestic violence, but it is disproportionately males. Unfortunately the synonymizing of power and violence is all too commmon, even among nonviolence advocates.

There is also an arrogance in the unstated assumption that "we" would be any better than they were our roles to be reversed. In a few cases this has been true, but by and large the new power holders turn out to be as bad or worse than those they replace.

It may be that it is assumed by Dunbar that 'hatred' would contribute a greater commitment and passion to the struggle for social justice. If so, I wish she had been more explicit and spelled out why and how. Perhaps the underlying assumption is that hate would be a sign that social justice is taken personally and not merely as an abstraction. This is actually an interesting point and one I will pick up on in a future blog.

Many have argued that hatred and violence have not only not contributed to the movement, they have been destructive. This would be my perspective and one I will spell out in greater detail in another follow up piece.

My second major criticism of Dunbar is that she is parochial. Her perspective is exclusively confined to indstrialized North America, or perhaps the industrialized west. I would possibly be more sympathetic to her piece if she were addressing the people of Darfur or the world's true poor, but she is not.

She asks "who are the rich?" and cannot understand why so many in our society collude with them in sustaining this corrupt and oppressive system. Her parochial position means that "the rich" are 'the other'. If we take a more global and historical perspective our collective cooperation is not so mysterious.

My own take home income for this year has been about $600/month. By the standards of my society I am poor, even desperately poor. Yet I eat well, sleep in a warm dry bed, with sheets, blankets and pillows that are clean, possess more books than many villages in much of the world, and here I am working on a computer. As Dunbar is a professor and author I assume her luxuries are many times greater than my own.

We are the rich. If we do not control, or even particularly influence the system that creates this situation, we nonetheless benefit greatly from it. Even the table scraps from this gluttony are so extravagent that the majority of us in the industrialized world live lives of privilege inconceivable to the majority of the worlds peoples, both past and present.

Why do we collude? Well, what would happen to all of or luxuries if there were to be global justice, equity, and sustainability? Resources necessary for our ipods and brand name clothing might be wasted on water, food and shelter for people who need them. Rather than hummers and mega-malls we might build health clinics and village markets.

Personally I might be able to maintain something approximating my current standard of living, but the majority of the population in the west could not. It is not, as Dunbar suggests, that everyone is hoping to someday become one of the truely rich, although that is certainly part it. It is that we are already the rich, and don't want to lose that.

In this regard I find Dunbar's whole position to be rather adolescent. Not merely self-indulgent, but arrogant and self-rightous. Why take responsibility for your own actions when you can blame your parents? Why worry about the homeless when you can feel aggrieved at having only a asmall apartment. Not that there are not needy people in the west, but they are not the audience Dunbar is addressing.

As such "hating the rich" becomes a very handy, if not necessary distraction from the reality of what is at stake, what is needed, and who is to blame. How much easier to rant and even act against a tiny group of the super powerful rather than take responsibility for ones own participation in the system, how much easier than to accept ones moral obligation to the truely oppressed.

Yes, fight for equity, social justice and sustainability. Yes, take action against the system that creates and maintains the inequities in all it's manifestations. Yes, devote yourself with passion and all your energies to what is right. And no, do not waste a single breath on self-indulgences like "hating the rich."

Vimy Ridge and other lessons

This Easter Canadians are being subjected to a barrage of media about The Battle of Vimy Ridge
as it is the 90th anniversary of that battle. Piece after piece extols the heroism and patriotism, (usually treating them as synonyms, which they are not) of those who fought and died. Over and over journalists reiterate how we must never forget what these men fought and died for.

Ok, I agree, except they never talk about what they fought and died for. I guess it is taken as a given that we all know, and further I guess we are to assume that "our boys" always fight for truth, beauty, freedom, etc.

So what were they fighting for?

The causes of World War I are complex are largely related to the economic, political, and military ambitions of the Great Powers of the day. In a nutshell the 'haves' wanted more, most specifically to be the indisputed great power of their age. In this context a great deal of sabre rattling and brinkmanship set the stage for something, anything, to set things off.

The immediate cause was the Austro-Hungarian reaction to the assassination of the Archduke Ferdinand. Ferdinand was killed by an assassin and Astro-Hungary responded with an ultimatum demanding all sorts of actions unrelated to the assassination itself and grossly interfering with Serbian sovereignty. Serbia agreed to almost all of the demands except one, but that wasn't enough for Austro-Hungary and the war was on.

So what is the lesson of WW I that we must never forget? Let's see ... how about: Great powers should not unreasonably shove around tiny states making all sorts of unreasonable demands in reaction to terrorist attacks because it can lead to wide spread, pointless wars with great suffering for millions of people.

Yes, that's a good lesson. We should remember that because, unlikely though it may seem today, it could happen someday. Yes, I know it sounds improbable, but I believe it really could happen that a great power could react to a terrorist attack with gross arrogance leading to an invasion, and then a long and pointless war.

"What experience and history teach is this-that people and governments never have learned anything from history, or acted on principles deduced from it." Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel